Amended Input From Software Freedom Institute for EU Consultation on Free Software
"On 3 February 2026 Software Freedom Institute lodged a submission with the European Commission's inquiry into Open Digital Ecosystems," Daniel Pocock wrote yesterday and, "I updated the document with a new version to fix some PDF hyperlink issues in the table of contents."
There are some gems in there, so we're putting it in GemText today, as well as HTML and plain text bulletins: (the original has links embedded)
Ref. Ares(2026)1223479 - 03/02/2026European Open Digital Ecosystems
Page (i) of opening commentsEvidence of Daniel Pocock Founder, director of Software Freedom Institute
keywords: cybersecurity, democracy, digital sovereignty, Debian, FSFE, Fellowship, GNOME, IBM, Red Hat, Techrights, Code of Conduct gaslighting, harassment, abuse, rumours, gossip, coercive control, cult behaviour, overworking, WIPO, UDRP, Switzerland, JuristGate
Attached - a full copy of the law suit filed in the US
District Court for the Southern District of New YorkPlease scroll down to find the table of contents. - (1:25-CV-03883-UA).
Personal background
In 1993, at age 14, I was the youngest person in my city to pass the amateur radio exam and begin engaging with the earliest versions of Linux and other free, open source software at the same time as engaging in the hobby of amateur radio. In 2002 I completed a Bachelor of Computer Science degree at the University of Melbourne. During my career, I have worked in various companies in finance and telecommunications and I have also worked as an independent consultant.
Carla and I married on 17 April 2011 and another Debian Developer died the same day. As he died in Switzerland the official cause of death has never been disclosed. The death immediately before that was a confirmed suicide of a volunteer who had sent everybody a resignation/suicide note the night before the Debian Day anniversary. I published a full history of the Debian harassment culture for people who want to fact check the social exploitation of open source communities.
25 April 2017 (ANZAC Day), the FSFE Fellowship elected me as their representative. I discovered the FSFE is not authorised to use the name of the real FSF. As they are violating the real FSF trademark, its been compared to identity theft or Nigerian fraud. I subsequently resigned from FSFE in total disgust. Ever since, my family and I have been subject to stalking and harassment from political rivals affiliated with the FSFE (fake FSF).
In April 2021, at the height of the pandemic, I founded the Software Freedom Institute. Rival developers and organisations began an even more intense campaign of stalking. A UDRP legal panel ruled that Red Hat, a subsidiary of IBM, had engaged in harassment and abuse of an administrative procedure to try and discredit me and censor a blog post about children in the open source supply chain. Link to Red Hat's evidence bundle containing the forbidden blog post.
On 6 May 2025 I launched a Pro Se legal action against the rogue corporations in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (1:25-CV-03883-UA). The case is currently at an early stage and refers to criminal violations of antitrust regulations by the large corporations spreading libel about my business and my family. A full copy of the claim is attached. This is the claim that is currently on the public court records and the public are entitled to read it in full.
Based on the above, I have experienced free, open source software both from the perspective of an unpaid hobbyist/volunteer, from the perspective of a paid employee/consultant and from the perspective of a survivor and litigant.
1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the EU open source sector?
strengths: we have some very talented developers who are EU citizens, EU resident and able to match open source to the economic, social and cultural context of their country and the EU
weaknesses: foreign actors are imposing on cultural and legal protections, for example, by violating the privacy expectations of EU-based developers. There is a perception that it is easier to get funding abroad.
2. What are the main barriers that hamper (i) adoption and maintenance of high- quality and secure open source; and (ii) sustainable contributions to open source communities?
Developers, especially women, fear public consequences and humiliations. These practices are long- standing defects in the culture of all open source groups. Many consumers and business users believe the software is free and don't want to give anything back to the community unless they have to.
People are often recruited on promises they are joining some kind of non-profit charitable group. Over time they discover that some people are getting paid. Some people spend their own money to travel to a community meeting and they discover other people had sponsored tickets. The people not getting paid or the people who get an uneven share of the funds become disillusioned and quit. Some people even died, like the Debian Developer who died on our wedding day.
3. What is the added value of open source for the public and private sectors? Please provide concrete examples, including the factors (such as cost, risk, lock-in, security, innovation, among others) that are most important to assess the added value.
By definition, whenever you put a closed source product side by side with an open source product, the open source product is always giving you one extra thing: the source code.
If you can choose to have the source code, why would you choose not to?
4. What concrete measures and actions may be taken at EU level to support the development and growth of the EU open-source sector and contribute to the EU’s technological sovereignty and cybersecurity agenda?
Provide stronger legal protections for individual developers and startup businesses who may be attacked by larger rivals, online gossip and other forms of subversion. My company had purchased a
Swiss legal protection, Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners. They promised that no claim would be rejected but in practice they rejected every dispute with various excuses. The legal insurance scheme was secretly liquidated by the Swiss financial regulator, it is the JuristGate affair.
Provide specific criminal law mechanisms concerning groups who engage in coercive control tactics. Extreme cases are already covered by laws about blackmail. Some jurisdictions have already introduced laws about coercive control in domestic relationships. We need the same protection for individuals who participate in group-based software development outside of their employer. Any time the name of a software product or so-called "community" is used to denounce another victim, they are engaging in a form of social engineering attack, they are engaging in coercive control. By creating these mickey-mouse judgments about people, they are subverting the processes of real courts and employment tribunals. At least once every year we see one of these groups make a public statement denouncing some random victim. A number of people died in proximity to this culture and group behaviour defect.
EU and national employment law needs to reflect hybrid ways of working and address the situations where there is a clash between hobbyist and commercial open source. If people come under work-like pressures, for example, when somebody goes to an event and they thought it was a weekend event but they arrive and somebody insists there is a "Code of Conduct" now, they need to get time off in lieu to comply with the working hours directive.
Due to the unique nature of developing and publishing software, need to contemplate opportunities for people to explore open source outside of their normal workplace. Being more specific, in those countries where citizens either do mandatory military service or citizens have a right to time off work for military reserve, the equivalent time could be offered for open source software development activities.
The French Validation des Acquis de l'Expérience (VAE), which has prompted discussions about a "VAE international" system, could offer a standardised and streamlined track for validating the skills of those who have published open source software projects.
Publishers of open source and any other domestically created software, especially app developers, need a way to bypass the gatekeepers. For example, the app stores on Android and iPhone are each controlled by a single company, Google and Apple respectively. Without specifying how it can be achieved, this elimination of gatekeepers is a very high priority.
Revise EU-level and national-level procurement policies to ensure that public institutions always use open source software.
When engaging in outsourced service contracts, ensure the services use open standards and open protocols to exchange data with public IT systems.
Apply a similar standard to hardware acquisitions, ensure that hardware does not prevent the owner from changing the operating system or software.
Put in place a process whereby all existing and ongoing IT expenditure is subject to continuous review with two goals: publishing a list of future open source needs well before tendering processes occur, and actively identify existing but incomplete open source opportunities well before the existing contract is due for renewal. Open source communities rarely have off-the-shelf solutions ready to compete in a tender process. If the needs are advertised well in advance, this gives solutions providers an opportunity to plan ahead and be ready to bid.
For regulated technological products that are widely used, including mobile phones, cars and consumer electronics, where we also have the motives to extend the useful lifespan and protect owners from surveillance, enforce a right-to-repair. A full right-to-repair should give consumers the ability to replace the software in the device, even if the original manufacturer has discontinued production or gone out of business.
5. What technology areas should be prioritised and why? In what sectors could an increased use of open source lead to increased competitiveness and cyber resilience?
Elimination of gatekeepers, for example, the Google Android and Apple iPhone app stores can't continue to be monopolies. Any organisation or sole trader who is lawfully registered in an EU state should be able to publish an app and any consumer should be able to install it, even if neither the publisher nor the consumer has a Google or Apple account.
Certain areas like telecommunications, finance and accounting are common to all businesses of all sizes.
The education sector, at all levels, has been targeted by companies hoping to brainwash future generations into using proprietary software. Some companies are offering their products or services free of charge for academic use as this helps them maintain the domination of their products in industry. Need to ensure that turn-key open source solutions exist for education. Need to ensure that educational institutions are choosing the open source solutions.
Subverting EU law: the dark side of open source "communities" are the myriad tactics used to subvert laws that distinguish the EU from the rest of the world
Various actors have seen free, open source software as an opportunity to subvert EU laws with respect to employment rights, intellectual property rights, privacy rights, misleading trade practices, freedom of expression, and gender equality, among others.
Employment rights: many free, open source activities have origins in hobbies and student projects. Many conferences and events take place on evenings and weekends. This leads to many problems and culture clashes. By default, this is non-working time for many participants. However, some
participants do appear to be participating on a paid basis and they are granted time off work in lieu of time spent at weekend events. On the other hand, some employers use the work produced by the open source community but if their workers try to put these events on a timesheet, some line managers insist it is only a hobby and not eligible for payment. There is significant inconsistency between different teams and different companies.
Intellectual property rights: some groups attempt to subvert the notion of copyright, insisting that joint authors can be "expelled" on a whim and their right to recognition extinguished on a summary basis. Copyright law has no notion of expulsion: after a joint work has been published, all authors have an ongoing right to recognition as developers.
Privacy rights: individuals and their employers face serious challenges with respect to privacy. Parallel problems are emerging in every industry due to the rise of social media and services like LinkedIn. For open source software, the challenges are even more extreme. We regularly see cases of poaching staff, shaming people, blackmailing people with the threat of shaming and so on. The implication of these practices is more serious for small companies.
Misleading trade practices, freedom of expression: free, open source software promoters have claimed an affinity for freedom of expression. This philosophical promise has been used as a means of recruiting people and it is used as a basis for claims the transparency makes higher quality software. In practice, many free, open source software groups have engaged in some sort of "Code of Conduct" gaslighting, where certain topics are forbidden and any reference to those topics is deleted immediately. For example, the naming dispute between FSF and FSFE is a forbidden topic. The Debian suicide cluster and written complaints the developers made before their deaths are a forbidden topic. If these groups were sincere about freedom of expression, these topics would be valid for discussion.
Gender equality: for various reasons, such as the emphasis on using evenings and weekends and the frequency of public shaming, it seems that very few women participate in free, open source software as unpaid volunteers. Some companies have attempted to mask the absence of women by paying young women to attend the events and dress in t-shirts like the volunteers. This causes embarrassment for everybody. Young female employees believe they are attending a business conference on the orders of their boss. These women are surprised to discover vast differences in behaviour between the participants who are there to socialise in their free time. These misunderstandings and cultural differences are exacerbated because some of the companies are advancing lofty statements about a "Code of Conduct". In practice, if people are participating in a hobby during their free time, the controlling corporations are misleading women about the nature of hobbyist and voluntary events.
This seems to be the final version.
To the EU's credit, it did not censor this submission in spite of a serial censor (he admitted to me in court under oath he's a 'repeat offender' in that sense, trying to bypass the law by contacting ISPs and webhosts) publicly "having a go at it". These people reject free speech as much as they reject software freedom. █