Microsoft Suffocates the Free Software Foundation (FSF)

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2012-06-20 18:13:44 UTC
Modified: 2012-06-20 18:18:03 UTC

The software mafia pretends that FSF is a casino

GNU father

Summary: The donations page of the FSF is being blocked by Microsoft, ironically labelled "gambling"

FIRMS such as Black Duck have been discrediting GNU/FSF's GPL for quite a few years, essentially by repeating the same dubious talking points over and over again. Black Duck has roots in Microsoft.

Is the following incident a case of mischievous staff or innocent mistake?

How Microsoft Threat Management Gateway Classifies donate.fsf.org

After reading about RMS having his laptop stolen, I clicked the link to donate.fsf.org. I'm at work at the moment, and our IT department uses Microsoft Threat Management Gateway to prevent access to certain types of sites. If you're not familiar with this software, it's essentially a proxy that assigns websites to categories and can be configured to block any set of categories. This is the response when connecting to donate.fsf.org:

Network Access Message: Access Denied Explanation:

[Explanation on who to contact in our company for more info redacted]

The page you are trying to browse to is categorized as "Gambling"

If you believe you are getting this message by mistake, try contacting your administrator or Helpdesk.

Technical Information (for support personnel)

Error Code: 403 Forbidden. Forefront TMG denied the specified Uniform Resource Locator (URL). (12233) IP Address: [IP Redacted] Date: 6/14/2012 6:31:39 PM [GMT] Server: [server name redacted] Source: proxy

The FSF recently lost another valued employee, the licensing and compliance officer (or one who specialises in the GPL). Choking the FSF's only life supply is rude to say the least. See the comments posted in response to the posting above (there's more in other sites). ⬆

Comments

Needs Sunlight

2012-06-21 10:06:35

The smear 'Shareware/Freeware' is part of the problem, too. Both are probably done intentionally and thus unlikely to be resolved at all. Notice that there is still a problem even after so much time has passed.

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2012-06-21 17:22:14

How do Shareware/Freeware relate to this?

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Microsoft Suffocates the Free Software Foundation (FSF)

How Microsoft Threat Management Gateway Classifies donate.fsf.org

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