THE #techrights IRC chats and various communications outside IRC have advanced to the point where we can now better understand who and what interacts regarding Software Freedom so far this autumn. Several people have even fed entire mailing lists into algorithms that can analyse the contents. It is work in progress. People believe that there's something going on, they assume that it is partly coordinated, but in order to make sense of it or 'reverse-engineer' it -- so to speak -- we need to learn the unknowns (or what's not publicly visible), e.g. one company instructing another, a company instructing staff or vice versa.

"People believe that there's something going on, they assume that it is partly coordinated, but in order to make sense of it or 'reverse-engineer' it -- so to speak -- we need to learn the unknowns (or what's not publicly visible), e.g. one company instructing another, a company instructing staff or vice versa."Andrew Tanenbaum (creator of MINIX) said to the press just over a decade ago: “A couple of years ago this guy called Ken Brown wrote a book saying that Linus stole Linux from me. It later came out that Microsoft had paid him to do this.”

One researcher of ours is finding money trails leading directly to Microsoft among those who slandered Richard Stallman (maliciously attributing to him positions he does not have at all!). We don't want to reproduce here the claims that are false, but let's just say those claims have been incredibly ruinous and only corrected very, very belatedly (after persistent pressure). Apologies cannot undo the harm and retractions don't tend to be seen as much as the earlier (defamatory) claims. This researcher might have more to show at a later date.

"Also, I've mentioned before," he noted, "the political cult Microsoft uses tactics which overlap strongly with previous political movements."

"Apologies cannot undo the harm and retractions don't tend to be seen as much as the earlier (defamatory) claims."He cites Taistoism, asserting that this describes how Microsoft is attacking GNU/Linux and Free software at this moment in time. He further explained: "The means to fight them would be similar. This includes the fight by proxy occurring against all FOSS projects via Malleus Hackerum (CoC) and, especially their fight against RMS and FSF. Notice that Malleus Hacerkum is used to get their people on each and every project, no matter how small, mostly by displacing or breaking the key contributors and founders." ⬆