Bonum Certa Men Certa

Leak: FSF/FSFE Trademark Dispute (FSF Demanding That FSFE Should Change the Organisation's Name)

Using or misusing the FSF's good name as a 'cash machine'

Change



Summary: The FSF made demands for FSFE to change the name, the FSFE discussed the matter internally and Jonas Oberg, the FSFE's Executive Director, wrote the leaked message (below) where he states: "So the framework agreement, as it stands, is not being honored from any side."

SEVERAL months ago Richard Stallman told me that the FSFE's relationship with the FSF was largely amicable. It was around this time that we also published FSF-Relationship-Framework.txt and explained why the FSFE taking money from Microsoft was potentially mean-spirited a move.



"...the FSFE taking money from Microsoft was potentially mean-spirited a move."As it turns out, Stallman left out something that had happened 3 years earlier (and 2 years before he was pushed out, with the FSFE's support for the coup).

Here is a letter from May 2017:



Subject: Re: FSF asking us to change our name II From: Jonas Oberg <jonas@fsfe.org> Date: 30/05/2017, 15:31 To: Bernhard Reiter <bernhard@intevation.de> CC: ga@fsfeurope.org

Hi Bernhard,

I largely agree with you, but I would like to ask for a clarification on this part:

I don't see why. We should ask them to establish the agreed cooperation.


If I take an honest look at the framework agreement, I believe it's phrased rather favourable towards the FSF, and a lot of what we would like to see -- such as joint decision making on important issues related to Free Software -- isn't actually in the agreement aside from an intent to develop such a way in some hypothetical future.

And I can truly see why the FSF believes we are in violation of the agreement, at least on parts. Our work on the Radio Directive and other policy work I believe is an example of work that according to the agreement should be carried out by the FSF, and not the FSFE.

Our work on standards for cloud services is close to what's reserved for the FSF. On the other part, there are a number of activities envisioned from the FSFE which we don't do, or never did: operate the GNU Business Network, develop new free software, translate FSF position papers, recruit more volunteers for the GNU project, resell FSF merchandise, and so on.

So the framework agreement, as it stands, is not being honored from any side. What I understand from you is that you think we can push more on this:

We intend, in the future, after we have gained experience working together, to develop a system wherein these decisions are approved jointly by a specific list of several major FSFs.


Essentially, our message could be that now, after 15 years, we have the experience of working together. It's not been a pleasurable experience, but we now know what the current tensions and activities are, which makes this a good time to now negotiate what such a system for join decision making would look like.

Is that close to what you intend?

Sincerely,

-- Jonas Öberg, Executive Director Free Software Foundation Europe | jonas@fsfe.org Your support enables our work (fsfe.org/join)


A few days later the following message was sent from the FSF:



Subject: FSFE From: John Sullivan <johns@fsf.org> Date: 02/06/2017, 15:50 To: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro>

Hi Daniel,

Congratulations on your election to FSFE's general assembly!

I'm wondering, if as part of your new position, you have been briefed on the current issues between FSF and FSFE.

I have been trying to discuss them with Jonas and Matthias for the last several years, but have gotten nowhere, and in fact things are now much worse than they were before. They made it clear at our last in-person meeting in April that they do not intend to change anything.

In your post at <https://danielpocock.com/risks-of-using-proprietary-software>, you expressed some of the same concerns FSF has. So I'm reaching out to you in the hopes that we might be able to figure out a solution, and also to hear anything you can share about plans you have for trying to address your concerns from your new position. We could arrange a call, or we could discuss by email, if you are open to talking. Will you be at Debconf in Montreal?

I am also attaching a copy of the agreement FSFE made with us in order to use the FSF name, in case you have not seen it.

-john




-- John Sullivan | Executive Director, Free Software Foundation GPG Key: A462 6CBA FF37 6039 D2D7 5544 97BA 9CE7 61A0 963B http://status.fsf.org/johns | http://fsf.org/blogs/RSS Do you use free software? Donate to join the FSF and support freedom at <http://my.fsf.org/join>.


According to this, the FSF granted FSFE permission to use the name, based on the FSF-Relationship-Framework which we reproduced here a few months ago. In 2017, John Sullivan, the FSF's Executive Director, sent an email to a newly-elected person from the FSFE's general assembly describing how difficult it is to deal with people in FSFE. "It is clear from these emails that FSFE does not have the blessing of FSF to use the name," the leak's source tells us. Quite a few people seem to be familiar with this problem, which is somewhat of an 'open secret'. The "FSFE has collected over 1 million euro of donations from Free Software supporters," the source told us. "Using a name borrowed from FSF helped them get this money."

"In 2017, John Sullivan, the FSF's Executive Director, sent an email to a newly-elected person from the FSFE's general assembly describing how difficult it is to deal with people in FSFE."And it meanwhile looks like in Wikipedia FSFE's self-promotional page has become a candidate for deletion, with the following anonymously stated reason: "Page replicates the organization's own view of itself, almost transplanted verbatim from its own web site. Staff and members of the organization have been actively editing the page (see Reinhard Müller, Mxmehl). Name of the organization is in dispute, as they borrowed the name from FSF. The organization has less than 30 members, as listed on their own People page. Demographic data released by the last elected Fellowship Representative shows that interest in the organization is very limited outside Germany. Much of the organization's work appears to be ambush marketing, for example, a city converts their computers to Free Software and the FSFE makes a lot of publicity trying to associate the decision with one of their campaigns, even if they were never involved. It is not clear what original work they have done themselves and therefore, without being either very big or having done some outstanding work of their own initiative, they are not particularly notable. If the page remains, it needs substantial work to include the history of the organization, how it has interacted with other organizations, volunteers and sponsors (Google) but there are not many Reliable Sources, as required by Wikipedia, to document those facts objectively."

In recent years the FSFE has had a number of scandals for positions it took and decided to broadcast out in the open. Seeing that even the FSF is not happy with the FSFE's stance, with hard evidence to prove it, seems reasonably newsworthy.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Before the OSI Was Bribed and Hijacked by Microsoft via GitHub and Compromised Management...
The OSI isn't even remotely "woke"
The OSI Has Been Silent for Over 3 Weeks, It Has a Severe Trust Issue After Promoting Microsoft and Proprietary GitHub
OSI took a lot of money from Microsoft to become a Microsoft lobbyist
Bribery is OK If You Work for Microsoft (No Punishment Expected)
It's very troubling and a symptom of a broken society/system when particular laws or rules are applied and enforced against some people but not against others
Someone Should Remind Microsoft Lunduke That Microsoft Hires Many Sexual Criminals and Pedophiles as Well
Microsoft Lunduke on an "expedition" to find one or more perverts, then generalise to everyone in the "community"
Cash Machines (ATMs) Make Mistakes and They're Proprietary Software
Correcting mistakes is a colossal challenge
Yes, Microsoft is the Problem
"I am no MS shill."
Another Failed Use Case for Chatbots (LLM): Legal Advice and Analysis
They're just some self-discrediting toy that costs way too much to operate
 
GAFAM 'Revolving Doors' at The Register and a "Bribe Price List"
"an analyst at Microsoft"
Microsoft Rapidly Shrinking (No, It's Not About Efficiency, It's About Unbearable Debt)
We'll soon see how much debt grew in the past quarter
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 29, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Corruption is the Standard Operating Procedure at the European Patent Office (EPO)
The EPO is a dictatorship that stains Europe
Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) at the European Patent Office (EPO) Requests an Urgent Meeting to Avoid Abolishing the Office
This is dictatorship led by the most corrupt
Slopwatch: Fake 'Linux' 'Articles' and Spamfarms/Slopfarms
at least 5 fake articles in one day
Gemini Links 29/07/2025: Wayland Unfit for Use and LLM Slop Faking One's Language Skills With Robot Communications
Links for the day
Nailing the "Hey Hi" (AI) Hype Bubble
So-called "hey hi" as they define it now is all about large companies or regimes remotely controlling the processes running on your machine and even your very own behaviour on your machine, which is in effect no longer your machine but some remotely controlled apparatus
"Four decades; Four freedoms; For all users" Now as a T-shirt
That's shown along the sidebar
Links 29/07/2025: Bad Climate and "Fair Software Licensing" Blasts Microsoft
Links for the day
Links 29/07/2025: Data Brokers Gone Wrong/Rogue and "Copyright Thicket"
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Linuxconfig.org, Linuxsecurity.com, Fagioli, The Register
Today's "Slopwatch" isn't the first article about LLM slop
We Cover Topics Other Sites Are Too Afraid to Cover (Even When They Know the Facts)
It's not that they doubt the truth, they just realise there may be consequences for talking about it
They Try to Tell Us the Free Software Foundation Inc is Dying, But Its Revenue Doubled Since the Dot-Com Bubble Burst
Being in "Activism" is never easy; but it does positive things for society
It's About the Cost of Workers, Not the Fictional Skills Shortage (That Does Not Exist, the Media Spreads False and Sometimes Self-Fulfilling Narratives)
This issue isn't limited to computing, some dub it "globalism"
Links 29/07/2025: More Pushbacks Against Slop and More Praises of Tom Lehrer
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/07/2025: Purple Yarrow and Understanding Op Amps
Links for the day
This Monday WebProNews Absolutely Flooded the Web With Fake (LLM Slop) 'Articles' About "Linux", Google News Promoted Them as Legitimate
All of the following are fake articles attributed to pseudonyms or authors that don't exist; the images are also slop. Why does Google promote these?
Linuxiac is Not a Slopfarm, But at Least Some of Its Articles Are Machine-Generated Fakes
what we said about it was correct
Expect More Microsoft Layoffs
"Are more job cuts coming?"
Microsoft Behaving Like It's Running Out of Money to Pay Salaries
Does that seem like the behaviour expected from a company which claims it is "worth" trillions?
LWN Downtime Due to Linode, Not LLM Bots
"I’ve received an email letting me know that there is a potential for data loss."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 28, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 28, 2025
Nonfree Software in My Bank, by Richard Stallman
Updated 8 hours ago
Links 28/07/2025: Science, Health, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Healthy Self-Image With Autism and a "New Life"
Links for the day
Links 28/07/2025: COVID-19 Sped up Brain Aging, "Circumvention is More Popular Than Compliance"
Links for the day
Richard Stallman is Usually Right Because He Thinks "Outside the Box"
he is able to observe society (mores and norms) as somewhat of an outsider
LWN Has Been Down for a Long Time, Another Casualty of LLM Bots?
Time will tell. How much time though?
Slopfarms Versus 'Linux' (and Against People Who Write Real Articles About GNU/Linux)
LLM slop in slopfarms by Brian Fagioli and Redazione RHC
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray and Running pkgsrc in a FreeBSD Jail
Links for the day
Microsoft Turns News Sites Into Spamfarms
Is the site The Register MS the next IDG?
The Register MS/The Register US
On Saturday I contacted them for a comment (before issuing criticism)
Hacking revelations at Vatican Jubilee of Digital Missionaries
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 27, 2025