THE most saddening thing is, many Free software (or "Open Source") institutions give up on people -- along with mission statements -- in favour of corporate money. The most obscene example of this is the Linux Foundation, which equates "growth" with money and conflates corporate buyout with "success". The most depressing aspect of that is the spread of the phenomenon to other institutions, such as OSI, SFC, FSFE and to a lesser degree FSF (we're still undecided about the last one). Debian has amassed a lot of money; much of it comes from corporations that don't necessarily respect software freedom but have an interest in controlling Debian as a project/community.

"It helps the public hold people in positions of authority accountable (to the people, not to corporations/corporate sponsors)."One needn't be a cynical anti-capitalist to say that there's something wrong with corporate takeover of almost everything. Capitalism is not inherently about few corporations running the world; it just isn't.

Over the next few days we'll reproduce a bunch of older articles about the FSFE, based on insiders. When we reproduce article we do not necessarily endorse everything they say; the Free Software Fellowship articles do, however, contain a number of interesting facts/information. It helps the public hold people in positions of authority accountable (to the people, not to corporations/corporate sponsors). ⬆