That COVID-19 (or coronavirus at large) can harm monopolies may be true at the same time, but let's not lose sight of the end goal

Whether you think it's exaggerated by the media or not, excess total deaths (irrespective of COVID) and overcrowded hospitals are compelling enough as solid evidence of soaring death tolls, attributable directly and indirectly to the pandemic

Summary: "Freedom" or "liberty" may seem to have been co-opted by extreme right-wing and COVID-denying (or COVID-minimising) elements, but at the moment we do stand to lose many "tech rights" (in the name of "protecting" us)

HALF A year ago Richard Stallman wrote: "TV news coverage of a crisis struggles to fill 24 hours a day with "information", notwithstanding the fact that the actual flow of new information about the crisis is nowhere near sufficient to fill that time."

"At this moment of time Linux is growing."The crisis is a real one, but a lot of important news slips under the radar, including the atrocity which is Brexit, corruption at many levels of government (when it's brought up people are accused of 'politicising' things at a time of unprecedented crisis), even Microsoft layoffs. People inside Microsoft told me recently that it had hit people harder than media bothered to report (the Bill Gates-funded BBC played along with the Microsoft spin, framing layoffs as replacing staff with "Hey Hi!") and we're still waiting for clearance ahead of the Microsoft leaks.

At this moment of time Linux is growing. Maybe not in "Fedora" clothing (Fedora 33 was released earlier this week and IBM spent no money promoting it, unlike Red Hat when it was independent) but in the clothing of "smart" "phones". Pleasing to the Linux Foundation (more fund-raising for salaries sky-high), which is promoting mass surveillance using such 'phones' (because of COVID-19). We already took note of this agenda at the Linux Foundation last year, in essence openwashing of the data-mining 'industry'.

The crisis is real (don't get started with the whole "herd immunity" lunacy, promoted by oligarchs' front groups and offshoots). But if we give up on software freedom and privacy -- sometimes in the name of programmes that don't even work (contract-tracing nonsense is proven to be ineffective, especially at a scale we're dealing with right now in Europe) -- then say goodbye to the vision of GNU. Sure, many of the surveillance machines (servers or so-called 'clouds', so-called 'phones', and 'smart' meters) run Linux, but who the heck cares if we turn Orwell's nightmare into a reality? A Linux-powered '1984' is no better than a Windows-powered one, or not much better. Let's not allow fear to lead us astray, only to give up on all progress made towards privacy (e.g. GDPR).

Bill Gates (in)famously wrote in 1980:

"There’s nobody getting rich writing software that I know of."

Some people from Microsoft challenge the claims of Microsoft profitability (Microsoft received massive bailouts under the auspices of COVID and Microsoft was always good at sucking money out of the taxpayers, acting more like a parasite than a software company). At the moment Gates is pushing vaccination programmes he stands to profit from. He was always only about money, not software. Software was the means, not the goal. Gates is in vaccination for money, not for people. He never cared for people... ⬆