AT THE END OF LAST week I saw a claim, in a Spanish GNU/Linux site (yes, it says "GNU"), that COVID-19 took Free software aback, undoing 40 years of progress. I could not agree, as the evidence we have out there does not support this assertion. Last week we wrote about the real market share of Windows going back to the levels of 30 years ago (and nearly under 30% all in all) and there's evidence, as Phoronix put it a few hours ago, that "Gentoo Saw Total Commits Rise By 42% In 2020" (this is a real community, unlike Ubuntu or Fedora).

"One obvious casualty of COVID-19 is privacy..."We also wrote about IIS collapsing last year. At my 'daytime' job (actually nighttime) I see a gradual migration in that general direction -- away from proprietary traps rather than towards them. Many businesses now realise that Clown Computing was just a passing fad and as costs pile up (those were originally priced below profit levels to lure people into the trap, getting them locked in) the exit barriers aren't strong enough a deterrent anymore. Clown Computing was all along an entrapment strategy, turning licensing costs into subscription costs which only seem attractive on the (shallow) surface. Microsoft's Azure has layoffs and Microsoft is paranoid about those pointing this out (it harms recruitment efforts). Azure is a failure. Microsoft lies to its shareholders.

One obvious casualty of COVID-19 is privacy; putting aside face masks as a barrier to identification of people 'out there', there are now more tools by which people can be spied on in their own homes and such oppressive tools with egregious violations of human rights are often imposed by bosses, examiners, and sometimes even governments. ⬆