THE year was 2012. FSF had openly and stubbornly opposed UEFI 'secure' boot, but Red Hat kept pushing hard for inclusion of this antifeature in Linux (even Linus Torvalds pushed back against that, using rather colourful language). We wrote a great deal about it back then (about 30 articles in half a year) and named the company -- not the person ('Gulagboy') -- as the culprit. We kept blasting Red Hat. So what changed after that? Why did Intel and Red Hat pay the FSF? And the FSF, instead of condemning the move, suddenly condoned the person who did this? Even gave him an award for it? This may always remain a mystery, an enigma subjected to guesswork at best.
"This may always remain a mystery, an enigma subjected to guesswork at best."Now, in 2023, there's a bit of a deja vu, not only because of last year's messages about Ukraine but due to questions about IBM repeatedly closing RHEL sources and slapping its CoC on GNU. Why does the FSF keep tolerating this abuse?
Today somebody who reads Techrights told us that the LibrePlanet-discuss isn't allowing his message to come through. This message wasn't about Ukraine or Russia. It wasn't off-topic either. It wasn't in any violation of any known rules. From what we've been told, it wanted to know the FSF's stance on what Red Hat did last week. There are good reasons to ask for that, notably the money-obsessed [1, 2] Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) 'butting in' and pretending to be the sole and most credible (even principal) guardian of the GPL, a licence crafted by the person that the SFC repeatedly sought to overthrow. To make matters a lot worse, the SFC has a track record of censoring IBM critics, threatening to even ban them. More recently the SFC hired one of the flag bearers of the movement to unseat Linus Torvalds, based on malicious distortions and deliberate lies. SFC hardly writes any software, so it is over-compensating by hugging pseudo-social causes.
What is going on here? If nobody from the FSF took the initiative to E-mail a reply (in person) to the sender (like in the case of Ukraine; Greg did respond off the list), and moreover the message was blocked from the mailing list, what can a person deduce? It's easy to deduce that this is IBM censorship or FSF staff trying to save face for Red Hat. The sender told us that "it seems to be IBM censorship" (denying the very visibility of the message).
"The bottom line is, it'll help to see an official FSF statement on what Red Hat/IBM did about RHEL.""It did go to the list so the moderator did see it," we got told and the "SFC attempting to position itself as speaking for the GPL is quite wrong."
Since then a message to that same list got approved but only Greg's (FSF staff). There are miscellaneous FSF-maintained things that don't work (for example, the Savannah RSS feeds give invalid links for nearly 6 months already), but the above seems like censorship (for IBM) rather than a technical mishap.
The bottom line is, it'll help to see an official FSF statement on what Red Hat/IBM did about RHEL. Richard Stalllman can formulate a statement, the GNU project can publish its position on the matter (if that's not already a CoC violation), and the FSF's site blogs rather seldom, so certainly it can find the time to issue a statement.
"We hope that the FSF will issue a clear response over the coming few days."An organisation where silence (lack of criticism) can be bought is likely to slide down the barometer -- to the point of selling promotions.
What makes (or made) the FSF so great is that it's not afraid to throw punches and criticise. This is what made it a common target of defamatory smear campaigns and the target of lynchmob-led boycotts. That's just what happens when institutions do the right thing and "enrage" corporations. The oligarchs revolt.
We hope that the FSF will issue a clear response over the coming few days. Dozens of people openly expressed their views -- even existing and former Red Hat staff -- so why can't the formal steward of the GPL? ⬆
FSF statement on RHEL policy change?
Several sites have been covering IBM's change to the workflow and licensing concerning RHEL and management of the relevant source code. I'll point to Jeff Geerling's blog about that since he has already adapted his own work flow accordingly:
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/removing-official-support-red-hat-enterprise-linux
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/dear-red-hat-are-you-dumb
But there are many others already.
Perhaps a statement is already being drafted by the FSF, if not then it is time to begin. I realize it takes time to formulate a thoughtful, on target, diplomatic response to such a move as IBM has taken, but as stewards of the GPL, the FSF probably ought to speak up sometime soon before other voices exploit the silence to the detriment of Software Freedom.