09.14.19

Gemini version available ♊︎

Proprietary Software Giants Tell Open Source ‘Communities’ That Proprietary Software Giants Are ‘Friends’

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 4:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Linux Foundation and Linux.com

Summary: The openwashing services of the so-called ‘Linux’ Foundation are working; companies that are inherently against Open Source are being called “Open” and some people are willing to swallow this bait (so-called ‘compromise’ which is actually surrender to proprietary software regimes)

“HOW did we get here?”

Many people ask us such questions…

Ask Jim Zemlin instead.

The “Registrant Contact” for Linux.com is “Jim Zemlin”. So a person who never uses GNU/Linux… owns Linux.com. Great!

A whois lookup shows that “Domain Name: LINUX.COM” has “Creation Date: 1994-06-02T04:00:00Z”

“The “Registrant Contact” for Linux.com is “Jim Zemlin”. So a person who never uses GNU/Linux… owns Linux.com.”So the site turned 25 only 2 months after Zemlin and the Golden Boys (gold, as in money) had fired all the staff. They ended up sacking all Linux.com journalists and editors — actual users of GNU/Linux — without prior notice (lack of funds was definitely not the problem!), only to be replaced by obedient openwashing pros, making the site more ‘in tune’ with the Openwashing as a Service (OaaS) business strategy of the so-called ‘Linux’ Foundation.

The Linux Foundation has been thoroughly and almost entirely captured by inherently-monopolistic corporate interests from the Board downwards, which means it cannot be salvaged or repair itself, only replaced. Entryism kills institution by undermining their goals. This is what happened here. The Linux Foundation’s chiefs (what’s left after many got removed) would likely tell us GPL is a “cancer” (if they could). We were shocked when someone recently told us, based on research he had done, that the last project released by the Foundation with a GPL-like licence was Xen. That was ages ago and since then the Foundation actively attacked the GPL, as we noted some days ago. This is the licence of Linux, which Torvalds loves. The “Linux Foundation” is against the license of Linux.

“The Linux Foundation has been thoroughly and almost entirely captured by inherently-monopolistic corporate interests from the Board downwards, which means it cannot be salvaged or repair itself, only replaced.”We’re meanwhile watching, with increasing levels of concern, SUSE’s retreat to its (or Novell’s) proprietary roots. It’s getting down on its knees again for Microsoft (Friday’s Azure promotion). It’s basically a Microsoft ad in SUSE’s official blog. “This blog was written based on the SUSECON 2019 presentation given by Stephen Mogg, Technical Strategist for SAP and Public Cloud and Mark Gonnelly, Senior Consultant for SUSE Consulting,” it says.

Notice SAP in there as well. SAP has too much control over SUSE these days and one must remember that SAP has long been close to Microsoft (it was almost bought by it) and it attacks Free software behind the scenes, sometimes even publicly. See old posts such as “Shai Agassi, SAP, and Open Source Software” or Open-source community hits back against SAP. The insults they threw at Open Source match those Microsoft had thrown before them. Cancer, socialism, you name it…

These companies are looking for ways to portray themselves as “open” without actually changing in any concrete way; same business models, same development paradigms.

SAP openwashing

“We’re meanwhile watching, with increasing levels of concern, SUSE’s retreat to its (or Novell’s) proprietary roots.”Swapnil made the openwashing image at the top. He actually made this phony nonsense. These liars for hire of the ‘Linux’ Foundation aren’t even using Linux. It’s all Microsoft and Apple stuff in his Twitter feed.

“The thing about the Linux Foundation is,” I wrote yesterday, “many have known for a while that it went awry, but 1) they didn’t say anything and 2) they didn’t understand just how bad it had become…”

One critic of the Foundation (for quite some time) responded: “Was when I was in Seattle on a Moodle gig… There was a foundation [Linux Foundation] event. There was a free pass to the security talks… So mysel+my gentoo friend went. They gave us full passes because they claimed there were no security passes left. Then I saw. Not community! And saw..and saw…”

“Saying that Linux needs Big Corporations to “succeed” is like saying that feminism needs financial support from wealthy white men who dominate the “rich lists” owing to the status quo feminists are looking to tackle…”She has been in the Linux community for decades and her site bemoans a corporate takeover disguised thinly as ‘social issues’. In her own words: “There is a poison spreading within our community. From my perspective, this is coming from people who do not code, who do not understand an inkling of what it is like to be a programmer, a maintainer, and put your heart and soul into a project.”

Some people saw that coming a long time ago. Remember that those looking to cause trouble aren’t critic of the Linux Foundation but of actual Linux developers (vastly different things). Saying that Linux needs Big Corporations to “succeed” is like saying that feminism needs financial support from wealthy white men who dominate the “rich lists” owing to the status quo feminists are looking to tackle…

What would GNU/Linux be if it was 100% dominated and controlled by the companies that compete against it technically and philosophically (as explained in our previous post)?

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. Links 27/05/2023: Plans Made for GNU's 40th Anniversary

    Links for the day



  2. Social Control Media Needs to be Purged and We Need to Convince Others to Quit It Too (to Protect Ourselves as Individuals and as a Society)

    With the Tux Machines anniversary (19 years) just days away we seriously consider abandoning all social control media accounts of that site, including Mastodon and Diaspora; social control networks do far more harm than good and they’ve gotten a lot worse over time



  3. Anonymously Travelling: Still Feasible?

    The short story is that in the UK it's still possible to travel anonymously by bus, tram, and train (even with shades, hat and mask/s on), but how long for? Or how much longer have we got before this too gets banned under the false guise of "protecting us" (or "smart"/"modern")?



  4. With EUIPO in Focus, and Even an EU Kangaroo Tribunal, EPO Corruption (and Cross-Pollination With This EU Agency) Becomes a Major Liability/Risk to the EU

    With the UPC days away (an illegal and unconstitutional kangaroo court system, tied to the European Union in spite of critical deficiencies) it’s curious to see EPO scandals of corruption spilling over to the European Union already



  5. European Patent Office (EPO) Management Not Supported by the EPO's Applicants, So Why Is It Still There?

    This third translation in the batch is an article similar to the prior one, but the text is a bit different (“Patente ohne Wert”)



  6. EPO Applicants Complain That Patent Quality Sank and EPO Management Isn't Listening (Nor Caring)

    SUEPO has just released 3 translations of new articles in German (here is the first of the batch); the following is the second of the three (“Kritik am Europäischen Patentamt – Patente ohne Wert?”)



  7. German Media About Industry Patent Quality Charter (IPQC) and the European Patent Office (EPO)

    SUEPO has just released 3 translations of new articles in German; this is the first of the three (“Industrie kritisiert Europäisches Patentamt”)



  8. Geminispace Continues to Grow Even If (or When) Stéphane Bortzmeyer Stops Measuring Its Growth

    A Gemini crawler called Lupa (Free/libre software) has been used for years by Stéphane Bortzmeyer to study Gemini and report on how the community was evolving, especially from a technical perspective; but his own instance of Lupa has produced no up-to-date results for several weeks



  9. Links 27/05/2023: Goodbyes to Tina Turner

    Links for the day



  10. HMRC: You Can Click and Type to Report Crime, But No Feedback or Reference Number Given

    The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were reported 7 days ago to HMRC (equivalent to the IRS in the US, more or less); but there has been no visible progress and no tracking reference is given to identify the report



  11. IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 26, 2023

    IRC logs for Friday, May 26, 2023



  12. One Week After Sirius Open Source Was Reported to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for Tax Fraud: No Response, No Action, Nothing...

    One week ago we reported tax abuses of Sirius ‘Open Source’ to HMRC; we still wait for any actual signs that HMRC is doing anything at all about the matter (Sirius has British government clients, so maybe they’d rather not look into that, in which case HMRC might be reported to the Ombudsman for malpractice)



  13. Links 26/05/2023: Weston 12.0 Highlights and US Debt Limit Panic

    Links for the day



  14. Gemini Links 26/05/2023: New People in Gemini

    Links for the day



  15. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 25, 2023

    IRC logs for Thursday, May 25, 2023



  16. Links 26/05/2023: Qt 6.5.1 and Subsystems in GNUnet

    Links for the day



  17. Links 25/05/2023: Mesa 23.1.1 and Debian Reunion

    Links for the day



  18. Links 25/05/2023: IBM as Leading Wayland Pusher

    Links for the day



  19. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 24, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, May 24, 2023



  20. Links 25/05/2023: Istio 1.16.5 and Curl 8.1.1

    Links for the day



  21. Gemini Links 25/05/2023: On Profit and Desire for Gemini

    Links for the day



  22. SiliconANGLE: Sponsored by Microsoft and Red Hat to Conduct the Marriage Ceremony

    SiliconANGLE insists that paying SiliconANGLE money for coverage does not lead to bias, but every sane person who keeps abreast of SiliconANGLE — and I read their entire feed every day — knows that it’s a ludicrous lie (Red Hat/IBM and the Linux Foundation also buy puff pieces and “event coverage” from SiliconANGLE, so it’s marketing disguised as “journalism”



  23. Links 24/05/2023: Podman Desktop 1.0, BSDCan 2024, and More

    Links for the day



  24. Gemini Links 24/05/2023: Razors, Profit, and More

    Links for the day



  25. [Meme] When the Patent Office Controls Kangaroo Patent Courts and Judges

    The EPO has been hijacked by industry and its lobbyists; now the same is happening to EU patent courts, even though it is illegal and unconstitutional



  26. The Illegally 'Revised' Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) is Disgracing the Perception of Law and Order in the European Union

    The Unified Patent Court (UPC) isn’t legal, the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) is being altered on the fly (by a person patently ineligible to do so), and so it generally looks like even patent courts across Europe might soon become as corrupt as the European Patent Office, which has no basis in the Rule of the Law and is basically just a front for large corporations (most of them aren’t even European)



  27. Sirius 'Open Source', With High-Level Political Clients, Reported to Politicians

    The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ are of interest to the British public sector; we’ve begun contacting relevant people



  28. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 23, 2023

    IRC logs for Tuesday, May 23, 2023



  29. RSS Feeds (or XML/Atom) Are Far Better Than Social Control Media, Doing It With CLI and Text Editors Works Best for Us

    Consumption (marketing term) of content (another misnomer) on the World Wide Web has been geared towards engagement (fancy term for time-wasting), so we’re trying to correct this with RSS feeds and processing of news (to Separate the Wheat From the Chaff)



  30. [Meme] The Payslip Lies

    Be wary of Sirius ‘Open Source’; They steal your pension money and give you fake (false) payslips (this was reported to HMRC last week)


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts