Bruce Perens (Debian, OSI, Still a Friend of Richard Stallman) Is Very Unhappy About What IBM is Doing
TO those who are familiar with the Free Software (libre, prior to "Open Source" facade) community and its history, Bruce Perens is a person who needs no introduction/s. As 'leaked' Debian E-mails reveal, Bruce Perens defended Richard M. Stallman (RMS) even when it was unpopular a stance and difficult an approach (among some people inside Debian). The photo on the left is him and RMS; they even gave talks together (we shared videos of that).
Bruce Perens seems to be learning towards the systemd- if not IBM-free Devuan. So do some distros. Is that an act of "hatred", seeing that systemd is increasingly being controlled by Microsoft? Or is that common sense?
In the middle of 2023 IBM 'shut off' access to source code of RHEL (unless you pay) and then CoCed quite a few GNU projects, in which it had staff (Red Hat had hired some of the existing developers of important or strategic GNU projects), e.g. [1, 2].
Monopolies in minority clothing ("vulnerable") is part of the name of the game in CoCs and equivalents*. How they're being "sold" to the public is misleading at best.
Sadly, the FSF failed to issue a statement on what IBM did to RHEL last year (after it had promised it would say something). Regardless, IBM and Microsoft/GAFAM stuffed many GNU projects with a CoC, despite objections from the leader of GNU (RMS) and his associates. So who's really in charge?
IBM says it wants things to become simpler, so it works with Microsoft, on Microsoft servers, with Microsoft systems and proprietary code, trying to replace Free software with millions of barely-tested lines of code. Simple, right? Go read the source code. It's "open". 2+ million lines of code for systemd alone? Report bugs! Don't participate, but do report bugs (like an underpaid or unpaid software tester). Open a MICROSOFT ACCOUNT to do so. How open! The company that says "WHITENESS" is evil literally helped Hitler and now wishes to have just one binary directory - much to the chagrin of Debian. Next they want Wayland, even if lots of software and games simply won't work with it.
To hell with IBM. We need not rely on IBM and as a flag bearer for Free software the company is utterly embarrassing. █
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* Nationalism is OK at IBM if you don't say "master". Actually, IBMers are allowed to say "master". Every person with an annual salary of less than 300,000 dollars, however, is presumed a Nazi. Just a kind reminder from the "Linux" Foundation a front group of IBM and GAFAM.