The Free Software Community is Under Attack (Waged Mostly by Lawyers, Not Developers)
Never wrote any code, takes Debian's money to censor Debian Developers:
Attacks the GPL, takes salaries from Bill Gates:
Today's main article from Daniel Pocock explores the (c), as in (copyrights), in Debian. A later one deals with more technicalities as explored in relation to WIPO UDRP D2024-0770.
Rather than personify the matter, let's just say that Pocock's case shows what happens when a project like Debian decides to 'disown' a developer (since the 90s) and companies try very aggressively/viciously to censor the developer, who had contributed a great deal and was highly decorated (many "badges" in Fedora). Pocock's case shows the relationship between companies and communities, in essence illuminating a dark side and legal gap/lapse. Instead of trying to refute what he is saying they just try to take his site/s down, mostly by hijacking his domain names. IBM tried this. It failed. Then Debian tries in another forum.
The community is basically under attack. It's not a new problem. It goes quite some while back.
This site, which was launched as Boycott Novell in 2006, responded to Microsoft and Novell colluding against the GPL and against the community. That never quite ended and sometimes it feels like Microsoft now does the same with Canonical and Red Hat (IBM).
"There was mention in the [IRC] logs today about CDDL vs GPL," someone has noted. "The former was designed with the intention of being GPL-incompatible. There were once a lot of links about that, but the revisionism is hiding that, especially with the push to ignore licenses all together as if they don't actually exist."
The CDDL was 'made' by a pusher of "Inner Source", i.e. proprietary plus openwashing. She was in the OSI and later she worked for Bill Gates directly. We know that the OSI's Simon Phipps was unhappy about what she had done. She is still out there attacking the GPL and the same is now done by the OSI. Microsoft bribes the OSI to actively lobby for the attack on the GPL. These annual bribes persist.
So don't give us the "Microsoft loves Linux" baloney. Saner people know what's really going on. They're not "bigots" or "elitists", they are realists.
Licensing and legalese may seem "boring" or "complicated" (depending on where one stands w.r.t. development), but it matters a great deal. In the case of Pocock, it may be the difference between being able to criticise ('insult') Debian or having one's publications censored en masse.
At one point the Debian 'elites' (part of the cabal, the Cambridge area people) tried to censor us too. █
