Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Fall of the Open Source Initiative (OSI): Microsoft Committing the Largest GPL Violation in Human History, Then OSI Covering That Up on Microsoft's Payroll

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 05, 2025

LLMs don't make GPL violations any more noble or acceptable; it's not hard to see what OSI was paid by Microsoft for

Open Source Initiative (OSI) ENTRYISM, a Lobbyist of Microsoft

In the introductory part and in part 1 we explained that there was a big scandal brewing inside the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Somebody has just died however. We were therefore asked (because of sensitivities and sensibilities) to curb or delay some parts of this series.

The plans for the series are changing a bit, but we'll carry on regardless. As noted in the previous part, the apparent aim is squashing criticism of Microsoft's GPL violations (set aside strangulation of women [1, 2]) and entryism by Microsoft, leading up to Microsoft lobbying in the area of "hey hi" (they mean chatbots that help violate the GPL without awareness of that).

We're trying to realign the plan for the series in light of the above death. We don't want to make mourning and grieving even worse. "Yes," an informant said, "there was enough for a series for sure."

Bear with us as we alter the outline; we'll cover OSI elections and more aspects of the OSI's demise. It's just not functioning anymore. It is captured by those it was meant to antagonise and the elections are accordingly gamed (not a new problem).

There's not a single scandal to cover here. Some are new, some are continuation of old ones, and they tend to be interconnected, especially the 'HR' issues and the policies.

We already published dozens of short posts showing how the OSI sought to justify Microsoft's GPL violations, in effect lobbying for Microsoft in an active court case (class action). We'll come to that some time later this week or next week.

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