Upcoming Techrights Series About the Public Appearances of Richard M. Stallman (RMS) in the United States
His latest talk was a successful act of defiance (some people tried to obstruct it, but not the FSF)
Our very long 2025 series about the Open Source Initiative (OSI) isn't exactly over, but the OSI is headless and has been headless for nearly 4 months already, so we generally decided to pause back in September. In a sense, we accomplished the goal of raising awareness; the chief leaving (or getting the boot) is a symptom of that.
Next, we plan to drop all pretences about "Open Source" and instead focus on Software Freedom, seeing that the main speaker for the OSI (in events and in the Web site) is a Microsoft operative salaried by Microsoft. He's a GitHub (proprietary) operative who only pretends to serve the OSI. He's like an occupier. If the health of "Open Source" is to be judged by the state of the OSI, then "Open Source" is morbidly ill if not already dead as a concept. Many people out there still equate "Open Source" with Microsoft GitHub, which is actually proprietary and actually a copyright-violating plagiarism blender that poses a risk to the very notion or existence of "Open Source".
Next month we plan to write a new series about the EPO and also about SLAPPs against us. Moreover, as promised, we'll get politicians involved and it looks like some of the culprits already flee the scene, knowing how bad things that they had done and possibly didn't like (in hindsight at least) would become a major liability to them, maybe a career ender.
Doing the SLAPP series in parallel with the Stallman (RMS) series makes sense. Because the same elements can be found in both, notably attempts to 'cancel' people for merely discussing "difficult" subjects. Or for upsetting rich people's agenda/s, such as back doors.
Over time people will see that honest and humble people - not deplorable incels who leverage like a million bucks of outside funding (some of it from Microsoft) - are the real victims. Apparently talking about monopolies and abuses of monopolies makes not only one a target but also one's spouse, parents etc. The same people who did this to me did the same to Stallman, to Bruce Perens, and several other high-profile people. Together, victims can combat the patterns of Ritual Defamation. The real issue is the abuses (and abusers), not people who talk about the abuses (and abusers). █
Image credit: OpenUK (we've meanwhile noticed that perens.com is down and/or not functioning (for several days already).