Bonum Certa Men Certa

A Reader's Suggestion: Directions for Techrights



4 directions



Summary: Guest post by figosdev

OUR site's growing impact has not changed its focus. We carry on irrespective of temptations and I habitually reject invitations to interviews on TV if I distrust the channels that invite me. The site's traffic almost doubled in the past half a decade and last week I was reminded of the impact when there was another SLAPP attempt from the former CEO of Novell. I never responded to his legal representative and instead did a story on Hovsepian's crocodile tears (basically, Novell's last CEO cannot find a job). We've done a lot of Novell coverage (thousands of articles, with insiders' tips included in these). In recent years we've been focused on the EPO -- to the point where (within only months) the EPO's management surrendered and went into panic, sending several law firms to harass me. For over 4 years the Web site Techrights has been banned in the EPO (blocked) for merely transmitting accurate information about the EPO, based on insiders and people close to the EPO. No site covers EPO affairs more than Techrights. Censorship of this kind is a timely warning about the EU's "filters" agenda.

Yesterday a longtime reader sent me a 6-page document he had written about the site. It wasn't originally intended for publication/dissemination, but he has agreed to make it public as follows.




Techrights began as Boycott Novell, a website dedicated to exposing and standing against corporate corruption in software and technology. When Novell was purchased, the rebrand to Techrights found the website exploring new directions -- with a focus on bad patents.

Other themes of Techrights would include censorship, "openwashing", calling out propaganda and corporate/media lies, and companies pushing people away from free software towards bad compromises like "open core."

While the Open Source Initiative spent time cozying up to monopolies, calling out free software on being "arbitrarily" different from open source -- when it was the latter that split off from free software, and "arbitrarily" different meant the very attitude towards monopolies that free software was founded to stand against -- OSI at least spent some time talking about the problems for open-whatever in a world where Microsoft and Apple want to retain control over the user.

Now that all pretenses of being about openness or the user are dropped, the OSI-Linux-Ubuntu-whatever foundation seems more about how to get corporations to steal the free software ecosystem. And Techrights takes the advice of OSI-cofounder Bruce Perens, who resigned OSI a year later saying "It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again".

Meanwhile, the Free Software Foundation is talking about "deals with the devil", acknowledging and partially accepting for the first time in years that many users simply aren't going to go with a fully free system -- if only because hardware OEMs haven't gone in the direction of supporting free software. Instead, manufacturers have actually gone the other way towards standards designed to shut free software out (except where blessed in an "open" way by Microsoft, Red Hat, Google, etc.).

Open source has achieved every goal -- to get all the big corporations to use free software, even if they adapt it towards use by monopolies who dont want the user to be free. It has packaged and sold free software to the very foes that made the free software movement necessary in the first place. The only thing left for OSI and the Linux Foundation to do now is take people's money and do all the things that O'Reilly dreamed of, while selling out users.

Techrights is easily the #1 voice on the Internet for calling out shills and open source hypocrites, and brings you daily the sort of news that the FSF brings you on a monthly calendar. Although it speaks to open source fans, it doesn't stand for the corruption and hypocrisy. At worst, it is "Open Source done right." At best, it is a constant reminder of how much we have lost (or stand to lose) in the fight for user freedom.

Without misplaced loyalty to any organisation, only to the truth, Techrights does what the tech press seldom does: journalism. But in these modern times when people know about the Snowden leaks and still open their phones with facial recognition and actual fingerprints, while Mark Zuckerberg puts tape over his laptop camera, we have to ask if journalism alone is enough?

To be certain, journalism is always important. But with the FSF failing (or at least being undeniably set back) in their mission for half a decade without even mentioning it, one might ask if a "Be The Change" direction is one that Techrights wants to take on. When it comes to the tech press, Techrights is the change -- when ZDNet publishes its usual corporate pablum, Techrights puts things back into perspective. This by itself is very useful -- most of all to people who already care about these issues.

The corporate world is uncompromising when it wants to change something -- it lobbies for public education to tell things more exclusively from its side of the story, it buys its competitors, and it uses bogus patents to steal the work of others. We don't need to be corrupt, but we do need to be relentless in our stand against the corruption.

The biggest enemy of all is apathy and lack of awareness. Journalism can make people more aware if they listen, but it can't help them do anything if they don't know what to do, if there are no practical solutions (practicality in the sense the FSF would mean -- not being handcuffed is extremely practical) then people will go back to ignoring what they've learned about these companies. "What can we do except go back to bed?"

This is where activism and education can do more than journalism. Good journalism educates -- but then it stops there and lets the rest take over. What if no one is taking over? Perhaps the best possible journalism would find the people trying to fix these problems and highlight their efforts and ideas on a regular basis. If that means that the journalism does a bit of editorialising, so does Techrights-- probably for the better.

It's good for an organisation to be partly neutral, just to be sure they aren't becoming an unquestioning mouthpiece -- but no journalism is purely neutral, it always leans a bit towards a certain kind of story. Techrights has a bias towards the user, and that's very tolerable bias.

The main public-facing function of the FSF -- both in what it asks of users and what it achieves -- is to raise funds and create an army of free software mouthpieces. This is the area where the FSF is most lacking -- because it has certainly done a great deal (more than any other organisation) to give freedom to the user, from developing the software open source then uses to capture and sell users back to former owners like Microsoft -- to funding important software projects and offering server bandwidth to users all over the world.

By no means is propaganda the main function of the FSF. But it is the main public-facing function, because free software developers are pretty much always a smaller part of the userbase than "users," so the function FSF serves to developers is by nature less public-facing -- most of the public doesnt know anything about it. Likewise, the number of developers who make use of the FSF's infrastructure (Savannah, etc.) are even smaller. By far, the most public-facing aspect of the FSF is fundraising and training people to speak for them.

Where this is failing, in spectacular fashion -- and a threat more grave to the FSF than WSL and Snap packages -- is that they are using the mouths of their 5,000 active users while barely making use of those 5,000 minds. The FSF is a parrot training centre: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html

This may seem like a very unfair critique, but it's entirely relevant and if you look at the results, it is not so unfair, untrue or unrealistic. At worst it is a slight exaggeration, but the FSF takes itself a little too seriously (regardless of whether it earns the right or not, which really isn't the point) and expects other people to as well. A counter-argument goes "it's a bit tongue in cheek" and so far as that's true its completely alright. It becomes a problem when the actual result is 5,000 parrots -- because parrots don't think very much about what they're saying.

By comparison, Techrights has an ideologically diverse community without the typical open source antagonism towards freedom -- such as people telling you that choosing software based on the licensing is stupid or that free software is arbitrary and obtuse for the sake of it -- or Simon Phipps explaining how the problem is that Stallman is autistic. Open source promoters are the "cool kids" who go to the big parties, and "freedom" (it's really a confusing word, folks!) is a nice idea, but its not "practical."

With Open Source you can talk about everything, except how Microsoft is doing something wrong -- sort of like the mainstream media can talk about anything, but it can't show you a clip of civilians being laughed at while they're being murdered by remote control.

Maybe the elephant in the room is -- what are we actually going to do with all of this information? Because the FSF isn't even sharing it -- they're either quiet or in denial about the direction the war against free software has taken. Of course they've talked about it for longer than anyone else has -- and perhaps that's why they think nothing is really new. But those of us who just got here 10 or 15 years ago, have certainly noticed new problems -- if the FSF is silent about some of that, then not being silent should be the first thing that free software advocates do. They're trying to sound the alarm, and the FSF is almost plugging their ears.

Open source development does not have any protection from "ego-driven" destruction -- when some 'coding maniac' hijacks the development and makes the system [unnecessarily] complex ,destroying the conceptual integrity of earlier, simpler versions: http://www.softpanorama.org/Commercial_linuxes/Startup_and_shutdown/systemd.shtml

"if you write your tools in a way that is pushy and monopolistic, which causes years of problems for the ecosystem to work around-- you've advanced redix." (https://freemedia.neocities.org/redix-watch.html)

When you are already talking about these things all the time, and it isn't enough to help change the world, the next item on the agenda is to stagnate, give up or move into trying to change things. There's no amount of reporting that Techrights can do that is going to accomplish far more than it is already doing -- it's a wonderfully relentless effort. The best it could do at this point is work smarter, not harder -- perhaps "smarter" would mean helping people put their information to use.

At that point, it moves from journalism and editorialising to advocacy and education -- not education in terms of schools -- education in terms of OER and online learning.

Nor would it move to advocacy in terms of training parrots -- but advocacy in terms of providing people with information and tools to become an active part of the development of ideas to win back our freedom. The Free Software Foundation might offer you that opportunity if you write software, but that alone isn't enough anymore.

We really need to teach people how to become more journalistic -- how to become savvier users -- how to care about freedom, of course -- and how to think critically and innovatively, and assist each other in terms of fighting new threats.

Eric Raymond is the lesser co-founder of OSI (at least in terms of his help towards making the user free) but he has achieved with the bazaar his aims that thwart the cathedral of the FSF. Sure, this is apples and oranges because the cathedral tried to give more power to the user, and the bazaar has sold the user back to corporations. So perhaps Raymond's book title should have read, "The Cathedral, the Bazaar and the Wealthy Landowners."

Nonetheless, we may need a bazaar of ideas to win, because the cathedral of ideas is all tapped out.

Techrights can be a giant part of that bazaar, it can be the biggest group of tables -- not because its goal is to be the biggest, but because most of the energy in the free software movement right now is flailing around in the throws of the very effective attacks from Microsoft, Red Hat and the many different sellouts who have helped us get to this awful place in free software history. Techrights is showing less wear and tear than the FSF or OSI -- so whether or not the goal is to be large, it is the de facto state of Techrights -- a steam locomotive that has outlasted both Groklaw and any pretense of OSI to care about users.

As much as this is about what can be done with its momentum, it is about what free software can do to harness (and continue to fuel) that momentum. We are at a stage in free software where many organisations are needed, and overlap was never a problem -- overlap in organisations, as with posix in distributions, is where organisations are working together towards a common goal.

Like with distributions, different organisations work best for different people -- they have slightly different audiences or needs. With regards to the current state of war, the FSF is floundering or crawling at an inch-per-years pace, more like ReactOS in its progress than Debian.

But Techrights could help people learn to code, it could provide a beginner-friendly atmosphere to bring in users, and it could be a voice for everyone fighting systemd, keeping a watch of the undeniably corporate effort to destroy posix and replace it with things like systemd and Azure -- "But systemd didn't start as a corporate thing" (neither did WebKit or the Linux kernel.)

The free software movement doesn't have a war room anymore. It needs one. Techrights can be that war room, or it can be the next best thing. Either way, we need it -- every resistance needs a voice, and Techrights is arguably doing more in that regard, at this point in time, than any other organisation.

Recent Techrights' Posts

We Are Safe in a Modern "Tech" Society, Right?
People are safer if they control their own computing
The Way Things Are Going, They May Soon Stop Saying "Web Address" and Instead Say "Chrome Address"
The Web isn't built or based around open Web standards anymore. It's centered around user-agent.
Microsoft as a Golden Cage
"I was laid off by Microsoft and can't find a job. I'm weeks away from giving up my apartment and moving across the country to live with family."
Weekend Discussion About How IBM's Bluewashing of Red Hat Will Cause "Enshittification" for Users
"I worked at a software company that was acquired by IBM so I knew it was game over for RedHat the day they were acquired"
Brett Wilson LLP Getting Sued by Its Very Own Clients, a Legal Story That Has Made the Mainstream News (Law360)
Law360 or Law.com are about as mainstream as one can get in that "sector" (litigation 'industry')
Lucas Nussbaum & Debian pregnancy cluster
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
The Same People Who Attacked Richard Stallman (RMS) Are Attacking Daniel Pocock to Discourage People From Listening to His Information
Pocock is being demonised for the same reasons and by the same people who attack RMS
Your Typical Anti-Richard Stallman (RMS) Cancellist
"About the RMS cancellation"
Richard Stallman (RMS) Has Announced His Talk in Rome Less Than 20 Hours in Advance (and on a Sunday)
Why did he wait until the night before?
GNU Tools Cauldron Event in Portugal: Videos Now Available via Invidious
Go have a look
Slopwatch: GNU/Linux Sites That Became Slopfarms and Spamfarms
The Web is a mess and "Linux" or "Ubuntu" sites became part of the problem
Richard Stallman's Talk 25 Hours Away, Aula Magna Palazzo del Rettorato (CU001), Sapienza Università di Roma (Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5)
The talk is 25 hours away and we see some QR code for it
Gemini Links 12/10/2025: Watches, the Depression of 2026, Gamboling with Odds
Links for the day
Links 12/10/2025: 'False' DMCA Claims and Slop Facing Perils Again (the Hype Wears Off)
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Just Lost Privacy Case in Austria and Its Latest Moves Make a Complete Ban Seem Imperative
Microsoft is not a software company, it's a spying agency that uses software to collect data
The Register MS: Microsoft is the Security Expert, Not the Prime Culprit, So Buy More Microsoft
This front page feature is devoid of any actual substance, it's just Microsoft copypasta
Paris 'Love Nest' & Debian Outreachy: from Lycée Lakanal to ENS Cachan, Cr@ns, nepotism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Stefano Zacchiroli (Zack) & Debian pregnancy cluster
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 12/10/2025: "Palm Computering", Further Exploration of Slide Rules, and Key Takeaways from The Well-Grounded Rubyist
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 11, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 11, 2025
Tomorrow: Founder of the Free Software Foundation and of GNU/Linux, Richard Stallman, Speaks in Roma (Rome), Italy at 4PM
GNU/Linux is more important than ever in this dystopian world
Microsoft and Apple Are Rare Topics in Geminispace
in Geminispace it's rather safe to assume everyone is into BSD, GNU/Linux, and sometimes retro
Qualcomm and Manchester United Appear to Have Dumped Microsoft (Qualcomm Now Invests More in Linux, Apparently)
It's a relief to no longer see Microsoft logos and brands on a local football club's gear (I'm not a Manchester United fan, but not a foe either)
As Guest of Honour in Rome, Founder of the Free Software Foundation to Speak ("Distinguished Lecture") After Introduction by Leonardo Querzoni
Happy hacking...
All Things Open is Proprietary
The OSI has become a front group of proprietary software openwashers, led and sponsored by proprietary giants
When Microsoft Lays Off Lots of Workers They Say It "Invests in AI" (a Lie), Now It's "Reshuffles" or "Microsoft Tightens"
Microsoft "news" by bots
"I saw Richard Stallman give a talk in the mid 80s, which began my fear and loathing of software patents" and "Richard Stallman was always right."
"By betraying the legacy of our ancestors, we’ve set ourselves on a path toward self-destruction — moral, intellectual, economic, and ultimately biological."
There Were Several Waves of Microsoft Shanghai Layoffs in 2025, Western Media Continues to Turn a Blind Eye to Chinese Layoffs of an Epic Scale
Sometimes select Taiwanese news sites (published in English) or automated translations are all we have
Brett Wilson LLP Spreads Trumpism to the United Kingdom, Looking to Profit From 'Legal Colonialism' (Overriding Sovereignty)
There's growing recognition of this conundrum worldwide
The Demise of Shopping in Person
In a world like this, how valued is the customer?
This Past Friday, "Nearly 700 People Came to Listen to RMS!" (Richard Stallman)
"Nearly 700 people came to listen to RMS!"
Distinguished Lecture by Richard Stallman This Coming Monday in Rome
After "Free software, Crucial for Freedom in a Digital World"
Slopwatch: UbuntuPIT Churning Out Plagiarism and the Slopfarm LinuxSecurity Turns to Pseudonyms
Our hunch is, UbuntuPIT will sooner or later realise that this toxic approach is just harming UbuntuPIT and tainting the reputation of past articles
The Lawsuit by Clients of Brett Wilson LLP Against Brett Wilson LLP is Officially On, It is Progressing, The 'Experts' Pick Outside Law Firms (RPC and Mills & Reeve) to Spare Them From Litigants in Person
So it is probably quite potent
Gemini Links 11/10/2025: Nyctography, Gerrymandering, and Lurking
Links for the day
The 'Culture Wars' in Free Software Have Gone Out of Control
Social control media amplifies such utterly infantile discourse
Teaser: To Compensate for the Fact Our Clients Are Terrible Human Beings Who Strangle Women (While on Microsoft's Payroll) and We Get Paid by Mystery Parties We Bombard You and Your Wife With Almost 10 Kilograms of Legal Papers
If you can't win an argument, then drown the other side with papers?
Links 11/10/2025: World Mental Health Day 2025, Another European Legal Defeat for Microsoft 360
Links for the day
MIT Technology Review is Part-Time SPAMfarm of Billionaires and Mega-Corporations
Does MIT operate its own "b2b" SPAMfarm?
Open Source Initiative Executive Director Leaves, Replacement Sought by Monopolists, Not the Community or OSI Members
Serves to show who runs this show...
Links 11/10/2025: China-US Tensions Grow Again, "Hey Hi" More Widely Recognised as Bubble Made of Capital That Doesn't Exist
Links for the day
Now Confirmed in Western Media: Microsoft Azure Layoffs This Month
Affirmed by more sources moments ago
Peter O'Callaghan QC represented grandparents, Westernport Hotel, at Liquor Royal Commission
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Either The Register MS Divests From FOSS Coverage or Liam Proven is on Long Holiday
Publishers perish when their audience loses trust in them
Microsoft Cancelling Another Datacentre is a Sign of Financial Trouble and Lack of Growth
The debt continues to grow
Gemini Links 11/10/2025: An Evening at the Fair and Fast Fourier Friday
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 10, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 10, 2025
Geminispace is Very Large
The word continues to spread and the number of participants grows
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, This Time During National Day Holiday
This time it's China again
10 Out of 10: RMS Attracts Massive Audience in Göteborg, Sweden (All Seats Occupied, Some People Standing)
a 55-second clip of his talk
Staying Happy in Times of Crackdowns on Civil Society
Optimism in this sort of "new reality" or "new normal" seems like something for the irrational person
"Nobel" Exploited Posthumously for "AI" Hype, Now They Do the Same With "Quantum"
ere have been many jokes about "Nobel" for peace (often granted to pro-war people) and a fake one for "Economics" (establishment propaganda)
Slopwatch: Plagiarism and "Linux" Articles by Bots
Sites that do this won't survive; many of them rely on slop services (suppliers) that will cease to exist after the bubble bursts
Links 10/10/2025: Putin Admits Russia Downed Azerbaijan Airlines Jet, More New Heat Records
Links for the day
Noteworthy Claim That IBM is Firing a Lot of Lawyers This Week (RAs in the Legal Department)
A lot of what they do is patent 'trolling' or lawyering up against their own staff (e.g. HR disputes)
Links 10/10/2025: US Judge Bars Attacks by ICE On Journalists and Protesters; “We Took The Freedom of Speech Away” Says the President
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers, Google News Gifting Slopfarms, and Fake News/Plagiarism About "Linux"
Google itself is a slop pusher these days
Qualcomm, the New Owner of Arduino, Blasted for Its Software Patents Tax on 'Smartphones'
A lot of Qualcomm's patents are on software. We wrote about this in prior years.
XBox Layoffs Rumours, Downtime, and Criticism From XBox Co-Founder
"everyone is ditching the xbox."
Links 10/10/2025: Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith, Many Articles on the Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: October Gothic and Reading Middle Earth Role Playing; C and Ada
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025