Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Openwashing of VMware, Sponsored by the Linux Foundation (in Turn Sponsored by VMware)

Is the Foundation a 'nonprofit' PR agency?

Dirk Hohndel
Dirk Hohndel and Linus Torvalds speaking at the LinuxCon Europe 2014 in Düsseldorf, 15 October 2014, by Krd



Summary: Dirk Hohndel (formerly Intel, now VMware) has become the master spinner of an infamous violator of the GPL, a proprietary software company with NSA back doors (evidence shown in Edward Snowden's cache/trove of leaks)

THE PEOPLE who proclaim to be the voice of "Linux" often aren't even GNU/Linux users. They just talk about GNU/Linux (calling it "Linux") and they think it's absolutely fantastic when "Linux" becomes a platform of blobs and DRM. What is the point then? Why even promote "Linux" if it becomes yet another closed, nonfree system? That's like swapping Windows for MacOS (or Microsoft for Apple), in effect defecting from one brand to another rather than shifting paradigm or freeing oneself from vendor lock-in.



There seems to be a rift or a split between the GNU/Linux crowd and the "Linux" fans; the former speak of freedom as in Free software, whereas the latter focus on "Open Source" (as in, some code may be available). It's not hard to see what side most corporations have taken.

I've come to the conclusion Steve Ballmer was to Microsoft and to Bill Gates what Donald Trump is to "the Establishment" and to robber barons. Their ugly policies, which they don't regret, they blame on a person (distraction from a bigger picture). That's not to say that the person isn't objectionable; but it helps other, somewhat less objectionable people deflect and personify the problems, which they then want us to believe they 'resolve' by merely removing the person. Microsoft after Ballmer has the exact same policy, albeit a slightly different strategy (or marketing/PR) with a new CEO, still largely the same leadership in the Board, notably Gates. Ballmer too attempted to infiltrate FOSS and Linux (and to a certain degree he did), but he just wasn't so successful at it. He wasn't a sufficiently good pretender. He was too crude. When we wrote earlier today about Azure we explained that it is all about controlling GNU/Linux rather than loving it. It helps when they tell lies like "Microsoft loves Linux..." ("we come in peace...")

"Ballmer too attempted to infiltrate FOSS and Linux (and to a certain degree he did), but he just wasn't so successful at it."The danger isn't limited to the operating systems space. As we habitually point out in our daily links, PyCon more or less got 'sold' to Microsoft (with the goal of Python entryism). Microsoft also bought itself some powerful seats in other tenets or pillars of Python, e.g. by virtue of buying companies such as LinkedIn and GitHub (but that's a subject for another day). We should note that Microsoft has also given cash to EuroPython (just about to start [1]) but unlike PyCon they're not actively advertising Microsoft for it. Attendees can and do support the event so that they don't end up selling the event to Microsoft (like sellouts who organise PyCon did).

This post is actually a rant about not one but three new videos [2-4] (published as recently as early this morning). One of these [2] was entitled "Developers Don’t Know The Code They Run In Their Applications" (so said the man who receives massive salaries from a serial GPL violator).

Why is he amplified here? Because VMware pays Zemlin's PAC, which in turn pays and arranges this PR opportunity (the interviewer is professionally connected to Zemlin's PAC and had all expenses covered by it).

"This interview (or set of clips) serves as a sort of megaphone for Zemlin's sponsors, including GPL violators."So Zemlin's PAC (the Linux Foundation) has turned to something like PR operations for Microsoft and similar companies, including GPL violators such as VMware. With Microsoft there have been various GPL violations (they got caught red-handed!) that we covered in past years, e.g. Hyper-V. This event isn't a sole example and the interviewer recently advertised himself as a PR service. Has media become "traveling [PR] salesmen"?

If they did some fluff and puff pieces, that's one thing. Instead, what we have here is company that's also a serial GPL violator. It badmouths FOSS licences (Hohndel "says that developers don’t even know about the code that’s running in their applications") and security of FOSS; it's also downplaying competition to virtual machines (containers), the 'bread and butter' of this declining giant. This interview (or set of clips) serves as a sort of megaphone for Zemlin's sponsors, including GPL violators. Companies such as Microsoft and VMware are not allies of Linux. Surely that's not too hard to understand, but money talks (they cover the person's expenses to come to their VMware/Microsoft-sponsored events, he then records the "people of interest" on his "Mac"-branded PC). So now we have a "Chief Open Source [sic] Officer & VP at VMware" lecturing us on FOSS. Yes, a proprietary software company with NSA back doors (see EMC/RSA material from Snowden leaks circa 2013 and 2014) is the 'authority' on this subject.

"Another GPL violator, VMware, recently bought Bitnami and a founding person then moved to Microsoft (it happened about a month ago)."It's like the company pays this PAC to serve as a PR front and control the narrative. Hijacking the story... for a fee. A GPL violator that's attacking and misusing the GPL coming up with spin. No wonder Bruce Perens called the Linux Foundation a GPL "infringers club". So Microsoft the serial GPL violator is buying GitHub (well, technically it's proprietary software, but Microsoft uses it for openwashing purposes anyway). Another GPL violator, VMware, recently bought Bitnami and a founding person then moved to Microsoft (it happened about a month ago). It's a troublesome trend. They're trying to just 'buy out' FOSS. They target the repositories. They want to control everything, not just in the "business intelligence" (BI) sense but also distribution.

People who sometimes turn out to be turncoats and sellouts aren't too uncommon; I've come across several over the years. Career-climbing opportunists, seduced by money and allured by the cash associated with defection to Microsoft's lie campaigns (like "Microsoft Loves Linux") and sometimes Microsoft job offers. Silence on these matters is no longer an option.

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. EuroPython 2019: Attendee briefing

    EuroPython 2019 will start on Monday. Again we will have more than a thousand attendees signed up and we’re looking forward to an exciting conference packed with more than 130 sessions from Monday - Sunday, July 8 - 14.

  2. Developers Don’t Know The Code They Run In Their Applications

    It’s a clip from our longer interview with Hohndel that you can watch on TFiR. The interview was recorded at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, Barcelona.



  3. An Inconvenient Truth Of The Cloud Native World

    As a result of this awareness, Hohndel is noticing some positive changes. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) recently announced a new SIG around security which will be conducting reviews of CNCF projects.



  4. A Disturbing Pattern Of Cloud Native: Dirk Hohndel

    Dirk Hohndel, Chief Open Source [sic] Officer & VP at VMware talks about a disturbing pattern he is witnessing in the cloud-native space. He says that developers don’t even know about the code that’s running in their applications.

    It’s a clip from our longer interview with Hohndel that you can watch on TFiR. The interview was recorded at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, Barcelona.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Saving the Planet With Honesty, Transparency, and Sharing (Not Only of Computer Code)
GAFAM is destroying the only habitat humans and other animals have and it'll only get worse
Disinformation About Election Outcomes Even Before Any Election Outcomes (or Election/Voting!)
seeding doubt about election outcomes
Against Outsourcing of Sites and E-mail
Software Freedom is great, but it is not enough if you let someone else do it 'for you'
Drew DeVault: People Talking About My Attack Site (Against the Founder of GNU/Linux) is "Spam"
"Spam on sr.ht mailing lists"
"Oppose the Fascist"
what the founder of GNU/Linux said
Halloween, All Saints Day & Swiss citizenship
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
Links 05/11/2024: Criminal Referrals Regarding Patent Trolls and Disinformation About the Election Process (Already)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/11/2024: 'App' Needed for Parking, NNCP, Gomphotherium
Links for the day
How Voting Does Not Work
You cannot vote from an "app"
Links 05/11/2024: Bluesky and Enshittification, Pugad Baboy, and Lots of Disinformation Flooding the Web
Links for the day
[Meme] Sweaty Under the Belly
"OK, my critics are 'spam'"
Microsoft Bribing Canonical (to Stop Competing) and Bribing Users to Shun the Competition
Canonical is worth shunning
[Meme] The 2024 'Info Bros'
And prehistoric googling
Computers Getting Worse (for the User) Over Time
This is like Windows-ism coming to "Linux" through the hardware
[Meme] How NOT to Vote
Another form of (mostly-unspoken-of) election interference
An LLM Inside a 'Search' Engine Means That Companies Tell You What They Want, Not What Web Pages to Visit
The future of 'googling' things might be as unreliable as using Social Control Media as a source of information
Google's Debt Has Increased and 'Cash on Hand' Fell by 22.27% This Past Year
These are the numbers that the corporate media intentionally leaves out
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 04, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 04, 2024
There's a Reason Why Techrights is Turning 18 and Tux Machines Will Turn 20.5 Next Month
I started advocating GNU/Linux when I was a teenager
Techrights Has a Long History of Fighting to Expose 'Team Mono' or Microsofters Inside GNOME
Never downplay the malice of Microsoft and its operatives
Gemini Links 05/11/2024: Halloween Over, Intention and Implementation, Bookmark Syncing
Links for the day
Microsoft Lost Nearly Half of Its 'Cash Reserves' This Past Year
Is Microsoft (MSFT) the next Intel (INTC)?
The Year Isn't Over Yet, There Will be More Waves of Microsoft Layoffs
Nowadays Microsoft just tries to conflate/equate its energy waste with "value"
The Corporate Media Blasted Bitcoin for Destroying the Planet and Must Do the Same to Incite the Public Against the 'Great Rigging of Wall Street' (Under the Guise of "AI", the Latest Gold Rush)
"AI" is the next "metaverse" (trailing by a few months)
[Video] Richard Stallman is Back to Halo and Gown (in Peru) With 2+ Hours of a Public Talk
The globetrotting Richard Stallman gave many talks at the end of last month
Going Strong Against the Wind
the abuse serves to emphasise or affirm the importance of what we do
Links 04/11/2024: Squashing More Software Patents and Taiwan at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/11/2024: Typing vs Writing and a Smol (Net) Pub
Links for the day
Links 04/11/2024: LibreOffice Had Adopted PeerTube, "Hey Hi" Hype is a Threat to the Energy Grids (Worse Than Fake-Coins)
Links for the day
[Meme] Social Control Telescreens With Microphone
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Shout-out to Christine From FOSSForce
Who noticed our short story
Not Boycotting Apple (Yet)?
"Apple Forces The Signing Of Applications In MacOS Sequoia 15.1"
statCounter This Month: Android Has Nearly Become Twice as Big as Windows
If it happened, it would be an unprecedented milestone
Why Technical Sites Need Not Make Political Recommendations or Endorsements
Except perhaps when it's for some purely technical role, e.g. FCC chief
[Meme] Apple Freedom
Freedom is... the ability to purchase as many 'i' things as you want
Apple's MacOS Shows Us the Vision of Computing That GAFAM Has for Us (Digital Prisons)
Freedom means "we the people" should be in control, not people being controlled by corporations (contemporary slaveowners)
"Active" as in One URL, One Emoji, and 4 Words in One Week
Diversity community in Fedora
Apple Vision Pro Has Failed, Just Like "Metaverse"
Vision Pro lacks software
Things That Can Improve Election Integrity
the first two relate to "tech"
Rigging Elections is Difficult, Cheating a Little is Not
Avoid social control media, it is the biggest rigger of all
"People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"
On throwing stones in a glass house
Our Stance on Electronic (or Digital) Voting Machines
The simple activity of voting and counting ballots does not require thousands of complex machines with hundreds of millions of transistors and hundreds of millions of lines of code
Microsoft and "Retrospective Re-writing of History..."
in YouTube anyone can make stuff up (as one goes along)
This Coming Week
Go exercise your right to vote
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 03, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, November 03, 2024
Reddit is (Still) Lying and Faking
Don't fall for this phony idea that the above sites are grassroots or edgy; they're not
GNU/Linux Users Are Not Cheaters
The bottom line is, most cheaters use Windows
Links 04/11/2024: FCC, Broadband Industry Spar Over Net Neutrality; Software Patent Squashed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2024: Official MyGemini.Space Announcement
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2024: Election Thoughts, Plagiarism, and LLM Slop
Links for the day
Links 03/11/2024: Deere 'Right to Repair' (RoR) and "Threads Bans Anyone For Mentioning Hitler"
Links for the day
[Video] "El Movimiento del Software Libre y el Sistema Operativo GNU" by Richard M. Stallman
The footage is a bit jittery (taken with a phone apparently, and there's no tripod available), but the sound is OK and the words (in Spanish) are comprehensible
Android at New Highs (47%), Windows at New Lows (24%), Suggests Latest Data From statCounter
So the market share of Android is about double that of Windows
[Video] Richard Stallman's Talk in Spanish (in Peru Last Week)
Alternative URLs too
The Media Focuses on the Wrong Scandal
The real scandal at MIT was Gates
Gemini Links 03/11/2024: Fantasy Life Day and Worship
Links for the day
[Meme] Write Us Drivers and GTFO!
When you realise sanctioning BRICS devs goes against the community
Decommissioning Copper Lines Makes Us Less Safe
We've essentially degraded the robustness or reliability of critical systems
Life of an Addicted Lolicon Who Can Also Code
Personal blog as an open diary
[Meme] Reporting Crime is Not a Crime
Obviously!
Manchester Party for Techrights
If you choose to come, of course we'll cover the cost of the food and treats (but not travel)
Privacy is Not a Crime (in Places Where It is a Crime the Regime is Typically Very Rogue)
Also, criminals lack "privacy rights" to hide their crimes from the public
GNU/Linux "Market Share" in Lebanon More Than Doubled in a Few Months
Maybe it's a reaction to something? Assassination in Haret Hreik was in July.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, November 02, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, November 02, 2024
Nearly 40 Years Without Security Incidents
People who use Windows have come to sort of "accept" that security incidents are part of life or "normal"
[Meme] The Streisand Effect
Simon says, don't bother trying to suppress facts
Streisand Effect at IBM?
Trying to silence your workers isn't the best approach. It only makes colleagues even more curious.
Microsoft is a Gift That Keeps Giving (Future Stories to Techrights)
Microsoft has been trying to silence me using dirty tricks for nearly 20 years
Elon Musk Has Trashed Twitter for Ideological Reasons (and Propping Up Trump in Exchange for Financial and Political Favours Once in Public Office)
In case you didn't leave Twitter already, consider the fact that Twitter's (or "X"... whatever!) future is uncertain
Wall Street Has Demoted Intel, Seeing There May be No Future to Intel
Intel's loss isn't a loss to us
Free Software Licence Compliance is About Security Too
Linux as de facto proprietary off-the-shelf platform