Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Problem Isn't Women or Minorities in Free Software But Particular Corporations That Exploit or Steer or Hijack Their Agenda

Woman writing in the agenda

Summary: If technical issues are being disguised using colours and genders (among other things), then it's important to highlight who's behind it (what company/ies) rather than fling back insults at people because it makes things worse

IT'S NOT too uncommon to see terms like "SJW" thrown around to discredit people who potentially cause trouble, borderline troublemakers who call people whom they don't agree with (on technical grounds) "racist", "sexist", "rape apologist" and so on.



"Since corporations can be held accountable for staff that defames senior and prominent Linux developers, rather than take it out on the people who are often unwittingly exploited (taking down critics of some corporate objectives) try to work 'in reverse' or go 'up the chain', finding out whose agenda is served and why. Show it to them."Calling such troublemakers names isn't going to help. The common enemy here is/are the corporations that hijack (and therefore harm/dilute) these social causes to advance potentially harmful agenda, such as back doors, DRM, software patents and so on. We've given several examples over the years, even recently in relation to the founder of Linux and his longtime filesystems right hand (Linux and Ted, respectively).

May we suggest something? Since corporations can be held accountable for staff that defames senior and prominent Linux developers, rather than take it out on the people who are often unwittingly exploited (taking down critics of some corporate objectives) try to work 'in reverse' or go 'up the chain', finding out whose agenda is served and why. Show it to them. Explain how ridiculous a concept it is that Microsoft supports minorities and women (Microsoft faces many lawsuits from those who dispute that to the point of suing) while it's inserting literally sexist code into Linux, the kernel. I've actually seen some Microsoft staff trying to leverage the "sexist" card against Techrights (it didn't go far as it was baseless) and it's all too familiar. To the point where it's better not to name people whom/whose actions you criticise, especially if they're not male and Caucasian (criticism of a company or an employee's action can be spun as ad hominem and bigoted). A decade ago a lot of these tactics were leveraged against Richard Stallman, who is a vocal proponent of feminism, equality and so on. We wrote about it a lot back then.

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