THE Debian project seems to have no new developers (DDs) in 2 months and Canonical is coming to grips with demise of its community (whereas Gentoo, a real community, reports big growth). The former and last "community manager" of Canonical/Ubuntu is nowadays a Microsoft shill. Seems like a pattern, no? Follow the money at the Linux Foundation and OSI... surveillance is the new 'open'!

"We've noticed that more and more developers nowadays speak of "Free software" instead of "Open Source" and that's a very encouraging sign as it means people go back to the roots and the principles, which are connected to altruism rather than profit motive."The GNU Project is still doing well. We recently wrote a series about the FSF, which nearly reached its goal (number of new members) after a deadline extension. GNU is a real community; it has been so since 1983.

We're also seeing a growing realisation that companies like IBM mean no good for Fedora and other parts of Red Hat. We see some developers walking away to real and genuine communities. We've noticed that more and more developers nowadays speak of "Free software" instead of "Open Source" and that's a very encouraging sign as it means people go back to the roots and the principles, which are connected to altruism rather than profit motive.

Assuming we go down the trajectory of software freedom, the (wo)manpower will still be there, albeit redirected or funnelled into projects and initiatives that don't merely 'farm' volunteers for free labour.

"We've had enough of those corporate coups and hopefully lessons are still being learned."To those who joined the FSF as members, thank you! Based on what we've been hearing, there are signs that the anti-RMS coup is mostly over (and it failed). Those who pushed for the removal of RMS are still out there, but not in positions where they can do further harm.

Long live real, authentic community. We've had enough of those corporate coups and hopefully lessons are still being learned. More coups will come and go.

After the hostile takeover of GitHub Microsoft has yet another YouTube-DL-like scandal on its lap; and seeing that projects and users flee GitHub, Microsoft makes panicky and much-belated reversals. ⬆