Another Reason to Boycott Microsoft/GitHub: The War on Reverse-Engineering

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2021-02-22 19:19:50 UTC
Modified: 2021-02-22 19:24:18 UTC

Video download link

Summary: The high-profile fan-made reverse-engineering efforts are being proactively censored by Microsoft on behalf of another company (without as much as due process), reaffirming the problematic nature of GitHub, a monopoly that represses Free software developers

THE level of media attention enjoyed by YouTube-DL when it was taken down by Microsoft caused or led to 'special treatment'; but not all projects to suddenly be vanished from GitHub enjoy such support from the media. As we've been showing in recent months, many are silently assassinated without anybody in the media paying attention.

"Why are people still willing to let a company so hostile towards software freedom (and towards reverse-engineering too; they're in bed with the copyright maximalists) have this much control over their projects and community of developers?"As it turns out, it has just happened again, but it's covered nowhere but a copyrights-centric site. A site that focuses on games for GNU/Linux (sometimes Free/libre ones, if possible) made a brief mention, barely even naming the culprit. "They've now given it the DMCA treatment, with the main repository and all known forks at the time to be taken offline on GitHub." (Microsoft)

Why are people still willing to let a company so hostile towards software freedom (and towards reverse-engineering too; they're in bed with the copyright maximalists) have this much control over their projects and community of developers? Is this a case of Stockholm Syndrome? This isn't free hosting and it's suicidal to put one's eggs in this basket. GitHub is for corporate openwashing (large corporations get their own subdomain there), not for software freedom. ⬆

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