Bonum Certa Men Certa

'Open Source' as a Proprietary Software Coup and an Attack on Software Freedom

Video download link



Summary: The well-financed interests behind the coup against software freedom are at it again; seeing that Free software is everywhere and has already won many markets, they still try to rebrand and reown the entire market, but whether they succeed or not depends on our collective action

SIMMONS and co. are at it again. Working on the payroll of proprietary software giants (Google, Salesforce etc.), these people basically wage a war against software freedom and moan about ICE while in fact working for ICE and outsourcing everything to a proprietary software monopoly that also works for ICE. So we know they don't care about actual ethics; it's just a shallow case of ego tripping or typical, chronic cognitive dissonance. Those are the same people who not only try to cancel the FSF and its founder but also worked from within OSI to cancel the OSI's own co-founder (for trying to protect the OSI from such subversive entryism).



"Some say OSI isn't just fronting for Microsoft and GitHub but also for Tidelift. Some people tell us that. Then again, consider the fact that Tidelift is managed by people who signed the anti-Stallman letter, looking to destroy the FSF and by extension copyleft/GPL."The initial pointer (for this article) was sent to me by someone who had worked for Microsoft and got sick of what he saw there. He left. Tidelift is propping up Microsoft, according to him. It's also connected to the Red Hat founders (company sold to IBM, which made them a lot of money, possibly making them billionaires). Some say OSI isn't just fronting for Microsoft and GitHub but also for Tidelift. Some people tell us that. Then again, consider the fact that Tidelift is managed by people who signed the anti-Stallman letter, looking to destroy the FSF and by extension copyleft/GPL. The latest person to manage the hate letter is an IBM employee. Speaking of IBM, Simmons once again promoted this nonsense yesterday, this time in an IBM/Red Hat site called opensource.com. As it turns out, those nostalgic monopolists and OSI figureheads are boosting Microsoft moles and lobbyists (of proprietary software!). They speak of "our pals at" Microsoft (GitHub) and it's worth noticing how many Microsoft employees lead this thing. They've killed the term "Open Source". Nowadays those who claim to speak for Open Source are just proprietary software giants, along with their front groups (including the Linux Foundation, which insists that "Open Source loves Microsoft").

"Unless we speak about those issues more openly (which puts people at risk of running afoul of some so-called 'CoC'), the situation will worsen."This video begins with the more positive news about Free software winning the Web servers wars (according to statistics revealed yesterday afternoon, Microsoft's collapse in Web servers continues; down from 5.54% to 4.95% in one single mouth! Yes, that's like more than 10% in losses in just one month; they lost 7 million domains!). We covered this collapse many times over the past year or so, sometimes in long (about an hour long) videos. So the game plan or the strategy at Microsoft seems to revolve around hijacking the competition, e.g. by hiring NGINX people to become marketing drones of Microsoft (as seen in the above case).

Unless we speak about those issues more openly (which puts people at risk of running afoul of some so-called 'CoC'), the situation will worsen. They try to 'own' our revolution and then lock us out with doors and gates.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete