Bonum Certa Men Certa

Increasing Focus on Advocacy for the Free Software Community (Putting Control Over Computing in the Hands of People, Not Large Corporations)

3 days ago: The Next One Thousand Blog Posts and the 15th Anniversary of Techrights

They eat our cake, then ask us to report bugs
Want to become an unpaid volunteer of IBM? Then join Fedora in 2021. And create a Microsoft GitHub account.



Summary: After 31,000 blog posts it's time to add a new theme to our coverage, which prioritises science, computer developers, and technology users; an urgent matter and pressing issue is the passage of control (e.g. over code and policy) to non-practising entities

THIS blog post of ours is technically the 31,000th (unpublished drafts included), but a pointless self-congratulatory post would not accomplish anything. Instead, let's discuss priorities. Thinking ahead, the EPO conflict will certainly escalate as dialogue with António Campinos broke down this year (first SUEPO at the start of the year, then increasingly the staff representatives too) and recent rulings about the Benoît Battistelli-led Vichyite strike regulations led to this call for reparations (see all the comments here).



"Team UPC will continue to spread false predictions in the media. As always!"A decade ago the EPO typically referred to European software patents as "CII" but now it's "AI" (Hey Hi!) and a bunch of other fluff. We need to keep abreast of those sementic games as they occasionally spread to other continents, threatening to undo 35 U.S.C. €§ 101 at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and even the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).

Judging by what President Biden has done so far, we don't expect Coons et al to thwart 35 U.S.C. €§ 101 and therefore we won't be focusing on the US patent system, except habitually in Daily Links (as we last did this morning; Chris Coons, the corrupted lobbyist/mole of the litigation fanatics/profiteers, is being groomed by Joff Wild and IAM).

Litigation companies insisting they want 'innovation'Remember that from Day 1 (2006) we've been fighting against software patents. That's nothing new.

Team UPC will continue to spread false predictions in the media. As always! We can safely respond to that in Daily Links without devoting long articles to the subject.

So what does that leave us with? Mostly Free (as in freedom) software and EPO.

But our plan is to add more focus to simplicity and UNIX philosophy (the roots of GNU). Something ought to be done about complicated, monopolised, privatised, and centralised so-called 'tech'. We need to change that current trajectory because people are being farmed, not served. Complexity needs to be replaced by simplicity and front groups like Linux Foundation replaced by communities. Google has not helped anybody embrace (software) Freedom, IBM does not embrace real communities (it calls its own employees "communities"), and Microsoft is openwashing everything so as to push proprietary software whereas Amazon mostly kills off lots of small webhosts and shops.

The way things are generally going, we won't win back freedom (or control over our computing), even if "Linux" spreads further over time.

Corporate 'community' and grassroots community
Grassroots communities aren't for-profits with shareholders

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft XBox Having a "Dog Ate My Homework" Moment: No New Console Until 3 Years From Now... Because "RAM Prices"
Who will ever remember this in 2028? Nobody.
Gemini End of Year Capsules Tally (Based on Lupa) Shows About 10% Growth
What a difference a year makes
Dr. Andy Farnell Explains Why Chatbots Became Dishonesty on Top of Dishonesty (Hiding Usage of Dishonest Salads of Words)
new article from CyberShow
Jean-Slop Van Damme and the Art of Bull--- Code
it's saving neither time nor money
 
Ahead of 2026 Mass Layoffs at Microsoft the Tree Gets Shaken to See Who 'Falls' (Resigns/Retires)
"We had a quiet meeting last week about budget realignment. No one said layoffs, but it’s clear where the focus is shifting."
Almost 6,5000 Pages in 2025, Aiming Higher in 2026
if we can keep focused, then quantity will increase
Gemini Links 31/12/2025: New Resolution, Reverse Hexdump, and Programming Languages
Links for the day
Links 31/12/2025: Nvidia Faces Bubble-Bursting Moment, Saudi Oil Money Pumped Into Chatbots to Keep the Energy Waste Going (Circular Financing Again)
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's First Talk in a U.S. College Since 2018
Greetings from Georgia Tech!
EPO People Power - Part XX - Why António Campinos Chose to Put His Cokehead Friend on 'Sick Leave'
EPO Cocainegate will be covered for months to come
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, December 30, 2025
Gemini Links 30/12/2025: FreeBSD, Gemlogs, and Xobaque
Links for the day
Get Ready for Gigantic XBox Layoffs at Microsoft (Much Bigger Than in 2025)
he unionisation drive is a sign workers already expect this
Concern Trolls: Stop Criticising Poor Gerstner Because Now He's Dead. Reality Check: Gerstner Has Found a Trick for Dodging Tax on His Hundreds of Millions in Wealth.
Maybe even billions in wealth
Samoa: GNU/Linux and ChromeOS Rose to Around 11%
based on Web access data from Samoa
DnD: Debian and Drugs
There will soon be some interesting new information about Debian
A Conundrum of Privacy/Surveillance: Will You Give Them a Stool Sample to "Feel Humane"?
What if skinnerboxes in South Korea also required that people provide urine and stool samples?
Nope, There's No Twitter "Successor"
There's a lot of horrible abuse going on in social control media
A Calm Year in IRC is a Good Year for IRC
Next year IRC will turn 38 (in August) and in 2028 it'll turn 40, just like the FSF did a couple of months ago
Slopfarms Covering Up for "Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella" After a Terrible Performance and a Terrible Year at Microsoft
How to cause many to resign/retire, hence not be counted as "layoffs"
IBM Was Never Saved, It Has Been a Downhill Journey for Decades Already
Gerstner wasn't a tech person but a fiscal butcher
Some GNU Joiners in Geminispace
Jose E. Marchesi (known for GNU poke and a bunch of other things) adopted Gemini Protocol
IBM Seems to be Doing to HashiCorp What It Did to Red Hat (Many Key People Leaving)
"Today marks my last day at HashiCorp, wrapping up an incredibly rewarding 5-year journey"
State of the Slop, Day 364
How does Phoronix feel about Google promoting slopfarms that 'rewrite' its stories and slap slop images on top?
Links 30/12/2025: "Durian Tsunami" and "Unneeded Surgeries"
Links for the day
Links 30/12/2025: Social Control Media Detox, Rage Against Slop Wasting People's Productive Capacities
Links for the day
Reality Check About IBM's Louis Grestner, Slopfarms Say He Was IBM CEO for 30 Years!
It is "hallucinating" (lying)
Debt as the New Currency?
Rich people get richer because they take money from the rest of us, if not directly then by compelling us (collectively) to borrow money at a national level, then "invest" in them
EPO People Power - Part XIX - "Berenguer Has Known of Campinos' Substance Abuse First Hand For a Long Time"
"You rightfully claimed that Berenguer is Campinos' protegee"
Gemini Links 30/12/2025: Quitting Coffee, Apartment by the Beach, and Strange Retail Ethics
Links for the day
Nintendo and Sony Outsold Microsoft XBox by 15:1!
The mass layoffs indicate Microsoft is aware of this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 29, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, December 29, 2025
Slopfarm: Firing 35,000 Employee is "Saving the Company"
"Big Blue" is getting smaller all the time
Slopfarms About the "Linux CEO" Linus Torvaldos [sic]
nowadays NVIDIA builds and helps build a giant Ponzi scheme
Vista 11 is "10" (Ten Percent)
Some months ago Microsoft openly admitted that it had lost (shed off) hundreds of millions of Windows users
Dealing With Online Pogroms
lawfare funded by third parties
The Year Apple Would Rather Forget
We await further stumbles and falls from Apple (in 2026)
"EU's reform agenda threatens to erase a decade of digital rights"
This is really sad for those of us who spent decades promoting and boosting/advocating the EU
IBM Layoffs in India, More Coming Soon, Say Apparent Insiders
Threads regarding IBM layoffs
Gemini Links 29/12/2025: Earlier "Happy New Year 2026" and "Dead Archivist Society"
Links for the day
Links 29/12/2025: Putin Critic Sergei Udaltsov Imprisoned, Cloudflare’s Outages Discussed
Links for the day
LLMs Are Inherently Parasitic, We Need to Treat Them Accordingly
a maintenance burden for those who possess actual intelligence
Links 29/12/2025: Bottled Water Considered Harmful, Cheetos Promoting Nazis in Europe
Links for the day
EPO People Power - Part XVIII - European Patent Office "Paints Itself as Progressive While Literally Being Represented by Cokeheads"
To what length/s will German authorities and media (not just in Germany) go to protect the EPO's "precious image"?
What IBM Will Do to Red Hat in the Coming Year or Years
This won't end up well for GNU/Linux as a whole
Not Turning in His Grave: When People Die, Their Corporate Destruction Becomes a "Turnaround"
All he did was mass layoffs - a tradition that has not ended since then
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 28, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, December 28, 2025
Louis Gerstner Has Died, His Legacy of Mass Layoffs at IBM Hasn't
Hagiographies will follow. They will say he "saved" IBM.
Links 29/12/2025: The Sunday Routine, Limits of Memory, and Gemini Vocabulary
Links for the day