Bonum Certa Men Certa

Peak Code — Part II: Lost Source

Article/series by Dr. Andy Farnell

This work is licensed under version 4.0 of the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license

Series parts:

  1. Peak Code — Part I: Before the Wars
  2. YOU ARE HERE ☞ Lost Source


A light sword



Summary: "Debian and Mozilla played along. They were made “Yeoman Freeholders” in return for rewriting their charters to “work closely with the new Ministry in the interests of all stakeholders” – or some-such vacuous spout… because no one remembers… after that it started."

I was a Free Software "hacker". The nights were late, the pay was… nothing. We were all-volunteers. There was no recognition, just a sense of being part of something. But oh boy, were we part of something! We felt like we were building history. I made companies. I wrote applications. I taught new hackers.



"With "disinformation" outlawed, we were swaddled, blind, clothed by the machine. Then, so suddenly, here, naked and together."All things pass. Much changed between the great pandemics and the mid-century storms when skyscrapers fell like dominoes. But I remember the software crisis starting. No great conspiracy. No revolution. No foreign hackers. No mythical "software wars". How suddenly it all blew up before that week when the food deliveries stopped and the lights went out. How many had already been on the edge, not knowing about each another or what was happening? With "disinformation" outlawed, we were swaddled, blind, clothed by the machine. Then, so suddenly, here, naked and together.



That old Malthusian worrier, your uncle Archie said it, "One day the code will run out. Everything runs on code, but it's not sustainable". We all laughed at him. Everyone knew software had zero cost and was inexhaustible. There would always be kids who wanted to write it, to prove something, to scratch an itch. Besides, machines would soon write all the code we'd ever need.



That must have been "peak code". You don't notice peak anything while you're living through it. By definition, it's the golden moment. Those days there were hundreds of languages, millions of coders and billions of devices. Software pulsed and flowed, in hourly updates, through the Internet into the gadgets that ran our lives. Secure Software, nourishing the always-on, always pumping machine. Then like all hearts, it just grew old, tired and sick, and one day it gave up. Some spirit within it died and the software went away.



"Those days there were hundreds of languages, millions of coders and billions of devices."Hired coders never cared. In their short, exhausting careers they plastered libraries on top of libraries, dependencies all the way down. To where? Nobody remembered. Maybe those few strange people who hacked not for money, but because it made them feel good?



Old words from before The Face Chain and The Age of Legibility, "vocations", "callings", "civic duty", seem senseless now. By the thirties, only performative activity validated by public perception telemetry and backed by a smart contract could earn credit.



"Hired coders never cared. In their short, exhausting careers they plastered libraries on top of libraries, dependencies all the way down."Graeber described "moral resentment". Hate of care. Within a decade it wasn't just overt, it was policy. Helping a neighbour or family member might be overlooked. The Humans First Bill sealed it. Nurses and teachers, medics, firefighters, police, child-carers, all gone. "If a bot could a bot should". Interpersonal Disorder, from a mid century copy of the DSM describes a "pathological desire to interact with or serve other humans rather than accept convenient rational transaction with the machine".



Momentum, aspiration and the inability of the masses to comprehend the decline kept things buoyant throughout the late twenties and thirties. Who knew the giant corporations could no longer sustain their own code? Things advanced too fast. Complexity and dependency went too deep. Education faltered. The "third industrial revolution" quietly ran out of steam.



"Who knew the giant corporations could no longer sustain their own code?""Free" coders did still exist. They still believed that "Software Freedom" as prescribed by the great Stallman could open a doorway out of enslavement. In practice authorities turned a blind eye. These farm animals were obliviously in service of the BigTeks, who harvested their code to fuel the machine.



Negative wages? That had an effect. Suddenly we were all supposed to pay for the privilege of keeping BigTek afloat?! Students, the only group who pay to work, rushed to fill the jobs without complaint. It was cheaper being a code worker than staying in education. Average age of the tech workers fell from 41 to 22 in a decade, expunging the entire body of active wisdom - those who knew how stuff worked.



"Average age of the tech workers fell from 41 to 22 in a decade, expunging the entire body of active wisdom - those who knew how stuff worked."Some techies whispered of the great "Techxit" when all the creators and developers were supposed to stop coding in protest at the Face Chain. It never happened. Fear kept them in line. Not fear of losing income, such crude social control policies were so 20th century. To take away a person's purpose, was the new cruelty of power. Losing your access to code or gaming often led to suicide.



Something was slowly shifting. Years before, in China it had been "Tang Ping", that ended in the "code for food" camps. In the USA a "Great Resignation" was successfully dismissed by social control media as disinformation. Some withdrew or poisoned their own libraries in protest, but their works were seized, reverted and stripped of their names by the Ministry of Code.



"Some withdrew or poisoned their own libraries in protest, but their works were seized, reverted and stripped of their names by the Ministry of Code."When SMMC's "security mandated maintenance changes" were first issued, paying coders dutifully went along, virtuously signalling that it was the "responsible" thing to do. I would say it happened right there. Those first seeds were sown into the depleted soil of free software captured by its new master of "public necessity". From there the weeds would slowly spread.



BigTek wanted to be the new banks, too big to fail. To show the vestiges of government who was boss the "three day weeks" came. Staged "security crises" lasted months, as the infamous Goldberg, alleged leader of Eponymous, "attacked our precious infrastructure". Some people learned how to store electricity, offline data and food, but those who died could not hack the DRM of their solar batteries, home appliances or get past the "Life Rights Management" for online access.



"BigTek wanted to be the new banks, too big to fail."BigTek's right to extract from the Free coder's "hobby projects", now declared "critical infrastructure," was official at last. GitHub underwent some re-branding. Accounts flipped to read-only, then locked, and then one day it became "The Ministry of Code". In the blink of an eye Microsoft appropriated nearly ninety percent of all 'Free Open Source' software, to "ensure stability". They kept the "messaging" light and positive - thanking all past contributors for their hard work over the years. It was, in all but name, the largest land-grab since William's rule in 1066.



The Free Software Foundation remained dutifully quiet, helping deliver the peasants to their feudal lords. Debian and Mozilla played along. They were made "Yeoman Freeholders" in return for rewriting their charters to "work closely with the new Ministry in the interests of all stakeholders" - or some-such vacuous spout… because no one remembers… after that it started.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Apple is the Company of Dictators and Worse
Apple is just another greedy corporation in search of sweatshops and even pedophiles (especially the high-profile ones)
Counting Unhatched Eggs Is Not Counting Chickens
Everything here will persist as normal
The "Infinite Bread"
The biblical story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 has software parallels
In Many Cases and in Many Different Ways, Technology Became Less Durable and Less Reliable Over Time
The "modern" things are more complex. And complexity is a foe or reliability and repair-ability.
Microsoft's LinkedIn is Losing Money, Traffic, and Hope; Now It Wants to Sell Its Users' Lifeblood (and Data)
Let this be a reminder of what social control media really is about
Microsoft Lunduke: Freedom of Speech Means Spreading What I Have to Say and Banning People I Disagree With
4Chan is one he aims for and he is siccing 4Chan trolls at people he doesn't like
Richard Stallman Back at the "Rudolf-Diesel" Hörsal "MW 2001" in About 40 Hours
He spoke there before; there's a very high seating capacity there
 
Links 20/10/2025: Louvre Museum Reveals Weakness, About 7 Million Protest US Turning Into Oligarchy/Monarchy
Links for the day
They Should Have Listened to Techrights Over a Month Earlier (Xubuntu Site Compromised)
we reported this issue about 40 days earlier and nobody did anything about it
Richard Stallman to Give Another Talk Today in Bavaria (Bavarian Academy of Science)
Tomorrow at 6 PM he speaks in Munich
Barry Kauler Explains That Puppy Linux and EasyOS Exclude Systemd to Keep Things Simple
Barry Kauler's Puppy Linux is in the community's hands. He now focuses on EasyOS and more.
Half a Year After Brian Fagioli Got Kicked Out of BetaNews for Slop He's Still Doing LLM Slop and Slop Images Targeting 'Linux' (Plagiarising Original Works)
If the Web gets polluted or flooded by slopfarms such as these, and Slashdot then sends traffic so these slopfarms (Slashdot probably doesn't do this intentionally), then real writers with real knowledge of GNU/Linux will lose the spark for publishing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 19, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 19, 2025
Campaign of FUD Against Framework Laptops and GNU/Linux (Using Microsoft's Attack on Linux, 'Secure Boot')
Ritual Defamation Cult has turned its attention over to Framework
Liberation From 'The Feed'
They rank things based on the editor's choice/ideology (he or she knows the sponsors, hence the masters)
Microsoft's Killing of Vista 10 Seems to Have Resulted in More Articles About GNU/Linux (But Also FUD)
We not only saw a rise in traffic, we also saw a remarkable rise in the number of articles
Today (a Day Before Richard Stallman Talk at TUM) There's a Patent Propaganda Event at TUM
Perhaps an opportunity for Dr. Stallman to rebut this "invention to patent" nonsense/fantasy (conflating monopolies with innovation)
OpenSource or "Open Source" as a Brand is Dying, Let's Get Back to Talking About Software Freedom
Those of us who actually want to reform the industry and put users in control of their systems/devices will recognise that "Open Source" was selling a lie or got-co-opted by liars
19 Years in Numbers: Techrights' Anniversary Countdown and Retrospective
In 2019 we began improving our workflows and, accordingly/predictably, we became a lot more productive
Slop Turns People Off (LLMs Lack Intelligence, They're Just Plagiarism Powerhouses That Fail to Deliver Any Real, Measurable Value)
"More" (or "MOAR") isn't always better
IBM Red Hat Has Re-calibrated or Adjusted to Bubble Economics, False Promises, and Slop/Plagiarism
This won't end well
Fake Numbers, Fake Claims, Fake Economy, and Media Grifters That Prop Up Fraud
Grifters like The Register MS won't be looked upon kindly after the bubble implodes
For Some, the GNU Web Site is Not Accessible This Week
They seem to have gone into some kind of lock-down mode
Symptoms of Upcoming Microsoft Layoffs in XBox
A crashing franchise
Psychiatrist confession: Germanwings crash & Debian toxic culture recognized before suicides
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/10/2025: Scentjacking 101, Slop Hype Boosters, and Steam Next Fest
Links for the day
Slopwatch: The Serial Slopper, LinuxSecurity, and Google News
Let's hope slopfarms die as soon as possible
Links 19/10/2025: Cambodia Scam Centres, Slop Hurting Wikipedia Traffic
Links for the day
As Economies Crumble Free as in Beer Will Matter, Not Just Free as in Freedom/Libre (Libertad)
French regions choosing to embrace Software Freedom
25 Years Ago, an Explanation of How Reducing Free Software to 'Apps' Would Interfere With Freedom Goals
there's nothing unreasonable about it
A List of 63 Known Gemini Clients (Software to Browse Geminispace Content With Gemini Protocol)
Not counting browser plugins for Web browsers
Gemini Links 19/10/2025: "Firma Odin Is Transforming" and Bot Attacks While "AFK"
Links for the day
US Government: 6.1% of Site Visitors Use GNU/Linux
GNU/Linux has a considerable share and it is growing
LLM Slop Could Not Rise to Prominence Without Media Complicity and Artificial Hype
Inane garbage disguised as "journalism"
Why the FSF No Longer Recommends Debian, as Explained by Richard Stallman This Month
some weeks ago
All the Latest Half Dozen Articles by Mehedi Hasan (UbuntuPIT) Only Admit at the End That He's Using LLM Slop
Disclosure is OK, but the practice of using slop is not
The 'Modern' Web of Fake Security and Easy Censorship of Whole Domains
Each year it gets worse
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 18, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 18, 2025
The Term "AI" is Not New and What Today's Media Calls "AI" Isn't Even AI
Only the hype was new... and totally artificial
Gemini Links 18/10/2025: "Planetary Rings", Steam, and PSU Replacement
Links for the day
Defeating LLM Abuse (State-of-the-Art Plagiarism) in the Area of Linux and GNU, Free Software, BSD, Security and So On
The aim is to get them to stop using LLMs to rip off other people's work
Links 18/10/2025: Russell Vought in Charge, US Government Leans to Russia Again
Links for the day
Credit Where It's Due: LinuxConfig.org Quit Doing LLM Slop, Back to Original and Real Articles
We waited for a while to say this, now it seems conclusive
Of Note: UbuntuPIT Aware of Critics of Slop, Adds Disclosure of Use of LLMs
We appreciate the honesty
Links 18/10/2025: Madagascar's President Flees and ICE Arrests Protest Comedian Robby Roadsteamer
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Near the European Patent Office (EPO) in 3 Days From Now
It'll be a good opportunity for patent examiners to listen, ask questions, and maybe greet him in person
From Scholar to Booster of Slop (and Even Slop in His Own Blog)
We're going to keep an eye on future posts of his
End of Vista 10 Also Good News for the BSDs
There are many news sites that recommend trying GNU/Linux this month
What's Wrong With Liking Parrots or Birds as Pets?
They'd demonise people for speaking about freedom, no matter what they say or do
Digital Sanitation Good Practices
leave behind Microsoftism
10 Days Ago Richard Stallman Gave a Long Interview in French (linuxfr.org)
English translation
Science, Not Fast Food/Junk Food
The commercial exploitation of users won't stop until users exercise full control over their software or - more broadly - their computing (including data)
The Free Software Foundation, Which Has Appointed a 43-Year-Old President, is Looking to Add Another Board Member (or Treasurer)
expect the FSF to add more people
Richard Stallman Confirms Next Week's Talk at Technical University of Munich, We Urge EPO Staff to Attend
That's probably late enough for EPO staff to attend after work
Gemini Links 18/10/2025: Notifications and Geminaut
Links for the day
Many Red Hat People Are Leaving, But It'll Be Framed Publicly as Leaving IBM
Similarly, IBM layoffs (or "RAs" as they're called) include Red Hat layoffs
Expect More Waves of Microsoft Layoffs This Month (at Least Two Rounds Confirmed Already)
From what we can gather, assuming the recent rumours about XBox are true, there will be at least 3 waves of Microsoft layoffs this month alone
Security Issues in Cisco and Jenkins Passed Off as "Linux" Problems
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) tactics
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 17, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 17, 2025