These recent developments are beyond alarming though quite unsurprising, actually. But the path forward needs not only a lot more vigilance, but also a clearer vision of the kind of future that needs to be created. The blogs by Daniel Peacock certainly demonstrate a demand for increased transparency; but these days, this is not limited just to free software organizations. There seems to be a war on transparency and accountability everywhere and the reasons for this are not just due to malicious aggressors a la Microsoft, Google, Facebook, et al, political actors, and others. Ignorance seems to be in high demand these days, and these aggressors are satisfying that demand in fine form, profiting like never before. Reading through the Librethreat database, a lot of the issues raised could very well be the identical narrative with only the names changed. The question that must be asked is not, "Why does this happen," but rather, "Why does this keep happening?" It's certainly not a good sign, socially, when this kind of history keeps repeating itself almost daily.

Mr Stallman has certainly launched a movement that, through GNU and all of the third-party software of similar license and spirit, comprises a huge corpus of knowledge that can be used for good - or for bad if it is not properly safeguarded. It may be time for a huge fork by people who vow to maintain the effort for the sake of moving forward under the banner of transparency and good will, thereby making corporate influence a non-issue. It's name shouldn't be GNG's not GNU, but rather define it in terms of what it actually is.

In any situation, be it business reports, medical conditions, school report cards, and so forth, the current state of affairs is already old news: it is the result of past appropriation of thought and action. So unless the free software community - all of it - the developers, the users, and the foundations start thinking differently the future is not bright. Mr Stallman had his vision in place early on, but how many others REALLY did? It's the people who think and believe ahead of the available evidence, even in trying times, that can bring about real change.

A lot of these companies have been doing their homework in human psychology. They know what makes people addicted, they know that the success of social media rests on fostering peoples' insecurities though proliferation of narcissism and falsity. They know that the illusory truth effect is highly advantageous - the more often one is told that something is the case, even when they believe it's not - the more likely they are to believe it in the long term.

Brian Lunduke is a good example of this, he was outspoken against MS in FOSS for a long time, but now he's changing his stance to, "weeelll maybe MS ain't so bad after all - maybe they actually do care about Linux! Just sayin', just sayin'!" The reason why this is happening, I would posit, is because society is becoming ever more insecure, greedy and selfish and no, this is not declinism, this is a consequence of the human trait to exploit new forms of technology, and the internet is one of the most revolutionary things to happen to the human race in its history. Its users don't know how to contain or control it yet. It's ever growing, ever evolving. In the 1990s and 2000s the users were in control, the major corporations were in panic and it was anarchy. By the time large companies had managed to work our how to control the internet and monetise it properly, a lot of people had been coerced into giving into their insecurities, the up-and-coming generations now sucking it up because they don't know any better.

Why does it keep happening? Convenience, ignorance, insecurity. It's the same reason why friendships now live or die dependent on digital platform. It's the same reason why people are willing to give up their privacy even though they know they're being exploited. Human relationships are becoming expendable and are being replaced by technology. In truth, I don't know if there's anything that can be done to stop it.

The removal of Stallman is just another small step in the slow but sure advance of corporate Linux. To view it on it's own as an isolated incident, is to be exceptionally naive.

There were once some funny jokes: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...661#post596661

Nowadays it's not so funny:

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog...o-open-source/ (long diatribe of Microsoft apologist bile)

The joke is now really on those users who thought this day would never come.

The joke is also on people who believed the FSF, Stallman and the GNU GPL were some kind of impenetrable barrier against those corporate nasties who's brand is plastered all over the Linux Foundation page and who's money bankrolls Linux.

Nowadays mslinux.org reads like a draft boilerplate.

This must have been a lot of fun to write. PR teams and freelance writers specialise in creating paragraphs of meaningless blather out of a half-truth.

https://www.redhat.com/en/partners/microsoft
https://www.suse.com/partners/alliance/microsoft/

https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/upl...2-1024x647.jpg

I never thought I'd say it, but they're actually doing a good job of making Canonical look even half decent...

It's currently in fashion to make excuses for MS and dismiss any perceived threat - people have short memories after all.

That t-shirt really is the final nail in the coffin.

You're just being cynical... feel the love! Embrace* it...

(and then extend it and then extinguish it)

I was thinking the same thing...

...would you like a registry key with that?

The FSF has spent a month now being silent, and they have an emacs event lined up (at the FSF office) on Nov. 2. The fact that they have no president, are not talking to the public and are advertising this event by itself (as if nothing else is going on) is an outrage.

But it takes on new meaning as I quote Jagadees.S, who has recently started contributing to Techrights:

This would probably be dirty anyway, but timing makes this very dirty.

The FSF has three options basically:

1. Be neutral, which means allow this takeover by monopolies
2. Openly support this takeover by monopolies
3. Be against this takeover by monopolies

I have no idea which of these the theme of the event is going to be. I assume it's feigned neutrality.

I think people should maybe even consider going to the event and protesting outside, rather than attend. They can protest the removal of Stallman, the censoring of pro-Stallman emails on the FSF mailing list, they can protest the silence and (of course) they can protest the takeover of emacs that IBM is attempting.

I've gone to the FSF office before. The office is high up, there is only so much sidewalk (not much) in front of the building. Being across from the building may prove more useful.

BTW, what does RMS himself have to say about all this? - I tried to find statements on his personal site, but no such thing?

RMS is being deliberately silent for a reason. He is reachable by email though there are many things he simply doesn't respond to.

This goes for everyone who is at the FSF. While I am happy and eager to comment on most things related to this, there are one or two things even I won't mention until some time in the future when they are public knowledge.

They are not directly about RMS, though people might feel they are relevant to this situation. They also aren't scandalous (you don't have to believe that now, but it will be clearer when made public-- the FSF is much more quiet now than I think is good for free software) but the FSF has already been quiet for so long that even under the circumstances, I think it's time this silence ended. If you think so too, the primary email to contact is info@fsf.org -- let them know how you feel.

That silence is slowly being broken, RMS has apparently asked for a list of emails supporting him which were deleted. Here is an example of the FSF censoring emails.

Stallman is trying to keep the email list apolitical, but it's not working very well:

The response from Ludovic Courtès was:

and he's now threatened to ban people who don't want to politicise the FSF:

So the idea here is to make GNU thoroughly intertwined with general politics, ban people who disagree and delete contrarian messages.

Note John Gruber's anti-Stallman piece here. It's not surprising it was written when one considered that Gruber has received thousands of dollars in payments from Microsoft.

Bradley Kuhn went into this in depth.

http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html

And frankly as linked in his blog, there is a lot of ammo against RMS that it makes this agenda full of half truths all the more silly.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170202...headed_prudery)

That blog was clearly written with the hope that people don't actually click on the included links. Most of those entries on Stallman's blog have external links, and he's commenting on them. Why is Mr Kuhn not telling us all to just shut up and not comment on anything in the news?

This is really a broader (and grave) trend with employers and organizations following their employees' use of social media and the Internet in general. Employers often have their own social media platforms and require their employees to use their real names in order to perform services or just to advance the agenda of the business. This gives no separation between one's professional and private life. RMS started the organization and if these folks don't like the opinions he expresses - somewhere else - then go quit the organization and start their own.

Both the GNU and the FSF have grown far beyond the scope of only one person and that blog include several such links of varying degrees very conspicuously. I don't think they were meant to be hidden, rather I would guess he has been saving them for such an occasion. Its not as simple as telling people to fork, there has been real effort and time spent in these organizations by many people. Of course this issue is not black and white, RMS has said many things I do agree with.