muckrights-sans-merde

 bonum fabula frat

### timeline-of-muckrights other pages: => why-msm.html why-msm *originally posted:* apr 2021 *updated:* aug 2021 one of my complaints about muckrights which i didnt establish for more than a year (but i did have a few doubts, which i tried to dismiss) is the if-by-whisky narrative it uses. this is common in the tech press, but with muckrights its harder to notice when they say (or used to say) so many things you already agree with. its a great trick-- because when theyre on a cycle of things they dont believe, which you agree with, you start to think "oh! here is a website covering things without the distortion on other tech websites". right? finally! thats what i thought, too. then they slink away from those positions, and latch onto whatever they decide to do next. a couple things have to be said about this: first of all, honest people change their minds, too. i dont begrudge anybody that. that isnt what ive witnessed here, which is a dance around the truth ive watched for a long time. this is a complicated dance to decipher, but i believe it can be simplified to make it more obvious. muckrights-sans-merde exists for that purpose-- to find the story that muckrights wont be honest with its audience about. another thing needs to be said about this, too: the first story on muckrights was not by the person i refer to as its "owner". muckrights was not originally muckrights, it was a website dedicated to fighting novell. i was pleased when it branched out to the free/libre tech world in general, and i agree that novell was a negative thing for computer users / operators / industry. at some point, possibly even years later, muckrights became something else-- something dishonest. whether that happened in 2019 or 2011, this timeline is a tool for looking at muckrights as a whole. if the official narrative of muckrights is if-by-whisky, or if it simply uses if-by-whiskey to disguise or add cosmetic enhancements to problems with its official narrative, a carefully-made timeline can help reveal such things. ive also used this to help track the course of the free software movement, to try to find when and perhaps why things got off course. for muckrights i believe ive already figured this out, but this is also a tool for exploring that theory. i expect roy to mistake or misrepresent this as some sort of tribute. perhaps if i call him out on that ahead of time he will feel less tempted to do so, but it wouldnt necessarily prevent him. roy is the primary reason (99% of the reason) i left muckrights. he tells everybody it was mincer. however i have no problem with mincer, at all. roy knows exactly why i left, because i told him. he has persisted, from december (when i explained) through late march (and surely not for the last time) in telling people i left because of mincer. however i nearly left in august (and even wrote and article about this, which is still published there) solely because of roy. this sort of history re-writing doesnt stop with me and why i left. it extends to relationships with rms and oliva which roy lies about, it extends to what is happening with free software. i volunteered for 2 years with this person, and the reason i did it was to combat the sort of history re-writing open source does at the expense of truth and software freedom-- to benefit selfish monopolies. roy also is a selfish monopoly, he maintains a monopoly on the truth using lies and outright fabrications-- why? to punish people for defecting from his regime. if it were all for the good of free software, if it were all for the truth, or to benefit free software rather than himself-- someone might overlook the fact that he throws his own contributors under the bus (and then tries to rescue them-- FROM HIMSELF AND HIS OWN LIES-- later on). except it isnt for free software, at least, it isnt anymore. roy is a pageview addict, hes mainlining them, and he will fuck over anybody to get them. of course he paints this as defending free software. that will certainly keep his supply going for a while. but again, i joined muckrights to combat the re-writing of history. not for some two-bit shit to go and re-write our own 2 years of working together-- and then the re-write the history of free software in the making on top of it. fuck that! im boycotting wikipedia until the end of the year, and i dont link to (but i will cite) muckrights, so the urls in this timeline are not hyperlinked. the wikipedia citations are from another timeline project, and some events are shown to establish what the world was already like before hurd, before muckrights. today, and for some time now, i promote the goal of a fully libre fork of bsd instead of salvaging gnu/linux. this is exactly what i felt i was being misrepresented about in august, with roy making it about licenses instead of what i was actually talking about. he has never corrected this-- instead, i left muckrights in december and hes spent many months on a campaign of smears, innuendo, half-truths and outright fabrications. i think the mission of the gnu project is just as important as the solutions that openbsd offers. it is possible to combine these and further the mission of the gnu project (with copyleft) instead of making things depend increasingly on the linux kernel. this is an important concept, which i believe roy is unwilling to cover fairly because hes shackled himself to debian and refuses to explore options just like so many windows users refuse to explore theirs with gnu/linux. note thats not what he led me to believe when i was joining muckrights. no, he told me what i wanted to hear-- he panders to his audience, especially if theyre new. ### 1953 * a-2, a compiler-related tool based on grace hoppers a-0 system, is released to customers with the source code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-0_System ### 1969 * work begins on unix at bell laboratories https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.html ### 1973 * unix kernel rewritten in c https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.html ### 1980 * united states congress amends title 17 of the united states code to include computer programs as copyrighted works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_copyright ### 1983 * 2.9bsd becomes the first version of bsd that is a full operating system rather than a set of applications and patches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Berkeley_Software_Distribution * 27 September: richard stallman announces the GNU Project https://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html ### 1986 * february: x10r3 (the predecessor of x11) becomes the first freely redistributable x release; uwm is the default window manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System ### 1990 * development of gnu hurd kernel begins https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/history.html ### 1991 * 25 august: development of linux announced https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.minix/dlNth7RRrGA/SwRavCzVE7gJ ### 1992 * 13 december: first free software (gpl-licensed) version of linux kernel (0.99) released https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/v0.99/linux-0.99.tar.Z ### 1993 * 15 september: intial release of debian (0.01) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian * 1 november: freebsd (having first been named on june 19) releases version 1.0 https://www.freebsd.org/releases/1.0/announce.html ### 1994 * january: at&t lawsuit affecting bsd is settled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Berkeley_Software_Distribution * 5 april: gnu hurd is bootable https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/history/hurd-flash * June: 4.4bsd-lite is a freely-distributable version of bsd following the settlement of the at&t lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Berkeley_Software_Distribution ### 1998 * february: open source initiative founded by eric raymond and bruce perens https://www.opensource.org/history * 28 october: based on two 1996 wipo treaties, the digital millennium copyright act (dmca) goes into effect in the united states, criminalising the circumvention of digital restrictions management (drm). 3-year-long exemptions to specific restrictions can be granted by the librarian of congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act ### 1999 * 17 february: open source initiative co-founder and open source definition author bruce perens warns against overshadowing the free software foundations efforts and says "now that the world is watching, its time for us to start teaching them about free software. notice, i said free software, _not_ open source." https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/02/msg01641.html ### 2001 * creative commons is founded with support from the center for the public domain https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/History ### 2004 * 20 october: initial release of ubuntu from canonical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(operating_system) ### 2006 * 13 november: first muckrights post, originally it was all about the wrongs of novell (and their deals with giafam). http://techrights.org/2006/11/13/welcome-to-boycott-novell/ > I say let the big MS lump payment be their severance from the community. its a shame the community did not reject microsofts efforts to take it over and control it; indeed 12 years later they would buy their way in with github, but almost no one has left-- not even those in the gnu project. for years i have called for the same thing (one might even say less) than the first ever post at muckrights did-- "less" because one does not simply boycott everything from github. but you can (and perhaps ought to) try. im generally very reluctant to try new software that chooses github for its hosting, and i try to rely less on (if not actually remove) software that is github-based. i stopped using pygame, leafpad and icewm (among many other projects) because they are based there. all of these were related to something important to my workflow. i replaced icewm with dwm, leafpad with a tk-based (utf-8 capable) editor. i avoid pygame, do not have it installed, and even removed it from my favourite software project. but muckrights downplays the threat; its certainly a far cry from the sentiment of their first post. and people think theyre anti-microsoft. * november: muckrights reports on a petition from bruce perens, which was referred to recently in irc: http://techrights.org/irc-archives/irc-log-techrights-240321.html ``` schestowitz we had an anti-Microsoft/Novell deal pettiion Mar 24 16:23 schestowitz Perens set it up Mar 24 16:23 ``` everything muckrights touches or mentions or likes magically turns into something "we" did. just two days later, it was mentioned that "we" suggested (unfortunately, as it was a bad choice) kat walsh as a possible successor for rms someday. ``` schestowitz what did Kat Walsh do to them?!!??! Mar 26 11:49 schestowitz She's awesome Mar 26 11:49 schestowitz we suggested her as successor to RMS Mar 26 11:49 ``` http://techrights.org/irc-archives/irc-log-techrights-020221.html no, that was me. roy takes credit for things that only ive said, but he also invents things ive never said, which he attributes to me. sometimes muckrights is almost like a fictional world that exists beyond roys wardrobe, like narnia. but its nice to know he doesnt just do it to me. occasionally he collaborates (retroactively) with bruce perens, with a magical time machine. of course there is always the possibility that he actually DID work with perens on something. only that he borrows glory in this fashion from time to time, leading people to believe he had some hand in something he wasnt even remotely involved with. so taking this "we" thing to the next level, if i write something about the lincoln assassination, does that make me an accessory? should i go turn myself in? for comparison, i wrote stuff for this guy for two years, was in regular contact with him, he "suggested" topics and asked me to do a number of things for him, some of which i did-- and was thanked numerous times for my contributions... only to have him later insinuate that i was just some rando whom he suffered to lend hosting and bandwidth to. his take on "we" vs. "you" is more than eccentric, it is nearly inexplicable. to illustrate how inexplicable, one of the articles where i suggested kat as a successor was in the context of asking stallman to (voluntarily) step down, which roy published-- then said nothing about for more than a year-- then smeared me for, then later defended (because he always knew the actual context of it), all in email and irc. but after ALL THAT, he decided to borrow (or invent) some of the credit for saying it as well. incredible. * november: this quote from 2006 would easily describe the way muckrights does cheerleading in 2021: > For the past couple of weeks, this blog has been filled with rants and accusations which were backed by proof. I thought that, for a change, we should also refer you to a more positive analysis. And yes, you’ve guessed it, there’s a snag to this so-called ‘positivity’. it’s akin to looking at the bright side of an irreversible disaster. http://techrights.org/2006/11/27/novell-praises/ * november 28: when muckrights took (or at least seemed to take) these sorts of threats seriously: > Efforts to hurt us from inside are the most dangerous. I think we’ll also see more attempts to dilute the definition of Open Source to include partially-free products, as we saw with the Qt library in KDE before Troll Tech saw the light and released an Open Source license. Microsoft and others could hurt us by releasing a lot of software that’s just free enough to attract users without having the full freedoms of Open Source. http://techrights.org/2006/11/28/bruce-perens-prediction/ * november 29: quoting stallman... > This deal is a threat to the freedom of the free software community, because its effect is to make GPL-covered software non-free in practical terms... i love that in 2006, stallman knew you could make gpl-licensed software effectively non-free. this of course is why gpl3 was created, and we all know that, but today people often talk like adding the gpl makes a project magically impervious to being co-opted or made "less free" or "free in license only". back then, people knew better. of course gpl3 really is impervious. we will never need a newer one for anything-- its basically like a hypothetical, perfect, flawless hardware firewall. nothing can match its defences! (none of these comments are intended to suggest the gpl isnt useful, only that it isnt the stand-alone solution to proprietary software some people treat it as. there really is more to freedom than the first step-- gpl emancipates, but in the long run freedom requires more than the initial emancipation). * november 29: quoting dana gardner... > The notion that a vendor can have a secret or fuzzy pact with another vendor doesn’t work when the community is instant and global and seamless http://techrights.org/2006/11/29/dana-gardner-novell/ oh yeah? tell that to the fsf, who took red hat off their sponsors page a while back (leading muckrights and others including myself to believe that we were finally free from ibms clutches-- maybe not entirely though) only for red hat to recently declare that they were not going to sponsor the fsf anymore. but wait! we thought... * december 04: i like the title > Novell Shoots Down International Standards, Gives Control to Microsoft http://techrights.org/2006/12/04/novell-supports-openxml/ like when github starting restricting entire countries from collaborating on projects in gnu? * december 07: quoting david sugar... > I do not remember requesting to become Novell’s slave, or of desiring to pay a Microsoft slug for the right to practice freedom. http://techrights.org/2006/12/07/david-sugars-take-on-microvell/ * december 11: quoting eben moglen... > This was the week ‘Open Source’ ceased to be a useful phrase because it denoted everything up to and including Microsoft’s attempts to destroy free. http://techrights.org/2006/12/11/embrace-microsoft-or-join-with-us-in-our-embrace-with-microsoft/ * december 19: another good title > FOSS: The Low Cost of Exit http://techrights.org/2006/12/19/foss-the-low-cost-of-exit/ the reason i actually started contributing to muckrights was regarding the skyrocketing cost of "exit" or as this article notes: > Professor Derek Keats’ observation regarding an often overlooked aspect worth considering when implementing a technology, the cost of replacing the technology with a competitor, or as he put it – the cost of exit. ive become so concerned with the dramatic increases in this cost, i polled people for a way to write this as a fifth freedom, which resulted in the following: > "The freedom to NOT run the software, to be free to avoid vendor lock-in through appropriate modularization/encapsulation and minimized dependencies; meaning any Free software can be replaced with a user's preferred alternatives (freedom 4)"-- Peter Boughton's Fifth Freedom unfortunately, in 2021 muckrights is not as keen to keep such a dream alive. gnu/linux no longer concerns itself as much with this either, instead surrendering to exit-cost inflating schemes and anti-solutions like systemd, dbus and tying more and more of the operating system to a single kernel. muckrights does mention this sometimes, but as with so many of the major problems free software faces, downplays them and joins in cheerleading and chestbeating (in lieu of serious problem solving-- actually at the expense of people engaged in serious problem solving). * december 22: we used to actually boycott things that are terrible for free software, not continue to pretend everything was alright and that things would somehow magically fix themselves while we change nothing: http://techrights.org/2006/12/22/fsf-boycott/ > Boycotts can indeed be effective and no-one proves this better than the Free Software Foundation its really a shame then, that we dont find boycotts (or more of them) of github over gnus drift towards microsoft control. * december 27: quoting phil morettini... > Unfortunately, in some cases, being targeted by Microsoft sometimes builds a company up in its own view. It’s almost a baptism into the big-time. Microsoft is worried about us; we’re a peer to them now! We must really be smart! This leads to a false sense of security about the company’s true position in the market, leading to the second factor which can bring a company down–Arrogance. http://techrights.org/2006/12/27/novell-rise-fall/ * its not difficult to review 2006, as it starts in the middle of november. * "shawn" features heavily this year, with many (perhaps about half? no careful measurement was made) articles from roy as well. in the first month or two they managed to do an interview with jeremy allison, which helped them get attention on digg and slashdot. i can tell you even in 2020, how far muckrights is willing to go to get an interview with someone important to free software. * given that it was originally intended to be about novell, its no surprise that most of the articles were indeed about novell. it also touched on relevant connections (and responses) to and from microsoft, ubuntu, mono, openoffice, gnome was mentioned at least once, and responses from the fsf and comments from eben moglen were featured. it may not (it could) have been obvious to the authors at the time, but within its first weeks, muckrights was already a blog that should have very little trouble (audience or format-wise) transitioning from a blog focused on novell to one that broadly covers free software issues. ### 2007 * 19 january: microsoft already trying to corrupt "open source" http://techrights.org/2007/01/19/microsoft-corrupts-term/ > There appears to be a coordinated effort by Microsoft to corrupt the term “Open Source” and make its merits less visible (if at all visible). It’s terminology assassination. There are more and more attempts to corrupt the term through media announcements and strategic moves such as the deal with Novell. by october the same year, according to muckrights, they have already "hijacked" open source. 13 years later in 2021, amidst public concerns that free software is undergoing a similar hijacking, roy decides to spin this as "open source" being taken over-- even after declaring it "dead" in 2019. such wishful thinking leads readers into a false sense of security, and obscures the need for a stronger movement (which of course roy "advocates", even while obscuring the best reasons for it being necessary). but thats muckrights for you: should we say this is serious today, or do more rah-rah-rah chestbeating and minimising? heck, why not both? then everybody is happy. * 23 january: microsoft paying for wikipedia edits http://techrights.org/2007/01/23/more-articles-on-microsofts-paid-wikipedia-contributions/ > When you cannot control the media, control the encyclopedia. It rhymes, too! * 22 march: forbes already smearing stallman over bullshit http://techrights.org/2007/03/22/bruce-perens-clearing-up-anti-gpl3-fud/ > Some of the bad publicity about GPL3 is deliberate. A particularly bad article by Dan Lyons of Forbes magazine painted an offensive picture of GPL3 and Richard Stallman, even accusing Stallman of having sex with flowers (!!!) after Lyons failed to comprehend a scientific joke [1]. http://web.archive.org/web/20080104162117/http://technocrat.net/d/2007/3/22/16651 * 28 march: "The Linux Kernel Could Go GPLv3" http://techrights.org/2007/03/28/gplv3-torvalds/ > After a lot of harsh criticism (even cursing at times), Linus Torvalds seems rather satisfied with the new General Public Licence, which addresses Novell-type deals. This is of course excellent news. and they said muckrights was pessimistic. to be fair, the article cited its reasons for optimism. whether that was realistic given the variety of sources it could have used, would take a lot more work to determine. later, muckrights would cite alan cox as a reason to be optimistic-- in relative contrast to torvalds, that is. its possible, of course, that torvalds actually did approve of gpl3... before being encouraged not to. * 28 march: "GPLv3 Draft 3 is Here" http://techrights.org/2007/03/28/gplv3-draft-3-is-here/ > For anyone who still says that GPLv2 doesn’t address patents, Groklaw had a link to an interesting piece about implied patent license aspects of GPLv2. I especially agree with PJ’s analysis that the Microvell deal is not harmonious with GPLv2, but rather it was more expedient to address the issue via a new license clause rather than litigation. the note and clarification about gpl2 and patents is interesting. * 6 may: modularity more crucial to windows than debian http://techrights.org/2007/05/06/microsoft-suse-theory/ an early instance of the "microsoft making its own 'linux'" theory, which is still touted in 2021 regarding wsl and "windows 11". (perhaps anything is possible at this point). but best of all is one of the stated reasons microsoft may "need to" do this: windows vista is too monolithic to maintain! i suppose we will need systemd then, to bring gnu/linux into parity/impedance matching? (this is intended sarcastically). > It has already been stated by the press that the codebase of Windows Vista is unmaintainable. The operating system is not sufficiently modular. This led to the rubbishing of Longhorn back in 2005 when Jim Allchin called it "a pig". * 14 may: "Microsoft Says It Will Not Sue GNU/Linux Users, But There’s a Snag (Updated)" http://techrights.org/2007/05/14/microsoft-not-sue/ > According to the latest developments, Microsoft’s threats are an attempt to strike more Novell-type deals, not prepare for any lawsuits. [...] Back when we ran a different poll on this site, the large majority (roughly 80-90%, among hundreds) said that other distributors should not engage with Microsoft in a Novell-like deal. * 14 may: "Novell Put Its Own Customers at Risk" http://techrights.org/2007/05/14/novell-customer-risk/ > Novell has opened the floodgates to threats when it offered admission that Linux was ‘unclean’. To its credit, Novell has some decent businessmen. The company received over $0.3 billion for this admission. Essentially, it swallowed the bait and it didn’t taste nice. Based on some financial transactions, we suspect that its executives received some good ol’ payola. Maybe it was a by-product and maybe we are just over-speculative. [...] At some stage, Novell has said that its deal with Microsoft does not guarantee that Microsoft won’t sue Novell customers. Interestingly enough, putting one’s own customer in jeopardy is exactly what we find in Microsoft. * 18 may: red hat still the "good guys"? http://techrights.org/2007/05/18/novell-vs-standards/ > As Shane pointed out, Red Hat does the right thing by demanding the use of free & open protocols, not deals. One must play by the rules of industry as a whole, rather than be subjected to the rules of one reigning vendor. obviously, that was a long time ago; what a shame that we didnt get it in writing. yesterdays good guys can become the very bane of today. * 18 may: google more pro-gpl3 than torvalds http://techrights.org/2007/05/18/gplv3-google-eben/ > Joining a large number of developers and companies, Google has just expressed its satisfaction with the latest GPLv3 draft. [...] Among others who feel similarly, you might as well include kernel hackers such as Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox. Why was there a scare in the first place? Partly because of brutal attacks from Microsoft lobbyists. torvalds was already against gpl3 in 2006. history demonstrates no change of heart that i know of. what we see from muckrights in mid-2007 seems like its one of two things: a period where torvalds did start to come around (which went nowhere, ultimately) or possibly roy spinning the most "diplomatic" statements torvalds made as reason to be optimistic. i have yet to determine which of these it is closer to. gpl3 was indeed successful, but most certainly not as successful as roys mid-2007 optimism paints the future. apple and microsoft (via github) would both attack gpl that much more due to gpl3. opponents of gpl3 paint this as the gpls own fault, whereas proponents argue this means gpl3 is doing what its supposed to-- protecting free software in a way that people who want to make it non-free must attack even more. > Within months, Novell’s deal with Microsoft (and its implications) might be history. i think the timeline will show it took a bit longer than that. ultimately it ruined novell, which i believe muckrights predicted. * 18 may: novell "self-hosting" their own demise http://techrights.org/2007/05/18/more-subtle-fud/ > Let us suppose that one such “olive branch” includes the deal with Novell, which was followed by aggressive threats and demands. It was clearly self serving. very relevant to the present (2021) somehow. * 23 may: gaslighting from microsoft, "Here Comes the PR Stunt, Puts Spin on All the Bullying" http://techrights.org/2007/05/23/bullying-spin/ > Haven’t all seen this coming? Perhaps it’s nothing new. Microsoft now attempts to boast its ‘gentle image’, for it is not going to sue Linux (over something which it could never sue). there seems to be a common theme with the previous post. * 1 june: full chestbeating mode, "game over", "the wrath of the fsf" http://techrights.org/2007/06/01/gplv3-legal-battle-over/ "GPLv3 (in Current Form) Could Be "Game Over" to Microsoft’s Secret Schemes" * 11 june: torvalds brief (and possibly imaginary?) acceptance of gpl3 is over? http://techrights.org/2007/06/11/gplv3-linus-kernel/ Is the Linux Kernel Approaching Acceptance of GPLv3? > Nobody [perhaps he means torvalds...] likes change. Change leads to concessions. It can abruptly end existing relationships, then give way to new (yet unforeseen) relationships. [...] Recently, Alan Cox made remarks that seem to suggest that he is more fond of the GPLv3 than Linus is. Consider, for example, the interview which was published yesterday. He realises that GPLv3 is needed in order to protect Free software. * 13 june: "Is GPLv3 Becoming an Distant-yet-inevitable Destination for Linux?" http://techrights.org/2007/06/13/gplv3-dual-kernel/ it would seem not. > It appears as though, partly due to Sun’s increased pressure, Linus Torvalds might (just might) one day consider a dual-licensed Linux kernel. * 17 june: leave it to ibm and microsoft instead http://techrights.org/2007/06/17/opensuse-deal-hobbyist/ "Novell’s 'Hobbyist' Workforce as Cheap Microsoft Labour?" > Alpha 5 of Opensuse 10.3 was announced just days ago. It is a good time to mention Groklaw’s latest article which addresses Novell’s effect on “free labour”. It unfolds and analyses the entanglement Novell’s deal with Microsoft presents to developers. * 18 june: "The End of Windows and the Arrival of GPLv3" http://techrights.org/2007/06/18/end-of-windows-gplv3/ quoting linux watch: > To me, the Linux/Microsoft deals not only make sense, they show that we are in the last stage. Linux is winning, and Microsoft is acknowledging it. After all, if Microsoft didn’t have to deal with Linux as something like an equal, why would they bother to make agreements at all? of course it concedes, windows could spend another 10 years (until 2017?) milking windows on things like "mainframes", as gpl3 wins "by attrition". hopefully that will happen someday, but it rarely helps to think microsoft doesnt have more tricks up their sleeve. * 18 june: fucking linus http://techrights.org/2007/06/18/tivoization-torvalds/ "The GPLv3 Debate Returns: Torvalds Still Defends Tivoization, But Not Everyone Agrees" > One of the controversial parts of the license is a Tivoization clause that forbids it. In a very recent thread on the kernel mailing lists, Linus Torvalds explicitly says that he supports Tivoization. [...] This is not new, but the strong language shows how stubborn he is. This leads to a serious dilemma. There are other sides to this argument. Consider, for example, this rebuttal from Bruce Perens. He addresses misconceptions that are — among other things — associated with Tivoization. * 29 june: "GPLv3 Released Today, Early Support Already Gained" http://techrights.org/2007/06/29/gplv3-support-gained/ > As you probably know by now, today is an important day for the GNU General Public Licence. For many years, this extremely popular software licence has neither changed nor evolved. Amendments have since then been made to protect the software from new phenomena and new strategies that exploit loopholes. An upgrade is required, however, in order for these amendments to take effect. [...] Despite an awful lot of noise (Microsoft is behind a lot of it, albeit the company usually recruits proxies and invites its lobbying arms), support for the new licence is fairly strong, based on an independent poll. In addition, the licence has earned the blessing of and won approval that includes big names such as Google and Alan Cox. Eben Moglen confidently said that wide adoption of GPLv3 is expected. * 13 august: trying to make free software less free http://techrights.org/2007/08/13/linux-extended-family/ "GNU/Linux is Not Being Divided, But the ‘Extended Family’ Fractures to Alienate Its Foes" > Linux was never being divided into camps. Linux had freeloaders with a proprietary mindset enter its community. It is time for them to change their agenda or depart. [...] MySQL did not violate any of the rules, but its move symbolised a trend where Free software is made less convenient to access and/or use. OpenSUSE is still different from SLED, so there is a similar example at Novell. * 23 august: trying to make gnu/linux non-free http://techrights.org/2007/08/23/microsoft-killer-deal/ "Microsoft Deals That Kill" > The free software community has recently decided that Linspire was on their blacklist. Why? Most (if not all) of it is a backlash from the recent Linspire-Microsoft deal. Basically, Linspire agreed to help with Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org compatibility, Pidgin and Windows Live Messenger compatibility, and Windows Media and TrueType font support in Linspire. Microsoft also promised not to sue Linspire users. But what is given in exchange? Freespire isn’t covered, major upgrades are invalidated (so you have to buy again to maintain protection against patents), and if you use free software, business software, software running on servers, or “clone” software, you could still be sued. After three years, this protection runs out. Plus, Microsoft can stop offering protection whenever they want. And to keep it, you can’t share the software, resell it, modify it, or use it for an unauthorized use. * 1 september: "Eric Raymond Sees ISO Abuse and Tells Microsoft Where to Stick Its OSI Trojan Horse" http://techrights.org/2007/09/01/eric-raymond-esr-osi-iso/ > Mr. Raymond, who is the mastermind behind the OSI and one of those that are most intimately familiar with Microsoft’s shady past, has spoken out. Seeing the sorts of abuses which Microsoft has recently, tactlessly, and repeatedly demonstrated in its standards race and also bearing in mind what many of us already know, he does not have faith in Microsoft. They haven’t any good faith, either. quoting esr: > They haven’t stopped at pushing a “standard” that is divisive, technically bogus, and an obvious tool of monopoly lock-in; they have resorted to lying, ballot-stuffing, committee-packing, and outright bribery to ram it through the ISO standardization process in ways that violate ISO’s own guidelines wholesale. [...] This is not behavior that we, as a community, can live with. Despite my previous determination, I find I’m almost ready to recommend that OSI tell Microsoft to ram its licenses up one of its own orifices, even if they are technically OSD compliant. Because what good is it to conform to the letter of OSD if you’re raping its spirit? * 15 september: "Destruction Through Assimilation" http://techrights.org/2007/09/15/destruction-through-assimilation/ > Competition and collaboration coexisting in harmony is not a fantasy. However, close collaboration where one side has the upper hand can harm competition and therefore harm the consumer. * 6 october: the importance of indepedence and transparency http://techrights.org/2007/10/06/novell-site-purpose/ roy sez: > It is very important to have a central point that delivers uncensored information about Novell and its relationship with Microsoft. This information must not be tied to commercial interests, business relationships, and advertisers. There is more than enough of that obedient garbage in what we call the mainstream media. It just doesn’t get it and it doesn’t really want to get it. attacking microsoft more than novell: > With about 150,000 Web pages delivered to human readers per month, it definitely has impact and it probably hurts the pocket of those who plot to subvert Linux. If you look at BoycottNovell.com long enough, you’ll see that Microsoft is attacked far more often then Novell’s staff, to whom we even offer praises every Saturday. We try to isolate the poison in Novell from the talent. > a warning about linux: These issues with Novell are being discussed quite extensively in some recent E-mail exchanges that I’ve had. I would share them in the spirit of transparency, but this requires permission to be received from other parties. People would still love to believe that while the code out it there, Linux cannot be stolen. * 16 october: osi compromised http://techrights.org/2007/10/16/microsoft-osi-approval/ > After the previous rejection, Microsoft got its way and received what it once considered “unamerican”, “a cancer”, and something which is inherently insecure. Yes, the Open Source Initiative fell victim to another invasion tactic that would enable Microsoft to hurt GNU/Linux. It wasn’t long ago that Ballmer talked about his plot to hijack open source away from Linux. That was last week. OSI shoots itself in the foot again despite Eric Raymond’s observations of fraud in the fight for OOXML. [...] We covered this issue many times before. The “open source” terminology has just become less relevant than ever before. Sad day. * 17 october: iso compromised http://techrights.org/2007/10/17/iso-irrelevant/ "ISO No Longer Matters..." > ...because it has been corrupted by Microsoft [...] First we had Ecma in sight and we gave up all hope (see references at the bottom). But we expected ISO to do better in the face of relentless lobbying and manipulation. How wrong were we. Aside from the fact that support for a proposed standard was bought (in the form of money and ‘protection’) from various companies including Novell, the actual voting process was corrupted too. Yesterday we mentioned Andy’s latest writeup and we also tracked fraud and described the need for a reform that OpenISO strives to deliver. For the time being, there’s nothing but a complete mockery of system. * 23 october: boycott turbolinux http://techrights.org/2007/10/23/turbolinux-microsoft-deal/ "Turbolinux Sells Out" > By all means, boycott Turbolinux. It is another company that plays nice with the neighborhood bully and even liaises with him. Things were simpler when Turbolinux only helped the Office monopoly with the ridiculous (and impossible-to-implement) ‘translator’ project. * 27 october: a possibly unintended humblebrag http://techrights.org/2007/10/27/no-fsf-connection/ "We Are Not an FSF Campaign" > We are not an FSF campaign and presenting us in this way would lead to trouble not just for us, but also to others, such as the FSF. I am not even a member of the FSF, for what it’s worth. roy does enjoy saying that stallman suggested "free software sentry", but actual fsf campaigns do tend to state the association clearly. * 29 october: world ip organisation, or ip on the world organisation? http://techrights.org/2007/10/29/wipo-patent-threat/ a muckrights reader quotes (luis) villa: > From Louis Villa: ...if you want to see what the most advanced patent trolls are thinking, this paper (co-written by a brilliant stanford IP prof and Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures, formerly Microsoft) is a really interesting read. It deserves much broader coverage and interest than it has received. http://tieguy.org/blog/2007/10/10/on-joe-on-patents/ reader adds: > So, this is what they are thinking when it comes to “patent reform”; by no means do they want to abolish the patent regime over pure software and generic ideas, they just want the patent trolls out. On the other side, we, the Free Software Community should fight for a complete abolishment of software patents. luis villa would go on to be one of the original (top-of-the-page) signatories of the anti-stallman letter, and has co-founded tidelift, which muckrights attacks (probably with a variety of good reasons, not only because of its co-founder). villa also worked on both gnome and the gnome foundation board, and intellectual ventures would go on to sue gnome over a feature of shotwell (rather than mono) more than a decade later. and gnome would throw the fight, making concessions rather than invalidating the utterly bullshit patent. * 30 october: microsoft has hijacked "open source" http://techrights.org/2007/10/30/microsoft-hijacks-osi/ "Microsoft Has Already Hijacked (to Kill) Open Source" > In respond to this excellent new analysis it is worth pointing out that Microsoft already has hijacked “open source”. It’s just unfortunate that many developers and CIOs are unable to see this. * 1 november: muckrights talks about the halloween documents, and similar http://techrights.org/2007/11/01/halloween-documents-novell/ "What’s in Microsoft’s Halloween Documents on Novell, ISO, OSI, GNU GPLv3, EC, and OSS?" > It is clear that Microsoft has some new documents lying about in Redmond, but unlike the Halloween Documents, nobody out there has got open access to them. Microsoft has a plan for the destruction of Linux (as we know it). There are many roles and factors here, which include, as the title indicates: Novell, ISO, OSI, GNU GPLv3, the European Commission, and various other companies, including Linux companies. If we don’t not respond, then Microsoft’s cookbooks will have a nicely-basked turkey by Easter. Matt Asay, referring to the Halloween Documents, takes an overview on Microsoft’s bizarre and complex strategy. * 1 november: roy doesnt like waffling bullshit either http://techrights.org/2007/11/01/open-letter-eweek/ > I will admit that I’m slightly concerned that you guys have apparently played “good cop, bad cop” recently. We’ve rebutted the latest example here, but had your original article been published properly (i.e. not with a ‘correction’ coming a week later), then none of this would be necessary. Additionally, damage to Linux would not be done so unfairly. * 7 november: debating with future stallman canceller jeff waugh over whether mono is "really required" by gnome http://techrights.org/2007/11/07/gnome-corrections/ > I believe this has a little to do with semantics. When I refer to GNOME, perhaps I should clarify that it does not refer to standalone GNOME (to be compiled from source code, for example), but to GNOME when it’s packages in pretty much every major distro. In each such distro, it appears not to be trivial to remove Mono, and it’s becoming harder and harder all the time. my own position on this is that technically, these things are generally the responsibility of the package maintainer. however, i also think gnome has been slippery about this sort of thing before, and the end result is still "gnome" (what roy calls it) whether the fault is with the package maintainers or the developers. > I worry that businesses will become heavily dependent on Mono and then receive demands for money (patent ‘protection’). KDE does not have such problems yet. of course if i were gnome, with my own concerns, i would be complaining about the impression and dependencies the packagers are creating rather than the coverage muckrights was giving it. but gnome and i have very, very different priorities. jeff says: > You can take all the Mono packages out of your system without removing GNOME. Sure, you will lose access to Mono-based software such as Beagle, Tomboy, F-Spot and Banshee, but if that’s your goal, you *CAN 100% ACHIEVE IT*. GNOME is not bound to Mono, even in the distributions that ship it. theres always someone who is more full of shit, and roy could be the lesser of two evils here, as jeff has a technical answer that is at least correct within a certain scope and context, and yet jeff almost seems to contradict himself: > As I’ve said in previous mails, there are some ways in which GNOME and Mono are related (in the same sense that there are some ways in which GNOME and other FLOSS projects are related), so “by all means” is not correct. I’ll make it clear again: * Tomboy, a Mono-based application, is included in the GNOME Desktop suite * gtk-sharp is included in the GNOME Bindings suite, so that third-party developers can create GNOME applications using C# and/or the CLR * No other Mono applications have been proposed for or included in the official GNOME release suites * There is no clear agreement within the GNOME project to proactively adopt Mono or to avoid its use entirely * There is absolutely no requirement to have Mono in order to run GNOME its a long time ago, but if this were still an issue, maybe the most accurate summary would be "mono is required by default, but not in a way that it cant be removed". that seems to be the situation, and it may have refuted several of roys individial claims, perhaps while sidestepping a major part of his overall concern. there are enough things about gnome from its very beginning, to consider it a problem for free software, rather than a solution. of all the gnu projects (or perhaps, former gnu projects) gnome seems to have done the most damage to gnu, its creator, his organisation and the movement itself. why roy ever defends gnome is almost a mystery to me. almost, because its very clear that roy would rather needle and harangue narcissistic developers forever, rather than try to walk away from their bullshit. in fairness though, im not at all sure he uses gnomes "desktop suite" today. i have some reasons to think he might use xfce now. he still defends gnome as if it isnt practically the same as gnome foundation in every horrible way (splitting hairs when there is very little actually separating them on the issues we protest the most). * 8 november: shades of 2014 http://techrights.org/2007/11/08/mono-alert/ > I think the “Mono by the back door” quote sums up the truth of what is really going on, WRT these Mono binding dependencies. thats quoting [h]omer of slated. also homer: > That’s how I see it anyway – Gnome and Novell are basically trying to “sneak” Mono in the back door, and hope that nobody notices, until it’s too late. The harsh reality; it probably already is. and unlike roy, he doesnt try to "distinguish" (or use special pleading) with regards to gnome vs. the gnome foundation. however low the gnome foundation tends to stoop, gnome tends to follow: => https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org/who-hates-our-freedom-the-most.html > When I think of Gnome now, I think of Novell, and when I think of Novell, I think of Microsoft. Anyone who has taken a stand against Novell, because of their uncomfortably close relationship with Microsoft, must surely think of Gnome in the same light, since they are driven by the same destructive forces, of which (of course) de Icaza is a central part.” less than a decade into to the future, gnome is notorious for the sort of thing roy mentions here: > The key issue here is the (virtually so) forcing of people to use Mono, which sounds benign. and (in the future) gnome skirts the idea that theyre "forcing" people to use something unwanted, by pointing to the people (gentoo, bsd) going out of their way to work around what fuckery gnome has done. debian may have adopted systemd due to wanting gnome. in fact, the version of debian that would adopt systemd (version 8, jessie) switched to xfce temporarily as the default desktop, on the way to adopting systemd and gnome. gnome has always maintained their innocence here. thats despite the famous mailing list item from poettering about suggesting they rely on systemd. and despite the likelihood that gnome compatibility was a factor in debians decision. whether or not gnome requires systemd, it seems very plausible that they wanted people to think it did-- long enough for everybody using gnome to believe a move to systemd was necessary. * 16 november: "approaching a digital dark age" with ooxml http://techrights.org/2007/11/16/ooxml-hooked-addication/ "Quick Mention: The OOXML Scam Begins to Bear Fruit" > We are approaching a digital dark age. Bob Sutor posted a pointer to a Q & A regarding OOXML. If OOXML isn’t stopped, then this lower entry barrier, as illustrated by the report above, will have people’s information imprisoned. If only more people realised the severity of this... * 19 november: a justified obsession http://techrights.org/2007/11/19/obsession-linux/ > In reality, not analysing the issues at hands, including the patent strategy, is the path to the destruction of Linux as we know it. Money can change laws, make bigots, and change perceptions. With the recent patent deals, for example, that money is already doing a lot of legwork, so to speak. [...] As far as mobile devices go (Linux has excellent presence and growth in that area), Microsoft hopes to 'tax' embedded Linux, probably per device unit sold. If Linux will ultimately reign this area, which it will, Microsoft can grab a share of revenue it is not entitled to receive. that of course has now happened, with android. > Microsoft has become morbidly obsessed with Linux. If this relationship is reciprocal, then it is probably justified. * 21 november: no ad hom in comments http://techrights.org/2007/11/21/new-moderation-policy/ "The Moderation Policy We Never Had" > Due to a recent wave of personal attacks, mud slinging, and invocations of Godwin’s Law, comments matching particular patterns will enter the moderation queue and will be approved only if they contain no ad hominem attacks. The recent ad hominem attacks were not only directed at editors, but also at readers, which makes them unacceptable. [...] Never before have we deleted any comments and we don’t intend to delete past comments, either. However, recent misuse brought need for change. Criticisms are acceptable and very welcome. When they become personal, offensive, and totally off topic, they will not be made publicly visible. * 24 november: reframing criticism of gnome http://techrights.org/2007/11/24/love-gnome-beware-mono/ "Love GNOME, Beware of Mono" > Jeff waugh, who is interviewed in the video below (from 2006), is unhappy with the output we produce in this Web site. He must understand, however, that we are seeing Novell’s increased level of intervention in the GNOME project. With Ximian on board and with SuSE’s focus gradually shifted away from KDE, Novell must be responsible enough to keep Mono conveniently separable from GNOME. As mentioned hours ago, Mono is close to intruding Evolution. Please, Jeff, assist the prevention of Mono-isation of GNOME. It’s an excellent desktop enviroyment and we believe we know what Microsoft is up to with Mono. * 9 december: promoting agpl3 http://techrights.org/2007/12/09/softare-patents-us-agplv3/ > Brett Smith has released some explanatory notes about the GNU Affero GPLv3. He released a similar quick guide about a month ago — one that addresses the GNU GPLv3, which is probably bound to become the most widely used software licence (inheriting GPLv2′s place). quoting smith: > Third, AGPLv3′s new requirement degrades gracefully. If you use AGPLv3-covered code in a program that doesn’t interact with users over a network, there are no additional obligations for you to meet. You can share and modify the program under the same conditions that apply to GPLv3-covered software. ### 2008 * 5 january: "Fighting Inconveinient Truths Using Labels and Stereotypes" http://techrights.org/2008/01/05/shooting-the-messenger/ quoting hans bezemer: > If we choose to research our blogs, you do not have the right to call us “obsessive”. If we are concerned about the FUD that destroys our work, you do not have the right to accuse us of “extreme paranoia”. If we are attacked and we react, we do not suffer from a “lack of civility and a quickness to give and take offense”. If we feel that “there can be no truce with [insert object of obsession here]” we have every right to vent that opinion. roy sez: > The same type of tactics are used extensively in politics. When you do not like someone who tells too much or if you fear a foreign leader, then start a smear campaign. [...] This is actually similar to what Microsoft has been caught doing a quite lot last year (astroturfing). * 7 january: even this stallman canceller is more likely to issue a correction than roy http://techrights.org/2008/01/07/mistake-bruce-byfield/ "Bruce Byfield Misattributes Quotes (Updatedx4)" > I never wrote this thing and following the link even proves this. Bruce, you must correct this. You’re putting fake words right in my mouth. I have always loved your articles, cited them and respected them a lot. How can you get something like this wrong? I am sure it’s not a deliberate mistake. [...] This is almost as bad as people who forged identities to publicly post ‘on my behalf’ that I am a transsexual, that I castrate parts of my body, and all sort of other hateful messages which they used my name to add credibility to. [...] I suggest that you post an apology and clarify this. bilefield would go on to post untrue things about stallman as an article in 2019, but at least he didnt sign the 2021 anti-rms letter-- unlike his fossfarce associate. > Update #3: Bruce has corrected the page. He truly deserves some apologies because he trusted the comment’s validity. It’s easy to fall for such scams. roy would eventually protest bilefield joining fossfarce post-stallman-ousting in 2019, and about one year after that would go on to tell people (as bilefield did about stallman) similarly dishonest bullshit about me in 2020. * 10 january: dismiss windows (in 2007), beware ooxml (in 2008) http://techrights.org/2008/01/10/microsoft-ooxml-bribes/ > As we emphasised quite recently, Microsoft's dirty tricks for OOXML are far from over. The tricks, including the briberies — however subtle they may be (c/f Novell) — will never end because it’s innate. All we can do is find them, document them and present them. As long as Microsoft is above the law, nobody can actually punish them, except for the collective power of the consumer. the year before, roy had said ooxml (if left unchecked) would usher in a "digital dark age" but posted about the end of windows (due to gpl3). whats amusing is the level of optimism about one in contrast the level of foreboding about the other. neither windows nor ooxml are good news. * 30 january: "Lying by Proxy: Another Powerful Microsoft Strategy" http://techrights.org/2008/01/30/lies-by-analyst-proxy/ > A leaked set of Microsoft memos, sometimes referred to as “evangelism is war“, reveals Microsoft’s intent to use analysts, consultants and grassroots support to serve as mouthpieces. The habit carries on to this date [1, 2, 3, 4]. as muckrights cited in a previous article, the memo also stated a "mission" to "establish microsoft platforms as de facto standards". it certainly wouldnt be the last time they tried to pull that off. * 31 january: "Money and greed the weak spot of FOSS" http://techrights.org/2008/01/31/quick-mention-microsoft-tries-to-hijack-yet-another-linux-event/ Quick Mention: Microsoft Tries to Hijack Yet Another Linux Event > Microsoft wants you to think that it loves GNU/Linux, so it tosses money at Linux events and then gives its own talks with its own philosophy at the events. This is far from new and we showed another example just weeks ago. [...] The same goes for open source programming conferences, including Python, Ruby (IIRC), LinuxChix and so. This “keep your enemies closer” strategy has gone on for years. It does more harm than good because it capitalises on greed and naivety. Just watch Novell taking Microsoft money to work around the GPL and betray so many. * 4 february: a dance around bsd http://techrights.org/2008/02/04/civitl-wars-in-free-software/ "BSD vs. GPL: But Why Are PEOPLE Fighting???" > The BSD and the GPL ‘camps’ can happily live in harmony and they often do indeed. There is a certain hostility, however, between the OpenBSD folks and the FSF/GNU in particular. in this article roy refers to allegations that openbsd "stole" gpl code and relicensed it. it also links to a response to an incident (quite possibly a different one) from eben moglen of sflc, where moglen states: => http://web.archive.org/web/20120116152447/http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/SFLC_on_Atheros_Driver_Issue > It might be useful to recall the first stage of this process, when OpenBSD developers were accused of misappropriating Atheros code, and SFLC investigated and proved that no such misappropriation had occurred? so if there were two separate incidents, this one was investigated and disproven. it was later in the month that someone addressed the bcm driver issue alluded to by this muckrights article: => https://luckybsd.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/update-bwi-miscellaneous-thoughts/ > The reason I side with OpenBSD over the bcm43xx developers is because the way it was handled: there was no attempt to see if the inclusion of their code in a CVS submission was accidental, as it was. Instead, the accusations were made that it was a deliberate violation and attempt to relicense their code — which it wasn’t. Anyone who’s looked at OpenBSD can sense that they pride themselves on their code. Including OpenSSH, which the Linux distros have been using, often without contributions of code or resources to assist development. the problem with this (very) old piece (13 years and counting) is that roy still likes to stir the pot and insinuate against openbsd by linking to his uncorrected article. this year alone (and its not quite even july yet) hes pointed to it in the main irc channel twice in march and once in may, and on "social control" media (which roy proudly claims muckrights doesnt use, because he uses it on their behalf) in march and may also. until further information is available i think its reasonable to presume two things: 1. roy never found anything significant about openbsd-- on the contrary, freebsd is the least free-- in terms of their pitiful standards for non-free software in the base installation and selling out / outsourcing to microsoft, and netbsd is at least better in that regard. 2. despite not finding anything, it still suits his petty, selfish anti-openbsd narrative to link to more-than-decade-old innuendo because its all hes got, and it LOOKS like it COULD be something. note that i wouldnt have called this "innuendo" in 2008, before hes had so many years to check for updates and additional context on this. maybe its still accurate (i bet its not, roy is already telling only part of the story) but i think "innuendo" is all roy is using it for now. roy sez: > Much of this recent tension began with this incident from last year. the incident hes referring to is the bsd placing gpl-licensed code in a non-gpl-licensed cvs. if you read far enough, he does state: > As far as drivers are concerned, reconciliation appears to have already been reached. my favourite part though, is here: > So, we have begun studying to see if the BSDs are somehow being used to combat GNU and RMS. The mailing lists may contain evidence, based on something we were told. i think the fact that he still links to this 2008 article strongly suggests he never found much. roy has a bias against openbsd, which is evident in the extremely low standards (and suggestive tone, followed by cover-your-arse backpedalling) of what he posts against the operating system, and he seldom (if ever) notes the reasons that many people who care about freedom (up to and including producers of fsf-approved fully-free distributions) choose openbsd as a starting point for their future development goals. hes one-sided, biased, unfair, and inaccurate. while muckrights claims to be about freedom, it goes unreasonably soft on debian (roy has repeatedly left out their heavy involvement out of his rants about the anti-stallman coup) and he goes after openbsd like a judge that wants to kill a defendant out of a personal grudge. he claims, but demonstrates no integrity regarding his coverage openbsd, when there are enough fair criticisms to make without such a bias. roy shows no interested in fairness in this regard, he is working entirely from double standards on this matter. i routinely welcome (and challenge) him to find and report anything of substance regarding openbsd, but he wont. * 7 february: "Nokia and Microsoft Seem to Be Getting Even Closer" http://techrights.org/2008/02/07/nokia-and-microsoft-relationship/ > People still hope that Nokia will learn to love Linux because of Trolltech, but a source told us that Trolltech is indifferent and Microsoft’s relationship with Nokia is nothing new. Both companies are considered monopolies in their area, so an outside observer might even add that they should be expected to think alike. [...] Being unaware of this issue is the worst that can happen. We must understand the situation in order to respond logically. * 13 feburary: "muckrights will always be independent" http://techrights.org/2008/02/13/fsf-and-trend-micro-boyoctt/ > As we stated before, we have no affiliations with anybody, not even the FSF. The site is independent and will always stay that way. * 15 february: "How GNU/Linux Gets Contaminated with Software Patents from the Back Door" http://techrights.org/2008/02/15/mono-contamination-in-ubuntu/ > As history has taught us, Microsoft finds it too risky to attack GNU/Linux directly. It would be too transparent and probably result in backlash from Microsoft’s own customers, many of whom also use and/or stock Free software. Microsoft prefers to use proxies and insiders to do their seemingly-independent jobs that accomplish long-term objectives. [...] Microsoft is in serious trouble, but it is fighting. whats notable about this post is that it explores alternatives-- so if youre tired of projects that foist mono on people, you can support one that cares more about the user. * 19 feburary: muckrights publishes "full text" of microsofts "evangelism is war" document http://techrights.org/2008/02/19/evangelism-ooxml-microsoft/ * 20 february: thirteen years ago, roy may have actually cared what crap went into debian http://techrights.org/2008/02/20/debian-mono-analysis/ > A few hours ago, the following analysis of Debian GNU/Linux “Lenny” came up. Let this quote do its thing: ``` Simple mental exercise: Identify the OS! [...] mono\gac\System.ServiceProcess\2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\System.ServiceProcess.dll mono\gac\System.Transactions\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\System.Transactions.dll mono\gac\System.Web.Services\2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\System.Web.Services.dll mono\gac\System.Web\2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\System.Web.dll mono\gac\System.Xml\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\System.Xml.dll mono\gac\System\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\System.dll Hint: Replace the backslashes with slashes, then prefix each path with /usr/lib/. ``` > The correct answer is: no, it’s not Microsoft Windows, it’s Debian GNU/Linux “Lenny” (testing), with the minimum dependencies needed to run F-Spot! (Actually, I guess that all not the files are needed, but this is how they package them, and how the dependencies are set.) roy sez: > Is this the future of GNU/Linux and the Free Desktop? Need something be done to address this? yes, roy-- that is the future of gnu/linux; a future where gnu/linux is NOT gnu/linux, and both gnu and linux are ibm and microsoft. and you will sit on this issue, for literally years. * 23 february: "after 32 years" stallman turns over control of emacs * 3 march: "A lot of GNU/Linux-users don’t care about freedom" http://techrights.org/2008/03/03/mandriva-2008-spring-rc-sidux/ from a link: > I’m sad to say: A lot of GNU/Linux-users don’t care about freedom * 3 march: the cult of microsoft http://techrights.org/2008/03/03/summary-microsoft-financial-situation/ > Over the many years, Microsoft has successfully created and secured a self-glorifying image [1, 2] which is hard to break. It is a PR exercise. Those who dare to try and break it will be maliciously abused, have their name smeared (cue Bill Parish), pressured to change their minds, or pressured out of their job. * 4 march: awareness of subverting free software is key http://techrights.org/2008/03/04/latest-strategy-against-gnulinux/ > The company must still keep the World Wide Web at least partly closed, never a commodity. Microsoft, by its own admission, thrives in extending (read: breaking) standards and ensuring only its own products work properly. [...] The main barrier for Linux to break at the moment seems to be numerous attempts to subvert it from the inside. Software patents aside, Microsoft continues to use its money to 'steal' software from Linux. Zend , for example, continues its loveaffair with Microsoft. [...] Microsoft has some recovery plans which need to be fought against. Awareness is the key here. * 6 march: "Off-topic: The Personal Assault Continues..." http://techrights.org/2008/03/06/ad-hominem/ > The pseudonymous/anonymous Munchkins (or whatever they are), posting from proxies as usual, are now spreading libelous material about my Web host/sites launching DDOS attacks. They are trying to get those sites of mine blacklisted. The vulgar language is just normal and it’s intended to repel and drive away readers of the forum. [...] The corporate bullying must end, or at least be brought to people’s attention. * 7 march: "Is Mono Now Officially a Software Patent Trap?" http://techrights.org/2008/03/07/mono-oftware-patent-trap/ > "I saw that internally inside Microsoft many times when I was told to stay away from supporting Mono in public. They reserve the right to sue"-- Robert Scoble, former Microsoft evangelist * 7 march: "Microsoft Now Tries to Invade Eclipse, Apache (Updated)" http://techrights.org/2008/03/07/ms-invading-eclipse-apache/ > It has only been one week since we mentioned Microsoft’s embrace of (to extend and extinguish) Java and also a short while since we last mentioned Apache in a similar context. It is not worth repeating the same arguments which were made at the time, but the gist of it is that Microsoft wants to envelope Free software projects, making them more reliant on Microsoft and dependent on Windows. [...] Microsoft also plans to work with the Apache Software Foundation. [...] As you’ve already noticed, Microsoft marketeers have started a heavy, new offensive revisionist history is a big part of this round: "Microsoft’s business was built out of open APIs," Ramji said.. [...] Ha. How does infoworld find the gall to publish that? * 8 march: > This Web site continues to grow in terms of its readership with an average of 12,000 pageviews per day (search engines excluded). * 14 march: "Quick Mention: Microsoft’s FOSS Invasion Continues. Next Target: Python" http://techrights.org/2008/03/14/microsoft-invades-pycon/ > Might organisers ever learn to decline sponsorships and reject attendance? Given Microsoft's plan to subvert Free software, they should. But on the face of it, based on the following press release, Microsoft is also intruding Pycon 2008. * 29 march: some statistics http://techrights.org/2008/03/29/bn-novell-reader-os/ this covers most of it-- slightly more complete version at above url. stats from awstats. ``` Versions Hits Percent Windows 593749 49.7 % Windows XP 452012 37.8 % Windows Vista 96080 8.0 % BSD 2267 0.1 % OpenBSD 312 0 % NetBSD 146 0 % FreeBSD 1809 0.1 % Linux 427822 35.8 % Ubuntu 169142 14.1 % Suse 38320 3.2 % Red Hat 2096 0.1 % Mandriva (or Mandrake) 6576 0.5 % Fedora 28780 2.4 % Debian 33768 2.8 % GNU Linux (Unknown or unspecified distribution) 148061 12.4 % Macintosh 64972 5.4 % Mac OS X 64857 5.4 % Mac OS 115 0% ``` * 3 april: "When You Know That Microsoft Has Formally Hijacked Open Source" http://techrights.org/2008/04/03/times-of-india-mistake/ > At first, when viewed in the feeds reader, the following article seemed like humour, but it's not (it's from April 3rd, not April 1st). The Times of India, a respectable publication, has just published an article with the headline: "MS says it won open source war." This refers only to the OOXML fiasco. So, what on earth is "open source" here (mind another hijack of this term) and what makes this a win, let alone a "war"? It's only an isolated step, which was taken using sheer corruption that remains under investigation with an appeal. OOXML won't ever be implemented and whatever strives to implement something close to it is not open source, it's proprietary. OOXML itself is proprietary. [...] Can you see how Microsoft hijacks the team "open source" and puts it up for display in mainstream papers, claiming that it "won the open source war"? As in defeated others at an open source game, using proprietary formats? [...] The term "open source" is being artificially diluted here and this dilution serves no-one but Microsoft. * 7 april: abstract idea patents violate first amendment http://techrights.org/2008/04/07/thought-patents-marriage-patents/ > WASHINGTON – Introducing a rare argument applying the First Amendment to patent law, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a friend of the court brief today urging a federal court to uphold the denial of a patent that would, if awarded, violate freedom of speech. In the brief, the ACLU argues that Bernard L. Bilski is seeking a patent for an abstract idea, and that abstract ideas are not patentable under the First Amendment. * 8 april: "Dilution, Not Commercialisation, is the Problem of Open Source" http://techrights.org/2008/04/08/open-source-diluted-osi/ > There is a certain misconception which suggests that open source becomes the hostage of companies. It is, to a large degree, a self-serving hypothesis whose purpose is perhaps to demoralise volunteer contributors. later on, muckrights would go on to use the word "bribes" to describe contributions from large corporations. both muckrights and esr would use the word bribery to describe what happened to ooxml with the iso standardisation process, the only dispute here is whether it happens to open source as well. but maybe we are getting ahead of the story. then again, esr published documents years prior which said microsoft intended to poach developers. how did he suppose they intended to do that, by luring them with candy? referring to an interview in computerworld: > In this new interview with Eric Raymond he too denies this, ascribing it to the "trade press" (possible incentives here). funnily enough, the "possible incentives here" also talks of bribery and corruption, but of the press. so its not "open source" which is being corrupted, perhaps its just everything BUT open source. but anything is possible, i guess. > Dilution, not commercialisation, is the problem, as we last stressed a few days ago. There are also many open source fakers and the following new article seems like a good example. (See corrections in the comments below) ordinarily i wouldnt bother with the exchanges in the comments, but this time it has too much good stuff to pass up. roy sez to a commenter: > Considering the pace of this site, "investigative journalism" as you call it would be too time-consuming to be doable. Luckily, as it's all in digital form, we can interact and make corrections as we go along, which we do. someone replies: > Na, 'jouranlism' it is not. [...] 'Bad-mouthing' is the right word. roy would go to refer to valid critiques of muckrights as "badmouthing", and replies: > "Journalism" is not any better and is sometimes less accurate. Moreover, journalists fear criticism, but that's just a totally separate story. its criticism when roy does it, badmouthing when people do it to roy. he would also go on to call some of what he does "scientific journalism" in january and may of 2021, as well as a 2011 muktware interview where it means something different than what it would come to describe ten years later: http://web.archive.org/web/20111108213709/http://www.muktware.com/news/02/2011/1636?page=0,1 http://techrights.org/2021/01/26/leak-and-whistleblowing-sites/ http://techrights.org/2021/05/22/say-no-to-paid-for-spam/ roy ascribes the term to wikileaks, and originally (in 2011) describes it as providing raw (unedited) materials so the public can verify things for themselves. in 2021 he says: > the job of journalism isn't just to give a voice to two sides but to speak to both and then assess who is right and who is wrong (or less right), then report the conclusions. stallman was never against commercialisation of free software, and perhaps the most charitable assessement of the situation in 2021 is "its not commercialisation that is the problem, its the side-effects of commercialisation", or maybe its just too much of a good thing? the minefield isnt the problem, only the mines. 11 years later: http://techrights.org/2019/09/23/the-dying-open-source-brand/ > Does OSI speak for Open Source? Or does the money speak? * 10 april: "Linux Foundation, Please Stop Feeding the Shills" http://techrights.org/2008/04/10/foundation-buys-idc-bs/ > It looks rather grim for the industry as a whole if all information and studies are manufactured rather than conducted. With universities being privatized and sponsored by companies, it becomes incredibly hard to trust anything you come by, even if a professor signs it. [...] In our more critical writings about the Linux Foundation we note that it's behaving less like a programming warehouse/coordinator and more as like marketing/corporate arm that sometimes bends to the will of Novell (and Microsoft, by association). * 23 april: "SpeC#ulation: Tipping Point for GNOME?" http://techrights.org/2008/04/23/speculation-gnome-mono/ > Regarding Debian GNU/Linux, which this reader uses, he adds: "it is important to find out [if more evidence exist]. I hope it does not mean that Debian is breaking its famous Debian Social Contract to allow mono and mono-carrying developers to infect Debian projects. The social contract is one of Debian's great strengths. [...] Microsoft reps are working as fast as they can to contaminate as many projects as they can with Microsoft technologies. On the technical side, it will make the distros more bloated, inefficient and cumbersome. On the legal side, it will make easy pickings for Microsoft lawyers in the trade zones where software patents apply." [...] Java is, as you point out, listed in last week's Google cache, but not on the start page. Instead Microsoft C# is being promoted." [...] Can anybody shed light on this? Will GNOME promote Microsoft technologies at the expense of open source Java and C++? * 23 april: dirty business as usual http://techrights.org/2008/04/23/the-truth-about-olpc/ "Nicholas Negroponte Should Join Hands with Larry Lessig, Not with Bill Gates" > As you are possibly aware by now, Larry Lessig separated from his copyrights reform ambition (some would say "crusade") after many years of never-ending realisation that corruption, not adverse rationale, was the barrier preventing change. [...] Nicholas Negroponte wanted to help children and bridge the digital divide using education, using free (libre) tools. He faced aggressive behind-the-scenes opposition from two companies that saw this as a threat to their quarterly revenue and shareholders. Negroponte was rocking very large boats that would lose a lot had his mission been allowed to survive. [...] After an outburst that led to a vicious smear campaign against him (c/f more examples of recent smear campaigns), Nicholas Negroponte was more careful when it comes to telling the true story about OLPC. [...] It is highly iroyic that Nicholas Negroponte was pulled into deals with the same people who systematically sabotaged his project in a "Slog"-like fashion (Microsoft's in-house terminology). * 30 april: "Interoperability Means 'First Benefit Microsoft'" http://techrights.org/2008/04/30/interop-benefits-microsoft/ quoting joe wilcox: > The way I see it, interoperability is for Microsoft a means to an end, the end being competitive gains more than customer benefits. Microsoft is the first beneficiary of its interoperability efforts. The new management tools clearly show what interoperability really means to Microsoft: increasing its footprint in heterogenous platform enviroyments. ### 2012 * 23 september: mark shuttleworth deftly sidesteps the question of whether ubuntu deserves trust after 12.10 shares local search data with amazon, by mentioning that it was already trusted up until that point https://markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182 ### 2013 * the year muckrights peaked ### 2014 * the year muckrights sold out the entire world ### 2015 * 14 february: jaromil makes pre-alpha valentines day release of devuan available for download https://git.devuan.org/devuan/devuan-project/milestones/1 ### 2018 * the year roy lied to me about his position, so that the years i spent helping him were free labour under false pretenses * 1 july: i start an organisation to lobby the fsf on issues it was neglecting * 14 december: libreplanet petition conflates a couple of minor interruptions made by the organisations own president with safety issues https://wwahammy.com/on-safety-at-libreplanet/ ### 2019 * 18 - 22 august: "guarding and rescuing the fsf titanic" series published on techrights http://techrights.org/2019/08/22/library-federation * september: richard stallman attacked by salesforce, mit, gnome, sfc and fsfe for defending late mit professor/ai research colleague marvin minsky on an mit ai-related mailing list * 16 september: software freedom conservancy publishes letter calling for richard stallman to "step down from positions of leadership" https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us/ * 16 september: richard stallman resigns as president and from board of free software foundation https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns * september: richard stallmans personal website tampered with to make it appear as though he resigned as leader of the gnu project * october: gnu guix petition calls for stallman to resign as head of the gnu project. * for an unknown duration, fsf is preventing/censoring pro-stallman emails from their mailing lists ### 2020 * february: alexandre oliva censored by libreplanet organisers http://techrights.org/2020/02/23/being-cancelled/ * february: fsf vice president refers to what is going on at fsf as a coup / "not a coup!" http://techrights.org/2020/02/24/oliva-on-coup/ * 29 february: i disband my fsf lobbying organisation and (probably at most 24 to 48 hours later) create one designed to promote a network of miniature free software research/promotion organisations instead (based on one idea the first organisation promoted). * 5 august: fsf treasurer geoffrey knauth becomes the second-ever fsf president https://www.fsf.org/news/geoffrey-knauth-elected-free-software-foundation-president-odile-benassy-joins-the-board ### 2021 * gnew development begins * january: 11 months after being censored by libreplanet organisers, alexandre oliva resigns from fsf * march: richard stallman officially rejoins fsf board * may: systemd bullshit timeline... ... 11th: fabricating (outright lying to mincer about) stallmans position on systemd (same as jan 08) ... 12th: callout article posted (here) to msm => https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org/the-second-biggest-lie-at-muckrights.html ... 15th: muckrights article insinuates that: http://techrights.org/2021/05/15/richard-stallman-2019-talk/ ... 1. stallman recognises modern threats to free software ... 2. people who criticise stallmans failure to do so ultimately do it for the same reason as those who criticise him for basically the opposite ... 3. (by logical extension, but certainly not said explicity) those who criticise muckrights for lying about this are really just attacking stallman (as argued the next day by the following msm article) ... 16th: msm article discusses the above points => https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org/wrong-about-detractors-and-wrong-about-vegans.html ... 16th (possibly after above article written) this post http://techrights.org/2021/05/16/system-lock-in/ makes roys PRESENT (personal) position on systemd very clear-- it may retractively take credit for things that make no sense (or they could be true) but either way, they dont admit that he fabricates an imaginary position from stallman on the matter. ^ oh-- he didnt write it, so he can pretend to endorse it now and throw it away at his convenience. ... 16th (after above articles written) muckrights publishes a meme that implies ibm actually, not muckrights is insinuating things about systemd critics: http://techrights.org/2021/05/16/untouchable-ibm/ > Systemd is becoming untouchable and its critics are framed as “toxic” or “trolls”, no matter the facts and irrespective of the technical substance of their complaints this really needs to be said though-- regardless of whether muckrights is actually making these posts as responses to actual accusations at ewwfs or msm, or whether hes making them as responses to HYPOTHETICAL accusations, what implied by these muckrights posts collectively is: ... 1. stallman understands the problem with systemd (no, stallman denies this on his own website) ... 2. people criticising his stance on this are really criticising stallman (spin from muckrights) ... 3. people criticising muckrights for lying are really criticising stallman (spin from muckrights) ... 4. no, muckrights didnt just imply that people who catch their lie are trolls (because) ... 5. actually it was ibm who said that, NOT muckrights just yesterday! (probably not-- probably not exactly, probably not actually, probably not recently) how many of these insinuations will muckrights put together to try to make this bullshit work? who knows? ... maybe you interpret these differently. ... maybe roy is completely alright with people criticising stallmans position on systemd. ... maybe roy is not doing damage control for the fact that he invented a position stallman doesnt actually have, months ago if not earlier, which he reiterated less than a week ago. ... and thats alright. each insinuation detected and refuted is an insinuation its more difficult for him to reuse. its not AS MUCH about proving hes saying these things-- as it is about refuting them anyway and making them more worthless to him. ... 16th (still going) no, really! this is about ibm! http://techrights.org/2021/05/16/ibm-strategy/ * 1 july: "Taking the GNU Project to the Next Level" http://techrights.org/2021/07/01/savegnu-coming-soon/ > Unlike the GNU coup (trying to hijack the brand “GNU”), this one is very supportive of the FSF, which is 36 years told. Rowe seems eager to talk about her vision. Please be kind and do understand that Rowe’s intentions are good. She has been very supportive of Richard Stallman and of this Web site. ive already written about leahs ambitions as she has explained them so far, but i dont know why its necessary for roy to refer to a years-old incident regarding leah and stallman. i dont know anybody important who thinks thats still relevant. its not impossible, but im unlikely to find anybody important who thinks thats still relevant. (IMPORTANT NOTE-- the article where this was done was actually a few days later, in the july 5th "liberation sentry" piece). i dont know (its actually difficult to tell) if roys intention is to damn leah with faint praise, but if thats not the goal then his article is foolishly written. i know leah will say she doesnt care about that. good for her, publicity from muckrights always comes at a cost. roy didnt write this for savegnu, he wrote it for himself. i didnt write my assessment of savegnu for savegnu either-- i wrote it as a critical piece examining the pros and cons. i have my own misgivings (mostly i dont want the fsf to become more corporate, not that i think leah really wants it to either) though theyre unrelated to things that have been done to death. the only people who need to worry about leahs past are the fsf, and they seem willing to work with her. thats it-- thats as far as the relevance goes. id be more than willing to try to hold that chapter over her if i thought it mattered. why did roy even bother with it? it reminds me of when he said i was "a bit sad" that roy wasnt checking his email regularly when i used to contribute on a routine basis. i never said i was sad, it was simply roys way of painting the fact that he would change his schedule on a whim and i would suggest that the idea had drawbacks. better to project an emotional state onto someone than consider their rationale, of course. i make no effort to deny my emotions, i only dispute the premise that you can avoid the real gist of an argument by imagining that someone is just "sad" or just pissed off, etc. its not a trick that people use to get at the truth, its a trick people use to avoid it and move the argument elsewhere. even so, i dont know why roy chose to do that in his article-- its the sort of thing that jewish mothers are known for, grabbing the announcement about something important to you and running with it, then saying "i know this will be better than that disaster with your high school science project", or whatever other embarassing thing you can think of. really? at any rate, my very best guess is that it was simply a compulsion. roy doesnt wake up and say "im going to tell a dozen or more lies today". it just happens that way, mostly. compulsive bingers dont wake up and say "im going to eat 5 times what i ought to today". when bob merrill wrote the words to "dont rain on my parade", he was probably thinking of someone just like roy in his life. worth noting is that after roy puts something down, he often takes it for himself (and never puts the credit back to the person he dismissed before the idea was "his"). ive seen him do this to at least two or three other people besides myself. this is the essence of double standards of course: "its wrong when you say/do it, but when i do it its grand!" whats the difference? "its me!" roy doesnt do "tantrums" of course-- he just whinges for weeks about a fucking keyboard, then gets a new one, then whinges on and on about that too. which i would sympathise with, if he didnt condescend to everybody else about stupid little things that arent important. the point is the double standard. i would (i did, recently) whinge about a keyboard problem too. you could even say i was "a bit sad" about it-- the difference is that it would be true, if you said it about the keyboard. it wouldnt be a silly assumption intended to diminish someone you pretend to give a shit about. if roy gives a shit about you or your work, hes pretending. he isnt actually capable of giving a shit about someone else, and he thinks (and routinely tells people) that their efforts are actually his own. theres a name for that sort of thinking, particularly when it is so involved in everything you say and do. and the odds that roy actually learned it from his own parents? straight through the roof. all these tendencies would be mitigated if roy were honest, though first he would have to become self-aware. its not impossible, its merely very unlikely. thats the truth, and theres no way to say it (that i know of) that wouldnt sound pithy, but its true. * 1 july: http://techrights.org/2021/07/01/gemini-telescope/ > Amfora would likely be its main ‘competition’, but Amfora is Microsoft-controlled (GitHub) and it uses Rust (also Microsoft-controlled). It’s also heavier in the RAM sense. My system allocates 12 MB of RAM to Amfora and that climbs up to 40 MB when I start browsing. How odd; I remember running Firefox 1.0-2.0 on a PC with just 32 MB of RAM (total). while i dont doubt that this is true anyway, its worth mentioning that the effect is likely made worse still by the fact that when he ran firefox 1.0 it was probably 32-bit, and the software hes running now is probably 64-bit. so his conclusion that its wasteful is reasonable, but the comparison to such ancient versions of firefox is probably not entirely fair. > Isn’t it odd that Amfora, which does not use a GUI, takes up a lot more RAM than the GTK-based Moonlander? its certainly notable. a probably reasonable conclusion to draw is that rust is bloated even when you create textmode applications, but the comparisons are shallow even if they stumble onto a truth. im in no mood for roys bullshit today and i could probably go a bit easier on this particular article, im simply not doing so. at any rate i more or less agree with the direction his argument is headed in. im not likely to use amfora if its written in rust, rust is an npi-- its a bloated, unstable webapi in the guise of a programming language, designed to keep the maintainers in control of your software. * 2 july: HP Products Are Faulty and They Try to Censor Evidence of the Defects http://techrights.org/2021/07/02/hp-censorship/ > HP seems to be operating a censorship army in social control media, working to hide evidence of HP products hp certainly is trying to manage the image of their shitty products, i can agree with that. the "censorship army" is a marketing rep who suggests that roy delete his post and deal with them in pm. will they stoop to what roy claims here? hp has a history of products that are fantastically shoddy enough to lead to class-action lawsuits, so its best not to underestimate them regarding the future. though roy is still exaggerating. > Over the past hour I’ve not managed to get anything done as my laptop is failing. It’s not an old laptop, either. But this is typical HP! i also have one shitty, useless keyboard-- from hp. its actually less like the one roy is complaining about, and more like the shitty new one he replaced it with. within literally minutes of using it i can feel physical stress. thats why i walked for literally miles to get a different keyboard. avoiding hp is good advice. > Over the past hour I went from 2 defective HP keyboard keys to 3 and now 4. this sounds more like what happened with another keyboard. > I should note that I never had any such issue with any other brand of laptop ive had it happen with a lenovo thinkpad, actually. i know thinkpads are generally associated with quality and (though i passionately hate ibm and everything they stand for) the goal here isnt to dispute that generalisation-- hp is generally worse. but roy and i both put our keyboards through a lot. in addition to all the typing roy puts his keyboards through, he also forces them to lie for him all the time. but i dont suppose thats a significant factor in this. i agree with roy on avoiding hp. all the same, its almost funny the way he exaggerates this story. * 4 july: "GNU/Linux Market Share is Surging, Up More Than 50% This Year" http://techrights.org/2021/07/04/statcounter-latest/ > THE Windows monopoly is eroding, but who or what grows at its expense? Well, Chrome OS is based on GNU/Linux but we don’t count it as such because it does not respect users’ freedom. so instead "we" will only count distros that used to respect freedom and become more like chrome os all the time-- a bit like how its a lot better to live in the usa than china, yet the usa still becomes more like china every year. its not even apples and oranges, its like oranges and clementines. > GNU/Linux ‘proper’ need bigger quotes there. > is definitely on the rise ... just as the corporations turn towards exploiting it full time instead of part time. so marketshare is still a function of paid marketing. theres a surprise. > It’s essential that we understand what’s really going on; it can help explain a lot. oh? i thought i just did. > Vista 10 has suffered from endless issues, including bricking of millions of machines and devastating cracks that cost billions of dollars in damage i dont doubt the trend, and gnu/linux is still better than windows (yet gnu/linux is no longer half as good as gnu/linux) though i dont know where i could go to find gnu/linux being used in a business. i used to know of libraries and retail outlets that used it, but with microsoft doing things like paying people to use windows, you never know what ridiculous things people will consider doing. * 5 july: "Liberation Sentry" http://techrights.org/2021/07/05/liberation-matters/ > Do not be seduced by the ‘Open Source’ crowd because a great way to sell a lie is start with a truth and hope people dont notice when you segue to bullshit. > THE TITLE of the blog says “Sentry”; this was a suggestion made by Richard Stallman about a decade ago. i think roy should stop bragging about stallman suggesting a name for the blog, when roy has lied to stallman and lied ABOUT stallman (saying that he said things he never said) and he continues to twist known truths into bullshit around stallman and gnu. but thats just my opinion. > we think that it’s important for everybody — not just computer geeks — to have computers and computing with freedom. Things aren’t improving, that’s for sure... oh, i dont know, theres enough chestbeating about the state of free software that either roy has forfeit his grounds to say things are bad or forfeit his grounds for chestbeating, but that wont stop his unjustifiable waffling. the thing is, you cant call roy on a lie unless youre very thorough, because hes always throwing out chaff so you never really know what his stance is. if he were any more slippery he would be an ibm exec. > Some compromises are essential for some progress, but concessions that throw away already-made progress are a regression. roy is (timeline-wise) just about to throw out a perfectly good fork of audacity, on crack-smoking grounds that a fork isnt necessary. so i would say that STAYING with audacity is a regression. but roys got an apparmor condom, woo-hoo! and you know what thats like? its like saying "this doesnt need stitches, just keep putting a fresh bandage on it every day for FIVE YEARS instead". roys doctorate isnt exactly in treatment, and for that we should be grateful. > He will turn 70 over a year from now and he wants to ensure his legacy (and the FSF) can carry on for several more decades. Last week the FSF formally advertised a job opening for its public-facing chief one thing you can do to protect the legacy of stallman is call people out for misquoting him and misattributing their own shit to him. of course you should (generally) be diplomatic about this; a global pissing match over "my stallman" vs "'your' stallman" is hardly a future worth fighting for, and if anybody drives things to that it should be the corporations, not fans. with that said, the very essence of open source is hijacking stallman. you dont have to let people do that. > Software freedom needs to ultimately become the normal. fortunately, we have muckrights to ensure that every year we could be fighting this will be TEN years instead, with his general watered-down half-assery which in spirit is not entirely unlike the watered down shit that open source is known for pulling. > The “Open Source” people don’t like taking about freedom except when theyre borrowing or hijacking the idea for their own purposes... > they’re probably using Windows and Macs and what matters to them is price or marketing aspects, not human rights. similarly, roy uses debibm and pretends that debian isnt just as much to blame for selling out to ibm. and when people have gotten tired of this bullshit and moved towards alternatives, roy has always balked at this. > In any event, we in Techrights remain focused on important goals associated with real justice hardly. > as per the foundational or objective moralities. bullshit. > We don’t want to ‘mob’ our way into a fake or shallow notion of ‘justice’ roys new definition of "mob tactics" from april 2021 onward is not unlike how open source used to use the word "extremist"-- he applies it to anybody who is more serious about freedom than he personally is, without any justification-- its just a label he likes to use. > and we are not caving to tyrants. roy has been caving apologetically to tyranny since 2014 at the latest, and pretending otherwise (without making any actual change) for the past year or two. the entire article is bullshit-- except for the opening line about open source, which is more of a decoy than anything. the best interpretation of the article is roy throwing the fight, and then patting himself on the back. with a needless wtf comment about leah, too (i wrote about that four days off/early in the timeline, as noted there as well). * 5 july: "IBM is NOT a Friend of Free Software" http://techrights.org/2021/07/05/ibm-led-mob/ > People must not forget the role played by IBM in the attacks on the FSF (they still try to take away copyrights from the FSF; many of the 'GNU rebels' or coup leaders are IBM employees, both in 2019 and in 2021) and yet in this very article. roy is helping them: 1. they dont TRY to take away copyrights from the fsf, they HAVE taken away copyrights from the fsf 2. i mostly agree with roys assessment of ibm, but he downplays debians role and pretends it was mostly gnome foundation (theyre arseholes too) and ibm, when gnome (not just the foundation) and debian played a role that is about as notable as ibm here. even when hes holding those responsible accountable, hes doing it to let other parties off the hook for their involvement. this is NO service to free software, nor to roys readers. and debians involvement in this is in no way minor or non-notable, roy is just biased as fuck (all double standards and special pleading) when this actually happened, i covered the story and roy downplayed it (possibly because i got to it first). now he says people mustnt forget this. youre so fucking fake, roy. * 5 july: "Reality is Warped When You Pay for 'Perception Management'" http://techrights.org/2021/07/05/bill-gates-pays-twitter/ > There are Gates-sponsored “tweets” (paid-for cruft) added to my timeline today yeah, it really does suck when twitter distorts your feed to promote their bullshit agenda, not unlike the way you distort things your former/contributors wrote to promote your own biases and (if by whiskey) watered-down bullshit. one doesnt justify the other, they both definitely suck. * 6 july: "The Audacity Situation Needs More Diplomacy and Less Mob Mentality" http://techrights.org/2021/07/06/audacity-diplomacy/ WHAT THE FUCK????? roy says he didnt do drugs when he trained, and i think thats probably true. but smoking crack is the best explanation for the article he wrote on the 6th of july. as i said about his article from the day before, "roys new definition of 'mob tactics' from april 2021 onward is not unlike how open source used to use the word 'extremist'-- he applies it to anybody who is more serious about freedom than he personally is". its not just a dirty trick, its fucking nuts. > (We Can Probably Remove the Malicious Features Without Forking) bullshit! > There’s no way a program like Audacity has a legitimate reason to spy on users thats true. but roy doesnt like boycotts (they require him to do something). roy prefers to wave a finger and keep feeding the people responsible-- thats muse group, of course. > Audacity’s new management is making a huge mistake; but forking should be the last resort and there’s probably still room for constructive negotiation oh, you think so? first of all, people from your own community are calling for a fork. second, muse group went as far as to blackmail someone FOR USING THEIR API. they literally threatened to turn them over to the chinese government. you want to negotiate with that? alright, lets send you to their offices then, and dont bother coming back until theyve removed the telemetry, you berk. > OVER the past 3 days many people spoke about the resurgence of an agenda we covered here before [1, 2]. We don’t want to reproduce all the dramatic if not sensationalist headlines here... roy calling a headline sensationalist is like donald trump calling a politician "uncouth". hes got to be kidding. > The short story is, clueless new owners of Audacity mused about pushing on with controversial changes during a long (holiday) weekend and many Audacity users are rightly upset. I’m among those Audacity users. no youre not. shameless opportunists are not upset by an opportunity to bullshit their readers. > We’ve seen arguments about distro makers making ‘soft’ forks or removing the offending code thats a great idea. > or pressuring the owners of the software (they now want a CLA for Audacity) to muse a reversal in policy pointless, theyve already threatened one developer with literal crimes against humanity. and i dont mean this in any sort of sjw way-- i mean literal torture and possibly death by oppressive regimes, not entirely unlike assange has faced. theyre scum, on a level that most of the people we already refer to as "evil" cant even stoop to. so of course youre playing interference (AGAIN) towards anybody interested in a real course of action. what the fuck is your deal? > We’ve seen not a single fork that has sufficient momentum behind it uh, i have. where did you look? > (the ones we saw involve violating privacy with Microsoft at GitHub…) thats only half-relevant here. ideally there would be a move off github, but since audacity was ALREADY THERE its not as important as forking. also youre only telling the half the story about this, but im not going to get into the details of audacity fork hosting. unlike you though, im not going to go against the facts here. > to supposedly ‘solve’ privacy concerns) wrong! > A fork should be the last resort or the most extreme course of action (otherwise it can be pointless and perish like Glimpse did). thats a terrible comparison. glimpse forked over THE NAME of the project, this is more comparable to openoffice to libreoffice (though its really somewhere in between). > An associate of ours has meanwhile prepared an AppArmor prototype bollocks-- using the new audacity with apparmor is an acceptable bandage, but its half a solution. why should users have to create a "workaround" like in the windows days? the solution is TO FIX THE SOFTWARE, not work around the evil while feeding muse. > Let’s try to resolve the conflict without a fork thats a stupid idea and not justified at all. this may not be the PERFECT situation for forking but its closer to being completely justified than your proposal, which is nuts. > conveying an intent to fork is sometimes enough of a motivating factor again, muse actually made unprecidented threats to a developer who was doing something they considered "copyright infringement". they are not going to be reasoned with. when YOUR BULLSHIT PLAN shows any merit whatsover, propose it again. it wont, because its pure nonsense. > enough to discourage integration of antifeatures (or a removal later) from bodybuilder to crack smoker... > That’s just the GPL at work! youre telling people not to bother making use of the license and fork, but still you cite the gpl. nice one. > This is Free software giving users more collective power/control no, youre talking about people sucking up to an unethical corporation like an idiot, and telling them not to use their power. and youre saying they have a "mob mentality" for standing up to really terrible people. thats also what you did with freenode, and NOW youre trashing freenode because sucking up to them didnt work. and still this is your advice for audacity users? im not saying this is NEVER the right course of action-- im saying its not the right one for audacity. sucking up to evil is a stupid idea. and calling people who dont suck up to evil a "mob" is the sort of shit OPEN SOURCE used to aim at stallman, calling him "extremist". now youre doing it. you cant play both sides the way youre doing without people having good reason (whether theyre right or not) to think youre a shill. if youre not, youre not always a lot better than one. now youre calling people a "mob" for FORKING, when the license gives them right to do so and the muse-holes have given them more than ample reason to fork-- and you pick the wrong side to defend again, while smearing the ones who are sincere. AGAIN. youre comparing them to gnu.fools, when what theyre saying about audacity is actually TRUE and when gnu.fools have based everything they consider important on lies and slander. you really dont get it, do you? its time for you to put the crack pipe down. i dont know if this is the dumbest article you wrote this month, this year, or this decade. its at least one of those. * 8 july: Microsoft is Basically Buying the Competition to Deny GNU/Linux Users a Choice http://techrights.org/2021/07/08/buying-the-competition/ > Microsoft has been grooming Canonical like this for quite some time instead of buying Canonical, raising antitrust stink. Canonical has been spying on potential clients in cahoots with Microsoft, promoting Windows (WSL), and working for the company that is attacking us in various other ways. as with the raspberry spy, roy passes everything through a debian apologist filter and ignores the fact that debian and canonical are so tightly connected at this point, that anything posing a threat (or corruption) to canonical is very likely to affect debian too. the percentage of debians corruption youll hear about from roy is just enough for plausible deniability, roy still uses it, so he gives debian a license to kill (freedom). do i think he should have mentioned debian in this story? i think he should have put 2 and 2 together, and gotten ready to talk about debians involvement in the future. but then if he were honest, he would be talking about the extremely heavy involvement of debian in the stallman cancellation. as roy is full of shit, thats not going to happen. he starts out by literally telling people not to talk about it and "move on", then he spends the next few months talking about everybody except debian. the real crime is that hes not getting paid. all this marketing/communications lying from muckrights for debian, and they pay someone else instead. * 11 july: Reigniting Excitement and Momentum in Free Software, Based on Accurate Hypotheses http://techrights.org/2021/07/11/making-freesw-succeed/ > Free software does not speak about privacy; instead it focuses on being able to exercise control and study code, irrespective of which pertinent aspects that affects (there’s a lot more to it than privacy). While it’s true that Free software can emancipate users from mass surveillance, there’s no guarantee that Free software won’t be (mis)used for that purpose, capitalising on Freedom Zero. In fact, some of the world’s biggest spies (governments and corporations) use GNU/Linux for their spying operations. So in general that’s an entirely different issue. this is rewriting what free software is about a bit. the purpose of free software is to give the user control over their computing. a lack of privacy that is due to the functionality of your own software is not "an entirely different issue". for some reason, roy keeps going after mozilla for violating privacy (telemetry) while letting audacity off the hook for the same thing. this is probably because roy doesnt use mozilla though he still uses audacity, but thats a guess. roy likes to pretend that all his choices are better and anything that goes beyond his advice is "extreme". which is funny because thats taking a page from the "open source" playbook: paint your principles as the only one that matter, and any that go beyond that as extremism (roy calls it "mob mentality" to want to fork audacity, even if it merely "focuses on being able to exercise control and study code"). sadly this line of bullshit is a popular one in (fake) free software these days: if you have the right to change something, actually USING that right is somehow excessive or "brash", the only thing that matters is to HAVE the right, not to use it. this is extremely disingenuous and it is eroding the movement, though roy is helping that right along with his crap. compare roys nonsense with this line: "Freedom means having control over your own life. If you use a program to carry out activities in your life, your freedom depends on your having control over the program. You deserve to have control over the programs you use, and all the more so when you use them for something important in your life."-- richard stallman, https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html why is free software becoming fake? because its being taken over by corporations and open source. roy knows this, he even said so in july, though for some reason he says corporations dont care about people-- and then he sides with their shit anyway. thats what "if-by-muckrights" means. its all well and good to SAY that corporations dont care and exploit people. but to DO something to fix it that the license allows? no, just POSTURE and thatll show them! they might even stop threatening developers (but probably not though, in fact thats a pretty stupid idea). when richard stallman writes an article that says "In outrageous cases (though this outrage has become quite usual) proprietary programs are designed to spy on the users, restrict them, censor them, and abuse them." that makes me think that privacy is not "an entirely different issue." instead of making it solely about the license and source availability, i think the APPLICATION of that freedom (whether to fork an application thats spying on you rather than simply trying to use that as a bargaining chip with truly sociopathic developers) is highly relevant. but if youre posturing and only care about the blog post youre writing, not the subject of the blog post-- then maybe it doesnt matter. the funny thing is that roy says that it matters all the time-- he just goes and contradicts it in every which way later, which leads a person to wonder if roy actually means anything he says at all. > People I speak to (e.g. in IRC) say that GNU languishes because of neglect, but judging by frequency of GNU releases (pertinent projects) I find that assertion difficult to believe/support with evidence. not that he really meant it, but i think the best evidence that gnu is neglected is that they outsourced the crown jewels to red hat many years ago. with roy doing all this (completely insincere and pathological, but OTHERWISE defensible) talking of "self-hosting", you would think he would hold gnu to the same (imaginary) standard. but gnu has relied on things like github and red hat, while sometimes only "self-hosting" a mirror. moves like that primed red hat (now ibm) to take control of things like gcc, and if thats the way this really works, then we shouldnt feign surprise when said corporations announce that THEY are changing the rules of development, NOT the gnu project, which gave up control. and roy thinks there is no "evidence" of neglect? im glad he doesnt plan to raise a family, then. (actually im glad anyway. narcissistic parents are the worst, always lying to their loved ones and bullshitting them all the way through life-- never truly caring for anybody, only for the IMAGE of caring about people). hilariously, in the same article roy suggests that people learn to code. i suggest that too, and we are far from alone in that, but what makes it funny when roy suggests it is that it will be the same week he tells people not to fork applications that spy on users! so he advises you learn to code-- just dont use what youve learned to be more free in practice; theoretical freedom is the only sort you need! i dont think roy "gets" free software at all. or more to the point, roy doesnt give a shit about YOUR freedom. just his own freedom is more than enough! * 13 july: "The Largest Distros of GNU/Linux Fight for Microsoft Hegemony (Instead of Freedom)" http://techrights.org/2021/07/13/software-freedom-matters/ the headline is quite true (dont mention debian!) > Summary: GNU/Linux ought not be reduced to merely another brand; if the goal is software freedom, then we won’t get there by relying on bigger corporations and yet thats exactly what gnu is doing-- relying on bigger corporations. "GNU/Linux ought not be reduced to merely another brand" translation: gnu/linux is already reduced to merely another brand. > Even though GNU/Linux is used more than ever before, rarely does freedom follow this trend. There’s actually entrenchment of ‘Linux-powered’ (e.g. Android) surveillance and GNU/Linux-based (e.g. Facebook, Google disservices) espionage. sort of the opposite of what he said two days prior, on the 11th. it doesnt matter, roy pulls it all out of his arse anyway. > The video deals with this new (this morning’s) example of Red Hat pushing (promoting but with drug-dealing slant) Microsoft’s proprietary software (check the licence, as it’s legally and technically proprietary software). It’s malicious software, a potential keylogger, which is also monopolistic and a piece of spyware in the “telemetry” sense. didnt you JUST SAY that this is "an entirely different issue" than freedom? it must appeal to LOTS of readers that you have something for everyone, yeah? left is left, left is right. privacy hurts freedom, not really, sure it does, whatever you like! roy is pretty negative for a yes-man, but then thats what compulsive liars are like. if you arent being appeased, give roy a reason to suck up to you and he might lie and bullshit for you, he might decide to appease someone else and throw you under the bus-- its all on a whim, so youll never know if you dont try! > We need to change the flag bearer of GNU/Linux to something else if we want to promote (or preserve) software freedom. from what, the fsf? did you mean ibm? (is there really a difference anymore?) translation: gnu/linux is already reduced to merely another brand. roy did a blog about it anyway. stuff was said, pages were viewed, nothing changed and nobody really bothered anyway. ancient muckrights: "actions matter!" yesterdays muckrights: "we just want the truth!" todays muckrights: "or whatever!" * 19 july: "Monopolies Cannot ‘Decapitate’ a Movement" http://techrights.org/2021/07/19/decapitating-movements/ > Summary: Despite the ‘theft’ or the mass plunder of projects (e.g. GitHub takeover), even at the expense of billions of dollars (with ongoing losses, both financial and logistical), we keep coming back again and again like a hydra another chestbeating bullshit one. you should go to roys personal website and find an old picture of him (literally) flexing his muscles, as flexing is all this article is about. on the 13th roy said "Even though GNU/Linux is used more than ever before, rarely does freedom follow this trend." this from a guy whose answer to people spying on you is "threaten to change it yourself, and theyll probably do it for you!" so rarely does freedom come with gnu/linux, but we just keep "bouncing back" (i think the best take on this is probably michael talking about alan partridges autobiography, but shh, we are trying to flex here!) its alright if you think im saying this just to have a go at free software. when leah talks about "saving gnu" roy says he doesnt like the name (because it implies gnu is in trouble, which it is). roy can have a go whenever he wants, and he does-- but its a monopoly. the monopoly on it exists in his mind. THATS what true narcissism is, an imaginary (fair to say literally delusional) monopoly on ALL OF THIS. thats the problem roy has, and the only complete explanation for all of this nonsense of his. only roy can talk about how to fix these things. anybody else is attacking free software, or being extreme, or just getting sucked into a "mob mentality". unless roy is sucking up to you-- then its cool. its complicated being roy; read muckrights and find a way to believe it, and youll understand. but you wont keep up with all the double standards because theyre not even standard, theyre another npi. > Alas, and in spite of all these setbacks, we’ve been making a lot of measurable progress over the years. yeah, says the primary author of formerly-boycott-novell. you had ONE JOB, and now after 15 yerars former novell people control the "linux" in "gnu/linux" and they even took over with systemd. so roy isnt boycotting novell anymore, hes using it everyday and recommends it to you, too. => https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org/muckrights-had-one-job.html of course if you dont use debian and dont use systemd, then that helps. roy still relies on both, so its really a good thing they changed the name (roy never liked it anyway, he apparently thought it was "too negative" to use the word "boycott" in a website about a boycott.) > The best weapon we have is patience and perseverance. which you need LOTS of to sit and do fuck-all about most of it in general, not even really exploring alternatives in a serious fashion (even smearing and misrepresenting people who bother to do the research on it). > But still… know the enemy to understand the attacks. he says that now, but in april he was saying its better to ignore them. which is it? only roy knows, youll just have to keep reading muckrights to find out. * 19 july: "Is Microsoft a National Security Threat?" http://techrights.org/2021/07/19/microsoft-national-security/ and if they are, is it dangerous for roy to downplay the level of involvement microsoft has with debian and gnu? is it that much more egregious that he pretends that openbsd has a secret friendship with microsoft lurking somewhere in a great abyss? => https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org/more-about-muckrights-and-openbsd.html roy cares disproportionally about microsoft involvement in the first place-- a little when its their connection to something he likes, and a lot when its a connection (sometimes a mostly imaginary one) to something he doesnt care about. but that doesnt mean you should ignore these connections, it means that roy doesnt care as much about substance as he insists. i still find this article interesting (roy didnt write it) but the context and what roy will do with it in coming weeks and months is worth mentioning. roy cherry picks (and twists) things to support whatever he wants to say, which is pretty awful coming from someone who is a glorified statistician (in the medical field) for a living. hes misused and misrepresented (and misattributed) my own research, all as fodder to suggest hes right, when he isnt and either doesnt know what hes talking about-- or simply doesnt give a shit. ordinarily i would take this opportunity to paste the text here, though its not under a free license, or i would link to the original instead of roys-- but its cloudflare/medium hosted, so im just going to point at the url which is right below the title of this entry. thats more than roy bothers with when hes appropriated work ive done (since leaving). can you believe what this guy is entrusted with? but thats free software these days-- its barely more than open source. * 21 july: "Open Source Initiative (OSI) a Sinking Ship in Service of Microsoft Monopoly, Proprietary Software, and Even GPL Violations" http://techrights.org/2021/07/21/microsoft-plots-osi/ * 22 july: "top letting corporations break what already works" http://techrights.org/2021/07/22/novelty-complex/ > Summary: Lesson of the week (or the month) is, stop letting corporations break what already works just to introduce something newer (at risk/cost to the clients, not those corporations that use early adopters as unpaid testers) unless its audacity, or debian. then roy will say to let them, only it will sound like "dont let them". best translation: roy doesnt actually mean anything. he just puts together words that result in pageviews. > OVER the years we wrote many articles (e.g. [1, 2, 3]) that explain how simplicity… well, basically keeps things nice and simple over the years roy put put together words that result in pageviews. > whereas unnecessary complexity or early adoption of “new things” means risk. This is common knowledge that many people, especially mission-critical operations, have come to expect. one prime example of this is bruce perens talking about this and systemd (systemd is also what the second article in 1, 2, 3 is about). funnily enough, with regards to systemd roy has said he doesnt agree with the perens example. so here you have roy saying that unecessary complexity for the sake of novelty is bad for mission critical systems, you have perens giving the example of systemd, and roy disagrees with his own point (or systemd is magically an exception here). its bizarre, but compulsive lying is bound to result in strange positions and arguments. > More than a fortnight ago BT said it would move me to fibre-optics (no more copper) and it put in a lot of effort to convince me to go along with that plan. roys been bitching about bt for the better part of a decade, but he doesnt like to boycott things in general, so hes still with bt. => https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org/bt-should-sponsor-muckrights.html > But it all went very wrong (see my series; it has 6 parts: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI). it sounds like the whole fiasco produced six blog posts. isnt that what this was really all about anyway? > I wished I had never agreed to that foolish plan, which to BT was about cost savings (to BT, not to me). this sounds fishy and like hes not telling the whole story-- even for roy. > The lessons learned may actually extend somewhat to debates we nowadays have in the software — not the networking/transit — world/domain/field. They try to make the Web all about bloated frameworks and the same goes for programming and operating systems. Simplicity, or sufficient abstraction to help us know what’s going on under the hood, is being abandoned in the name of “power” or “security” or supposed “ease of use”. But we end up with more problems than before, the entry barrier is raised even further (discouraging so-called ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’ because training and experience levels go up a notch) and many practical things get worse, they’re not improved. roy sounds like he would like to use bsd. but he also tells people you have to run startx to run the gui-- you dont, but i once told roy that startx was working and he took that and ran with it. > These days many security issues in systemd are falsely attributed to “Linux” and in the past week even weak passwords were being blamed on “Linux”. It’s astounding, isn’t it? yeah roy, it sucks when OTHER people dont care about facts or context. want to know a secret? it sucks just as much when you do, too. like youre about to: > GNU is still minimalist if not ‘brutalist’. not really. when has the bloat needle ever moved anything but forward? > Except GCC, i dont want to give the false impression that i think its impossible for gcc to be an exception to the rule, but it is funny. nothings bloated, except the thing you need to compile ALL OF IT. lol... except the interpreted stuff, then you only need to compile the interpreter, of course. > because there’s lots of hardware support, hence the same problem as Linux that isnt the only reason. > This atomic UNIX mentality or modularity helps keep freedom in fact this has fuck-all to do with gnu or stallmans personal philosophy actually (i wish that were not true, but it is). > more people can participate. particularly if they work for red hat, which you pretty much do if youre working on gnu at this point. roy talks like it doesnt go both ways-- ibm has taken over gnu, but you can help gnu and the fsf by working on gnu without helping ibm take it over. call me sceptical, a wild claim like that needs a better argument, if not better evidence. other than roys usual double standard bullshit, how can ibm take something over and you can still help it without helping them? he should probably explain how working for gnu is NOT also working for ibm (as unpaid labour) but it will be fun if roy tries to bullshit his way around this one. dont think he wont ever try-- roy is a true champion in the bullshit winter games. * 23 july: "The Next One Thousand Blog Posts and the 15th Anniversary of Techrights" http://techrights.org/2021/07/23/31k-techrights/ "what do you think we should do, basil?" "give it another 15 years?"-- fawlty towers, "communication problems" > A quick video about our future focus as a Web site that seeks to illuminate suppressed subjects while actually suppressing (and yet still appropriating work from) former contributors and critics, roy is going to "illuminate" suppressed subjects. thats great, then he can tell people do sit on their arse about those too (rather than just the well-known stories already covered until now). > a timely issue to bring up as we very soon complete and surpass our 31,000th blog post (some time next week) and some topics are becoming obsolete by their very nature translation: its a slow news cycle, do another meta post. > THE history of this site is not a secret and unlike many other sites we don’t engage in revisionism about it. yes, you do! you dont only engage in revisionism on a yearly basis, you do it on a weekly and daily basis. you also engage in revisionism about the meaning of free software and pretend that stallman said things he never said. you also engage in revisionism about things YOUR OWN WRITERS have said, and complained about you misrepresenting-- and then you turned around THEIR corrections regarding THEIR OWN RESEARCH as "revisionism," YOU CHEEKY SHIT! > Everything started in 2006 as “Boycott Novell” — an action rooted in Novell’s patent collusion with Microsoft. today, boycott novell (and roy in particular) is still is not boycotting novell-- but he sometimes still tells other people to. (other times when they do of their own accord, he tells them not to). > The subject remains unaddressed because even though Novell is no longer around Microsoft’s strategy carries on, albeit in some evolved form like infiltrating other companies and the Linux Foundation. and yet when a huge controversial project like systemd (planned largely by sievers from novell) you tell people not to "cry wolf" about it, when you had just said "even though Novell is no longer around Microsoft’s strategy carries on" and infiltrates the linux foundation, etc. youre a funny fucking shit, roy! > Microsoft sinks a lot of money into revisionism, distortion, and perception management which shows you how stupid people can be when they have money-- roy does all of the same shit FOR FREE! > "We must confront false narratives!" what, and fight them with "falser" ones? > we don’t like merely parroting what’s already well covered (or poorly covered) elsewhere. so you dont like parroting whats well covered or poorly covered elsewhere? doesnt that include everything thats covered elsewhere? but somehow it doesnt including you parroting (without attribution) my february article on your website in march? OH WAIT, youre just lying to your readers again, carry on! > The EFF also put its sword down and stopped fighting which muckrights wont do, but it will tell YOU to stop fighting... > We definitely intend to continue covering this very important topic. if he really wanted to help, he could just start a taco stand instead. > We moreover need to re-engineer or change the topology of things like truth and facts? > in order to lessen collective reliance on social control media (misinformation, censorship), centralisation (monopoly) sure, because only muckrights ought to bring you misinformation, censorship and monopoly... > When people stop confronting a falsehood (a surrender to lies, due to fatigue) like you told people to do about gnu.fools in april? > we quit having access to the simple truth and, accordingly, lies become ‘normalised’ or blogged... > Such as the lie that the EPO runs smoothly under Team Campinos, Microsoft is a reformed company that “loves Linux”, and GitHub is good for “Open Source” or that canonical is really separate from debian, or that less of gnu has moved to github that it actually has, or that "we" wrote some articles (which you didnt write and you misquote, misattribute and misrepresent) or that stallman said things about systemd that roy fucking made up... or that roy didnt lie to stallman himself several months ago... > (heck, even “Open Source” itself turns out to have been a lie, spun off as a marketing ploy by openwashing of everything proprietary). OH! or that its open source being "taken over" by microsoft, not open source taking over free software (and getting "love" from microsoft for doing so)-- but it depends what day you ask roy about it... > Recently the community jumped from one disaster to the next (gradual death of Freenode, attacks on the FSF/GPL, demise of the so-called ‘Open Web’) and so we need more lifeboats and contingencies. yeah, thats what i said in my book about "lifeboats" and the fsf and contingencies. but roy said he didnt agree with me and that i was throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so fuck him really. from the looks of this post he only criticised it so he could help himself to it and take credit-- but thats not exactly a new trick for roy, ive even given it a name. get ready for 15 more years of exploitation-- from giafam of course, and from the controlled opposition that is muckrights! => https://wrongwithfreesw.neocities.org/a-muckrights-carol.html * 23 july: "SINCE moving to our shiny (new) IRC network, which we self-host" http://techrights.org/2021/07/23/improving-the-signal-to-noise-ratio-in-irc/ it isnt self-hosted. the irc server is on another continent, waiting to be decommissioned, and roy never owned it. roys defition of "self-hosted" is extremely flexible for him, and something quite different for a reasonable person. at any rate, some of the things roy cites as advantages of "self-hosting" are impossible with his present arrangement. i used to have a server in my flat. THAT is self-hosting. i still associate with the person who encouraged roy to host from a raspberry pi in his homr, but that pi isnt what hosts irc. THAT (irc) server is not under his control, and soon will not even be under the control of its present owner. you want to call that self-hosting? you can call it "sally", if it pleases you to do so. * 24 july: "Support the Founders of GNU and Linux, Besieged by People and Corporations That Hate Development Communities" http://techrights.org/2021/07/24/besieged-by-big-corporations/ > Summary: The founders of GNU and Linux (Stallman and Torvalds, respectively) want to give us free (as in freedom) software not really. linus torvalds is a lying douchebag who spent most of his career siding with people who would package and sell free software to its enemies. linux was all in all terrible for gnu, except in terms of marketshare "adoption" (exploitation) and it is the centrepiece of the effort to turn a project designed around USER FREEDOM into the unpaid-labour-driven "uber of software development". he has specifically said he doesnt call it "free software" because he conflates INTEGRITY and FREEDOM with "hate". he is a backstabbing, co-opting son of a bitch who is (and always was) squarely in the open source (scam)/camp. he made his career and his name on the scam of open source. for some reason, people feel its necessary to kotow to this (now utterly useless) traitor to everyone. they do nothing to justify it, except that stallman (possibly) made a similar mistake. extending one-sided peace to your corporate oppressors nicely sums up the essence of open source, and of torvalds and his personal politics. the nicest thing you can say about him and still be realistic is that he cared more about his own project than sievers (novell) and gkh (novell) and yet you have the nerve to turn "boycott novell" into what torvalds himself would have called (quote) a "dick-sucking contest". the only thing he ever truly hates a corporation for is inconveniencing him. i would say you have a lot in common, in terms of modus operendi. the difference is torvalds gets more people to fall for it; including you, perhaps. or not, and this is just posturing on your part. i dont know what else it could be. how can you ignore so many facts at once, and write this absolute drivel? > Don’t let these career lobbyists dictate what we want or need. ...when roy will bullshit you for free. * 26 july: Increasing Focus on Advocacy for the Free Software Community (Putting Control Over Computing in the Hands of People, Not Large Corporations) http://techrights.org/2021/07/26/stopping-tech-parasites/ s/Advocacy/Pandering/ > Want to become an unpaid volunteer of IBM? Then join Fedora in 2021. or debian. or muckrights. > it’s time to add a new theme to our coverage, which prioritises science, computer developers, and technology users; more like cherry picking, handwaving, and projecting. > THIS blog post of ours is technically the 31,000th (unpublished drafts included), but a pointless self-congratulatory post would not accomplish anything. hes already posted one or two of those, and dont be fooled into thinking this isnt a self-congratulatory post in future tense. > Instead, let’s discuss priorities. which arent (and wont be) priorities. > Remember that from Day 1 (2006) we’ve been fighting against software patents. That’s nothing new. thats good, because if it was about boycotting novell instead, they fucked up. > our plan is to add more focus to simplicity and UNIX philosophy (the roots of GNU). nope! not the roots of gnu at all. unsubstantiated. go read stallman.org. > Something ought to be done about complicated, monopolised, privatised, and centralised so-called ‘tech’. i make fun of roy when he says "should be" because it generally translates to "wont". like when he said ibm should... yeah, they should. but other people are actually trying to do something. roy discourages them and then goes back to saying "ibm should..." its more than a little ridiculous at this point. > We need to change that current trajectory you "should" > because people are being farmed, not served. including writers for muckrights, and even former writers. so i very much question roys sincerity about fixing this. > Complexity needs to be replaced by simplicity says the guy who sat for YEARS on systemd, told me he was "no friend" of it in 2018 and then told readers in 2019 or 2020 he was largely "apathetic" or "neutral". no, roy is just co-opting again. > and front groups like Linux Foundation replaced by communities. im not ready to call muckrights a front group, since i dont think everybody involved is fake. but muckrights is absolutely a front. > IBM does not embrace real communities (it calls its own employees “communities”), roy just uses people, and he pays them in quaint lies and backstabbing, which is a form of emotional slavery (if you think im misusing that word, go read a fucking psychology textbook and stop confusing tumblr with uni) > and Microsoft is openwashing everything so as to push proprietary software whereas Amazon mostly kills off lots of small webhosts and shops. and the linux foundation is funding roys self-hosting, lol. no, im not joking. if i were roy i would imply that "maybe this is the real reason roy posted unreasonably friendly and overly generous bullshit about torvalds the other day", but i think the real reason he does that is that roy still insists torvalds reads his blog, and he wants to suck up to him sometimes. > The way things are generally going, we won’t win back freedom (or control over our computing), even if "Linux" spreads further over time. thats true. but roy isnt going to change for more than 30 seconds. hes still bullshit. > "Grassroots communities aren’t for-profits with shareholders" no, but they are increasingly beholden to them-- and that (even now) includes the fsf. * 26 july: "Microsoft Windows Has Lost Another 2 Million Web Sites This Past Month Alone (IIS Floundering)" http://techrights.org/2021/07/26/windows-loses-another-2-million-websites/ > It’s likely that Microsoft’s “Plan B” or contigency would be to hijack the competitors. It is a classic Microsoft move and it is the reason Microsoft ambushed GitHub for a takeover since 2014. It’s a very malicious cult that presents itself as a company. Jeremy Stretch has just published this article entitled “Corporate Participation in the Open Source Community” and he seems to be unaware of the risks of Corporate Takeover. This article mentions GitHub as if it is something desirable, but it is a hostile abduction of projects to undermine the freedom of software and to interfere with communities (giving Microsoft control over them). This obsession with business at the expense of communities (like Microsoft’s meddling in NGINX and other projects, even Apache) is something that needs both explaining and understanding. Right now the strategy of Microsoft is a hostile takeover of alternatives to Microsoft. We can’t let them do it. Just go away and leave us all alone. You’ve done more than enough damage. * 26 july: "Free Software Projects Should Quit Selling Keynote Speeches to the Highest Bidders (Corporations) and Choose Based on Merit/Relevance" http://techrights.org/2021/07/26/keynote-speeches-for-sale/ > Summary: OSI, SFC, FSF and Linux Foundation are in effect selling time and space (even to Microsoft, except the FSF was never foolish enough to do this). As of today, LibreOffice does the same thing (which might remain benign; just be sure to reject rivals as "sponsors" because it dooms projects and events). here is a great opportunity to examine the shallowness of the muckrights form of "advocacy" (more like lip service). it sounds great and ultimately calls for something desireable, but its as shallow as saying "MORE DIVERSITY!" alright then, how? the gripe isnt just that it doesnt bother exploring the idea in a meaningful way-- that would be more of a nitpick or a whinge. the real problem here is that IF IT DID BOTHER, then it would lead to conclusions that logically DISQUALIFY so many other "solutions" and goals that muckrights sets forth. if this bothered to go beyond the shallow, it would lead to the realisation that what muckrights proposes in other posts is far from sufficient. so while i absolutely agree with the spirit of the headline, by the time it comes to getting keynotes the corporations have already purchased "relevance" from the tech press and other organisations. their names are already on our lips-- good or bad (i would at least say less than great) thats "relevance". without dramatic new criteria for relevance, the only difference would be that instead of "selling" (taking money for) keynotes, it would go by "merit/relevance" which means the same (or very similar) projects (same outcome) would get highlighted for "free"-- meaning it wouldnt act as a fundraiser. i dont think corporate funding is feasible anyway (but i did, until a year or two ago) and im not in favour of it. but until we reexamine what "relevance" is, corporations are just going to buy it "somewhere" and show up at our conferences with that shit whether they contribute money or not. they still get to hijack the conference. is it impossible to have a free software movement that (as roy just said days ago) is "more grassroots?" (note that roy criticised me for saying this to stallman, now he says it like its not an idea i took a reputation "bullet" for from HIS OWN gun, but roy is a co-opter and a complete scumbag). i think its both possible and necessary, but part of that would mean a dramatic shift in what we consider "relevance". we dont have to bullshit to make that work-- we cant redefine what is relevant to the "tech press" because theyre shills. we cant redefine what is relevant to "open source" because its a corporate astroturfing scam. we can only decide what matters most to US as an actual movement. now the big question is, does roy really think the fsf is going to GO ALONG with that? no, the fsf is already taken over by corporate bullshit. so as roy is fond of saying when he dismisses an idea: (before "borrowing" it and making it "his own" later) "moving on..." also, if you want to change what software is relevant, you have to change the software you rely on. thats why stallman says the first and foremost way you can help the free software movement is to USE free software. if things have gotten too corporate, and you want to change whats relevant, people have to actually change what software you use. roy honestly doesnt do this (with some minor exceptions) so it leaves his advocacy shallow and hypocritical. and meaningless lip service. to make things worse, he criticises people for actually living up to his (fake) standards and TRYING to get away from the things he says are negative. what are we SUPPOSED to do? FAKE IT, like roy! and roy wont admit it, but making a big deal out of faking a push for freedom is what the "open source" scam is all about! * 26 july: "Funding Sources Like Corporate Sponsors/Patrons/Masters Put at Risk the Freedom of Free Software" http://techrights.org/2021/07/26/invisible-strings/ > Sources of funding or “sponsors” such as large corporations typically come with some barely-visible or temporarily-invisible strings attached (an expectation of commercial reciprocity, rendering the recipients subservient like ‘slaves’) and we need to understand how to preserve software freedom in the face of such trends roy does not understand how to preserve software freedom in the face of such trends. when a corporation takes over openoffice, the solution is to fork openoffice. its worth noting that the fork of openoffice got taken over anyway, so this isnt always sufficient-- clearly there needs to be enough of a movement to prevent the fork from being taken over as well. sadly, we are far from there. thats not a criticism, its a very basic assessment-- we cant (presently) stop forks like libreoffice from being taken over as well. roy says (regarding audacity) that a fork is the most extreme option, and hes sort of right about that. where we differ is whether it helps to suck up to the people taking over first. if you pull dumb shit like that, you get more articles about it and you can say "you tried". but this step is only worth bothering with if the takeover is really due to an honest misunderstanding-- it usually isnt. the takeover of debian wasnt honest, and roy sat on that for years (technically he still does, as a shameless apologist). now hes sitting on the takeover of audacity and the takeover of libreoffice. he doesnt fucking bother. so for him to say "we need to understand how to preserve software freedom in the face of such trends"-- you first, roy. YOU need to understand how to preserve software freedom, because YOU cant even boycott novell! (who wrote systemd? who is taking over the linux kernel?) all roy advocates is bending over for corporations and calling it standing up to them. lets let the clown idiotsplain it though: > THE ethical condundrum surrounding Free software funding is hardly new. Richard Stallman spoke about it more than two decades ago (he suggested ways to get paid for writing freedom-respecting software) but corporate media likes to pretend Free software can only succeed if monopolies fund to control it. They don’t even speak about freedom; they prefer shallow nonsense such as “Open Source”. yeah, shallow nonsense is shit... > This video is part of an ongoing series or a theme that explores the loss of collective control by users and communities; by encouraging non-reciprocal licensing, CLAs etc. the monopolists seek to control everything. but roy doesnt actually have a plan to do anything about it. thats alright, the problem is that he pretends to-- and he advocates people following a plan that is completely imaginary and wont do anything at all. > Remember what IBM did with Red Hat only months after IBM had taken over (and then again a year and a half later) because money comes with demands. They want something in return. Audacity comes to mind and earlier on we mentioned LibreOffice, which relates to the links below ive already written about several of the articles in those links, and what bullshit they are as well. one of those responses directly precedes this one. > This subject is part of a much broader problem; sponsorship and funding are a matter of control (coercion, subjugation and so on). And if the goal is to empower users and give them true control over their lives (on the platform or on-line), then we need to understand and accordingly tackle the emergent threats. you already said that. > People who see these from the inside are sometimes horrified to learn what a bunch of charlatans and frauds work there. hahahahahahahahahaha... yeah, ive had a similar experience. > They want to control Linux users; but they aren’t even Linux users themselves. whats the plan? whats the understanding? THATS THE END OF THE ARTICLE? > they prefer shallow nonsense oh right, and you gave them what they wanted. maybe there are "invisible strings" to a point, but dont count on it. you think he actually says what the plan is in the video, but wont write about it in text? is that a bet youd put money on? roy has no plan-- muckrights isnt controlled opposition, its FAKE opposition. roy might as well say "I AM SHOCKED! SHOCKED! THAT THE EROSION OF USER FREEDOM IS GOING ON HERE!" sure you are, pal. it just shows in everything you do. * 28 july: "we still rely on Google News to a certain extent" http://techrights.org/2021/07/28/google-news/ > Google has got almost a monopoly on (nearly) real-time news syndication; this is why, for our Daily Links at least, we still rely on Google News to a certain extent this is just sad. look, i dont hold most people to the standard i hold roy to, because roy is a textbook narcissist and holding him to his own standard is the best way to expose his lying and bullshit. roy has to make up shit about people he disagrees with to keep them on a level beneath his, and he also has to lie about himself to maintain this farce. i dont really care that roy uses google news-- i certainly dont recommend it to anybody, but im not here to skewer people for using it-- it is really just sad, coming from muckrights; the way he throws his hands up in the air and pretends to be helpless instead of seeking a real solution. every solution takes time, and some things ultimately matter more (as a priority) than others. i havent gotten rid of gtk entirely (id love to) but gtk, now THAT is really hard to get rid of. but my editor doesnt use it, my window manager doesnt use it, and i typically balk at new software that uses gtk. thats the most i can expect of myself right now, regarding gtk. i dont hold anybody to a higher standard than that, i simply advise people to avoid gtk as much as theyre able. this google news thing though-- heck, thats fixable. > THE way we gather news has evolved a lot over the years; it actually predates this Web site as I’ve posted many GNU/Linux-related links on a daily basis since 2004 or 2005 (back then it was mostly in newsgroups/USENET, later social control media such as Digg.com). > I’ve witnessed the demise of RSS feeds, and various incarnations of social control media — partly responsible for this still-ongoing war on RSS. basically roy needs to scrape the pages of the websites that dont have rss or atom feeds. if that sounds overboard, he practically scrapes the rss feeds already! ive seen him countless times try to tweak whatever he uses to get the feeds, because theyre always breaking the feed somehow (either because he script is crap, or the feed hes trying to scrape really is garbage-- either are real possibilities). sure, this is more work. and there are probably even easier ways to get away from google news. but just saying you cant-- please... > though Google barely advertises RSS feeds anymore (and the Google-funded Mozilla also reduced focus on such user-centric technology), they’re still available, albeit sometimes a little hidden. in other words, theyre increasingly user-hostile. and instead of giving up on them, roy tries a bit harder to deal with their bullshit. i wont say ive never made an effort like that (i certainly did with debian, once upon a time) but roy talks a big game and really spends an extraordinary amount of time sucking up or kowtowing to things that he ought to give up on instead. at a certain point it makes his advocacy more of a farce. http://techrights.org/2020/12/03/figosdev-on-debian/ > Google News is the only thing from Google that I still use thats a fair defence. i think its possible it isnt true, and he exaggerates his distance from youtube, but im going to write as though i entirely believe it for now. > because sadly there’s no potent alternative to it (other than subscribing to many thousands of sites over RSS and then filtering the results, which can be a lot of computational work) oh, you big baby. i thought you had to be using google news because not every website had an rss feed. you mean you need google to tell you what parts of your own feeds are relevant? so from now on, if youre clueless about something, i can joke that google probably just censored the thing you should have known about? this is kind of a gem, you know? again, im only picking on roy because hes such a pompous, hypocritical shit. > that barely scales for one user or few users). most people dont need "many thousands of sites over RSS" though. and what do you use that for? to write a bunch of fake shit about not really fixing things that you take years to admit are broken anyway? spooks in modern times have a similar problem-- theyre already looking for needles in haystacks, so they decide the solution is to add more hay and they think they will find more needles that way. william binney explained why that is a terrible idea (apart from being illegal) and as to why they do it, it comes down to contractors making larger profits pushing that shit instead of something based on a constitutional treatment of privacy and smaller scale searches. but once again, its the fucking economy that explains why things are so fucked up. you dont need MANY THOUSANDS OF SITES over rss, you need to CHOOSE what to follow better, dipshit. i bet that if you replaced google news with something using PSEUDORANDOM numbers instead of googles "hey hi" (which you always say is useless anyway) then it would work out about as well. what does RANDOM NEWS give me today? oh! okay-- time to write three more new utterly bullshit articles! > In this video I explain how I manage to overcome the truly awful signal/noise ratio that plagued Google News in recent years. if its any good, it can probably do it without google news at all. > Sadly, they also started syndicating and including spam/plagiarism sites while delisting totally legitimate sites. ah, so you ARE letting them censor your feed! and instead of walking away youre just standing for it. good to know! > The Google monopoly in this area generally lowered Google’s incentive to maintain any sort of proper quality control (same as in social control media). Spying increased too, but by blocking JS and redirections one can mitigate a bit. this article definitely does a suitable job explaining why nobody should ever use google news. it doesnt really explain why you use it. on the contrary, i think youve (mostly) debunked your own points. > That’s just my personal experience. Let us know yours, e.g. in our IRC channels (incidentally, there this decent new article about IRC today). alright, ive never used google news. and thats alright! you should try not using it. if that doesnt work, try smarter, not just harder. * 29 july: "Crying 'Wolf!' About Systemd is Only Beneficial to IBM and Systemd Developers/Pushers" http://techrights.org/2021/07/29/crying-wolf-systemd/ im just beside myself about this one. for a person who constantly talks about the hand of ibm and microsoft in everything to blame someone else for doing so has got to be the silliest pot-and-kettle moment in muckrights history. though it has plenty of competition. but the last person you need telling you not to get worked up about systemd is someone who sat on the story for years while his community (that he lied to about it) warned him about all of this. whats the story here? some people have made some connections that probably arent accurate. if roy has a problem with that, hes ignoring the difference in scale to his own incredible bullshit. i havent read the phoronix article and i probably dont need to. theres probably no need to prove to anybody else that systemd is a problem-- its well established, anybody who still thinks its a good idea probably isnt going to change their stance-- a lot of people have given up on gnu/linux altogether over it, only after years of trying to fight it. its been a problem since 2014, and roy has treated it like one since possibly 2019 or 2020, but hes not making any moves away from it. for all roys talk about ibm, hes clearly waiting until the year / decade that systemd just "goes away" to do anything about it. but he admits its a problem-- he even lied and pretended stallman thinks its a problem (nope, he completely made it up). so for roy to have the nerve to say OTHER people are "crying wolf" is somewhat beyond the pale. but thats our roy, as full of shit as ever. does that mean theyre right? theyre probably wrong. but i wouldnt trust muckrights to discern anything from bullshit, because muckrights is fake opposition anyway, muckrights is "open source" in free software clothing. it certainly pretends to be more than that, but thats what open source does. > Crying “Wolf!” About Systemd is Only Beneficial to IBM and Systemd Developers/Pushers not significantly. when ibm and systemd devs dont have the truth on their side, they just lie anyway. youre making a lot of out of something that will quickly resolve itself. you just wanted to pose as the voice of reason again. > Microsoft controls Systemd only to the extent that Systemd is controlled by GitHub thats probably true, but there are certainly other ways in which microsoft could become involved. im not saying they have, only that ruling it out summarily can be just as silly as insisting it happened with zero evidence. > But Systemd has long been on that proprietary platform (its developers don’t truly value software freedom) and this has long been a problem, even before Microsoft hijacked it for coercive power thats arguably true, but it somewhat contradicts roy himself saying that microsoft has been working on hijacking github since 2014-- a year before systemd moved there (in january 2015 they still compiled to a github mirror, and the move to actually developing there happened months later). im not saying this is necessarily significant, only that for roy to say people are "crying wolf" hes overstating things and leaving out details that make what theyre saying less ridiculous. in other words, roys counterpoint is too weak to make any strong critcisms or rebuke anyone. > THE position or stance we maintain/hold/have regarding IBM is negative enough already of course, these days roy paints anybody who is a step ahead of him in his "advocacy" is a "mob" which is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the way that open source used to paint anybody with integrity as being "extremist" or "about hate". really, 2021 is the year that roy becomes another fucking linus. but whatever! > and it’s based on hard facts, not gut feelings and/or speculations oh please... > so suffice to say we’re Systemd sceptics. oh, fuck no! no, no, no. first of all, youve made no serious effort in more than HALF A DECADE to move your computing away from systemd. youre a debian apologist FIRST, and a systemd critic (more like a "hypocritic") when it barely even matters what your stance is anymore. everything debian has done (because you still use it) you blame on ibm, like they had debian held at gunpoint or something. youre a liar when it comes to systemd, NOT a "sceptic". secondly, its only been 21 MONTHS (less than 2 years) since you said: > I myself have been more or less neutral or at least apathetic on the matter [systemd] for many years. you LIED to me about your stance on it in 2018, just like youre lying to your readers again in 2021. you proved it was a lie when you wrote that in 2019, and the reason you lied was to get people to do things for you under FALSE PRETENSES, you fucking fraud! so take your "scepticism" and shove it right up YOUR MOTHERS FAT OLD ARSE! you LYING SON OF A BITCH! > Even worse than sceptics fuck you... > since well before IBM bought Red Hat. oh, fuck... DUDE! LIES! http://techrights.org/2019/10/23/devuan/ "I myself have been more or less neutral or at least apathetic on the matter for many years."-- YOUR lying arse, not even 2 years ago. (months AFTER ibm bought red hat, it should be added) http://techrights.org/2021/07/29/crying-wolf-systemd/ "we’re Systemd sceptics. Even worse than sceptics since well before IBM bought Red Hat."-- YOUR lying arse, not yet even a week ago. YOU LIED ABOUT STALLMAN, you lied TO stallman, you lied to ME, and also about me, and YOU LIE to ALL of YOUR READERS. only a delusional person could lie this much and not live in constant shame of himself. instead, telling a really big lie is probably one of the few things that brings you pleasure. FUCK YOU, roy. your readers deserve the truth. * 29 july: "The OSI’s Defunct Elections (Privacy Breach), Conflict of Interest (Nicholson), and Other Lingering Problems" http://techrights.org/2021/07/29/osi-privacy-issues/ > OSI privacy issues. I don’t think we’re supposed to see the voters’ data (publicly accessible here as the front end or the corresponding .json file). [...] Summary: The above, together with an email from the OSI below, serves to show they’re re-running a bad election and — yet worse! — there appears to be a conflict of interest implicating the OSI’s sole member of staff! [...] THE OSI is in a state of disarray following the abrupt departure of its sole member of staff one year ago. Coordination is poor, the agenda has shifted in a negative way/direction (like attacks on the FSF), and this is what its interim manager said in a message: > As an Individual Member of the Open Source Initiative who joined by March 4th, you are eligible to vote in the re-run Open Source Initiative’s 2021 Board of Directors election. This email includes important information about the election and voting process. > The OSI elections… again seem to have a security/privacy issue, compromising the integrity of the whole process. As one source told us (see screenshot, links etc. at the top), issues linger on “and then there’s this privacy concern.” [...] “However,” our source added, “I saw the OSI elections are currently being… reheld. So, not sure because I did not document who was going for elections but… I noticed Salt there. He has a long standing relationship with Nicholson, the Interim General Manager. So, Salt running for a position where he has history with the “manager” is odd, but we are well aware of the cronyism in the past. What really struck me was his bio, where he discusses paid positions for Executive Director and staff.” * 29 july: "Half the People in This Letter Are IBM Employees" http://techrights.org/2021/07/29/ibm-and-the-coup/ roy continues to lean on my work to distort reality and truth this week. the truth? its debian as much as (arguably even more than) ibm, but roy is using ibm as a shield for debian. LOADS of new data roys assessment deliberately ignores (he has remained too much of a shameless coward to mention this): => https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org/who-hates-our-freedom-the-most.html => https://wrongwithfreesw.neocities.org/what-muckrights-wont-tell-you-about-the-coup.html of course eventually roy will take THIS data and spin it too. anything you give to roy he twists to support his own bullshit-- and he even gives himself credit for it (he had nothing to do with the gnu+github research i did. he had no part in it whatsoever, but he says "we" did that research and then he states things about it are both factually incorrect and go against the actual findings). this is what you will get for helping his monopoly. * 30 july: "‘Open Source’ as a Failed Initiative" http://techrights.org/2021/07/30/open-source-failed/ > Summary: A closer look at the dire state of the Open Source Initiative, or OSI, which no longer protects Open Source (let alone software freedom) but instead helps openwashing, Microsoft entrapment, and a coup against the FSF open source IS a colossal failure in terms of its stated goals. in terms of its actual goals, they have paved the way for a corporate takeover. this takeover can still be beaten, but chestbeating isnt the answer. admitting how bad things have gotten (without turning around and feeding hubris for shits and giggles) is necessary to fixing anything. roy cant decide, so he does both. the problem is, if you cant decide then youre either committed to a very detailed and thorough analysis, or a bunch of bullshit that throws truth out the window. on that much, roy has clearly made his decision. its not only open source people that say the fsf has failed-- open source has their own reasons for doing so. when they say "the fsf is irrelevant" they mean that open source should take over. theyve really been saying that since the 90s, and bruce perens left osi over this before the turn the century. so of course, open source still says that. but when open source HAS taken over more or less, then the fsf HAS failed. and even roys own community talks about this. his articles are far from representative of his own community at this point. lets see what roy says: > THE OSI situation which we spoke about last night [1, 2] is further aggravation of an already-fatal prognosis. Things got a lot worse (and very fast) a year ago when the General Manager left and months ago we saw the current (“interim”) General Manager viciously attacking Richard Stallman. Some even accused her of borderline antisemitism (in the mailing list). no argument with that. i think the charge of antisemitism (it was an idle/thoughtful comparison, not an impassioned one) came from a former fsf staff member actually. roy has quoted him a number of times. > The latest episode in this circling-down-the-drain drama isn’t pretty. It looks like they’re once again failing to run an election and people have already noticed the creaks. Their system isn’t working and there’s nobody truly in charge. They lack technical skills and a lack of legal background is impossible to compensate for with shallow politics. osi is a scam and it should be shut down, but its propped by sponsors and probably (not unlike fsfe) trying to figured out what to do now that its sold out everybody, including its own founders (sound familiar? its a trend these days...) > At the moment the OSI is trying to sink the FSF, hoping that by taking other boats down love the nautical metaphor, roy... > under the OSI can somehow still maintain some relevance. i dont think osi cares about relevance in the big scheme of things. roy is talked about it like its a separate entity, not the arm of microsoft he treated it as a year or two ago. roy is happy to tell you that osi was taken over by microsoft. if he wants to explain the silly bullshit going on at osi, he should probably consider what a fraudulent non-profit co-opted by a large for-profit needs to do to keep running. if they even plan or need to keep running at this point. my guess is theyre playing it by ear, though its probably naive to assume they dont have a plan. if they indeed have a plan, im sure it involves becoming MORE of a front for corporations. that shouldnt be too hard, everybody is doing it these days and theyre sitting right in the laps of the right people. possible exceptions: something inconvenient and they decide to cut their losses. its a possibility. but without better information i think we have to guess. maybe if roy took his thumb out of his arse and got real about investigating this he could figure out the real plan, but until then i suppose hes going to stick with chestbeating. so much for the news. > They keep telling us that the FSF is “irrelevant”, but that’s just a case of wishful thinking and an act of projection. Long live copyleft. Sharing is caring, so happy sharing (and hacking). its true that they want people to believe this. its silly to think they havent PARTIALLY succeeded. i think if we are honest (for roy thats hypothetical of course) then we differ mostly on what percentage of relevance the fsf has sacrificed, or lost, to various coups that roy pooh poohs one moment and YOU CANT STOP THE COBRA! (i mean, he actually says "hydra" though thats how i hear it) and the next moment hes like "shit you guys, this is serious!" it is serious. but thats what some of us mean when we talk negatively about the state of the fsf. theres really no question whether the fsf has let us down or not. nor is there any question that osi set out to help destroy them. roy doesnt seem to be taking into account the possibility that osi was willing to sacrifice itself-- i mean, it already has. but thats not the same as failing, if it was their plan to sacrifice themselves to sabotage free software-- they did that already. they "failed" when they sold out, but... they sold out two decades ago. any part of roys article here could be considered "non-bullshit", until you put it all together into the crap that it really is. * 31 july: "Linspire Should Be Avoided in 2021 Just Like It Was Avoided 14 Years Ago" http://techrights.org/2021/07/31/linspire-clown/ > FOURTEEN years ago we called for a boycott of Linspire for its patent collusion with Microsoft. The same happened with Xandros, which would buy Linspire and temporarily push Freespire. That failed just like Novell and Turbolinux. linspire, but not debian? im not saying linspire isnt worse in and of itself. debian has certainly screwed over FAR more users. its definitely apples and oranges here. though im not sure it isnt also a double standard, again. you can say im making this about debian unfairly. thats alright, the argument is definitely for my own amusement. either way, "we" agree that using linspire is a bad idea. * 1 august: "Microsoft Knows That When Shareholders Realise Azure Has Failed the Whole Boat Will Sink" http://techrights.org/2021/08/01/microsoft-server-lies/ there are so many things wrong with this article im not sure where to start... - esr was penning this sort of chestbeating bullshit 20 years ago, and the message people have taken from that to this day is "we dont need to worry about microsoft". - also its been 20 years and it still hasnt happened (which doesnt mean it wont happen, thats not the point). how many times has microsoft insinuated itself into things and nobody worried or bothered to do anything about it, because of this sort of chestbeating "we cant lose" fucking hubris? its a self-defeating prophecy-- im all for cheering on our successes. lets not do it early like these two. - marketshare arguments are shallow and often miss the point (conflate or ignore key differences) between objectives and advantages of alternatives to mainstream and popular bullshit. when we are the underdog, we point out the problem with marketshare arguments. when we become mainstream, we put too much of our awareness about marketshare arguments aside. its just too tempting to say "look, obviously weve become #1 for a reason!" even when we refuted that very argument simply by existing (and offering something better) before. to paraphrase (without sympathy for) linus torvalds, i dont want our activism to turn into a contest to see who is best at autofellatio-- the "best" (by a rational or relevant metric) is OFTEN not the most popular. and often the way you get to be popular is by cutting corners and sacrificing what made you better. or just: "marketshare arguments are shallow". im sure ive been guilty of this sometimes myself, its still a sloppy argument as a rule. perhaps a more poignant way to say this is that if we spend too much time chasing marketshare, we are sacrificing our advantage to play the game by microsofts rules instead. and i think this is increasingly poignant, as the linux kernel becomes simultaneously ubiquitous and steeped in corporate takeover-- is this really what we wanted? > The main point of contention is the claim that sometimes Microsoft is "first" at things. As noted a number of days ago, it’s almost never the case. Throughout the company’s entire history it was mostly ‘stealing’ other people’s work, undermining the original. then rewriting history (to make Microsoft seem like a pioneer). a bit of roys pot and kettle action, but true of microsoft nonetheless. > Many people still think that Windows was the first operating systems with windows in it, that Microsoft Office is the ‘original’ office suite (Microsoft did not even develop it; it just bought it piece-wise), and that Microsoft had a role in the rise of the Internet or the World Wide Web. The very opposite is true! yes, its funny how people can actually pretend to stand for (and get thanked for) the exact opposite of what they actually did. > Mr. Lewis, who was inside Microsoft, has pointed out that Microsoft is in effect defrauding shareholders. i already made the comparison twice, it really doesnt need to be made a third time in the same article... > He even filed evidence and lodged a formal complaint with the SEC. Azure layoffs are being hidden from them and there’s financial fraud taking place. Not for the first time in Microsoft’s history… muckrights has covered this before, and i have no problem with the fact that theyre covering it again. despite the fun ive had with the comparison to muckrights itself, the main takeaway i really want people to have is that painting this as the end of microsoft is irresponsible and (in practice) actually leads to setbacks in the movement. its not something im taking the time to prove, but i think putting it out there (as was done here) is a reasonable start. i dont think this is too implausible an argument to give real consideration to. > I recently wrote that “Linux is a Lot More Dominant Than You Were Led to Believe“ (or “Almost 50% of Web Traffic is Linux at the Client Side, Even Higher on the Server Side”) along with a chart and meme... its also alright to refute microsofts marketshare propaganda with facts. spinning THAT the way its being spun is even worse, as marketshare arguments are already shallow on their own before you try to use them to prop up an extraordinary claim. > As a Techrights associate pointed out at the time, “below some level of market share (85% or so) Microsoft will no longer be able to maintain monopoly rents. i dont consider that unlikely. however, it misses the important point that microsoft didnt build their monopoly on windows-- they built it on dos. then they used windows to prop up their dos monopoly. then they used office to prop up their windows monopoly. this is how microsoft actually works-- as a chain of lock-in dependencies, with each one eventually shedding the older lock-ins and creating new ones. "open source" itself was supposed to be (in eric raymonds own words) microsofts "worst nightmare". today, microsoft controls open source and uses it as a trojan horse against free software. i think roy and eric raymond have an ego problem in common. its not with admiration that i say microsoft has been fairly successful with their control strategies-- certainly far more successful than esr predicted (he didnt seem to look ahead to microsoft taking over his own organisation either). i think microsoft has probably failed by their own standards, but that wont stop them from trying-- nor are their efforts such a failure that we should start underestimating them. i dont want to paint microsoft as invincible. i want to point out the fact that we still have a long way to go, and getting cocky now will only help microsoft. like i said, theres nothing wrong with celebrating successes (even this one). spinning that celebration into the sort of hubris this is article pushes (not for the first time, as roy himself has actually made this sort of argument many times over the years) is the self-defeating part that should be discouraged. the reason roy does this is for the benefit of people like himself that are so self-congratulatory that they can say "we did, we won!" while others are still fighting and roy contributes rhetoric. its very much like what politicians do. "i dont want a protest, i want a parade!"-- a (highly trained) officer responding to blm protests as they reached (for now, at least) an all-time peak > I expect that the threshold has been crossed and that’s why they started to “give” away the new versions. thats funny to read on muckrights, when for 10-15 years theyve pointed out microsoft giving away things as a takeover strategy, but now its a sign of weakness? > It’s probably also why so many budget items have been moved under the heading “Azure” so as to provide the illusion of growth somewhere. [...] nymshifting is a common tactic among many companies. Microsoft uses it a lot [...] this much i dont dispute. its "good" "rhetorical" practice to mix your bullshit with facts, in hopes that people will conflate the two. > Also, technically, they should not be able to trademark common dictionary words [reference to "Surface"]. "azure" is also a common dictionary word. the halloween documents mention a "blue sky" something or other, but ive never found anything to confirm a connection between the halloween documents language and "azure". i dont think you should be able to trademark single words, unless they have a unique (nonstandard) spelling. even then, i dont think single-words (like "quik") are reasonable in the kind of scope that is typical of "monster" cable, trying to go after any brand with "monster" in the name. the trademarks for "puppy chow" dog food and "puppy linux" are both registered, to different people (both trademarks have limited scope). in the uk the scope of a trademark is traditionally broader than in the states, a point which ive never seen evidence that roy is aware of. this is obviously a side point (whether his or my own) and has little to do with the article. > Microsoft can fake growth, especially when combined with the efforts of its minion stenographers out in what’s left of the trade press.” (Example puff piece from The New York Times, parroting what Microsoft claims; or “cooking the books” as the associate put it) i wonder if roy intends his readers to believe this is the first time microsoft has done this. im not trying to insinuate that, except for the fact that its presented as part of an article trying to make the argument that this is the end of microsoft. and anything theyve already done before... (like giving away free stuff?) i get the argument that dumping can be a bad sign at times, but when youre already well-known for doing that as a tactic, i dont understand how it can be both strongarming competitors and also a sign of weakness. this is a point of contention for me with a lot of pointless chestbeating articles like this. (this article isnt even pointless in my opinion-- but the chestbeating premise/conclusion of it is). > I’m suspecting that Vista 11 has no other purpose than to push TPM hardware and eliminate all Free, general-purpose motherboards. Once the TPM modules are ubiquitous they can start the software side… this is a threat worth taking seriously, though hopefully microsoft will back off if it is resisted strongly enough by consumers. sadly, i dont think the resistance is as strong now (due in no small part to things like smartphones acclimating people to having less control over their computing, but thats certainly not a novel point to make here or anywhere by now). > How about those scattered press reports about Azure-linked datacentres being shut down? so first you say that the end of azure means the end of microsoft, and then you prop that up by saying "and the end of azure is coming soon". maybe it is, and that would be welcome (the only time ive dealt personally with a self-professed softie evangelist, he was bragging about how azure was going to be ubiquitous whether we liked it or not, and when systemd devs said similar that was what it reminded me of) but i think its stated too matter-of-factly here. though perhaps im just too sensitive to bullshit to rate it "fairly" (then again, ive been wrong before). > In the realm of servers Microsoft lost the battle a very long time ago (see “Is Azure Stagnating?” in case they’ve fooled some people into thinking they’re a big server host; they’re not! good. > Microsoft was super-paranoid about any of us mentioning these layoffs because that harms morale and HR! They even came to our IRC channels to discourage us talking about that! while i dont doubt this, i believe roy is overstating it to reinforce an argument i think ive already made sufficient protest of. * 3 august: "IBM’s Attack on the Community and on GPL/FSF is an Attack on Red Hat’s Greatest Asset" http://techrights.org/2021/08/03/ibm-vs-the-community/ i believe he intends that "red hats greatest assset" is their codebase. if it is "allowhurst" (thats one of roys better jokes, did he coin it or did mincer?) then im not sure what anybody needs in the person who sold red hat to its enemy. allowhurts real legacy was to help people gut the very thing he was in charge of. he was no asset, but like i said i think he was referring to the code. > IBM has no clue what it's doing i dont understand this argument either. when microsoft purchased github, neither roy nor i (nor the hundreds of thousands of people who left github that week) thought it had a chance of improving matters. i believe we are on the same page regarding microsofts intentions. my response was that red hat was next, and that was announced months later (albeit by ibm, of course). i didnt assume ibms intentions would be better than microsofts-- why is roy making that the premise of his argument? if you follow the discussion at muckrights, ibm is well-known for gutting their acquisitions. of course they said otherwise, for the same reason marketing people always insist the latest product is better than everything before it. who actually believed them? if ibms goal was to gut red hat, they seem to know EXACTLY what theyre doing. this is another article where i really dont know what the fuck roy thinks the objective is, and cant imagine why. i doubt hes that naive, but i cant always guess the real motiviation for some of his bullshit. > Ever since IBM bought Red Hat it has repeatedly attacked the FSF (in a malicious and personified fashion), looking for its own ‘copyright grab’ whilst outsourcing loads of code to proprietary software monopolisers who attack the GPL; by doing so, IBM is destroying the value of what it paid more than 30 billion dollars for. he really doesnt think that was their goal? granted, there ARE other more plausible arguments that suggest ibm doesnt know what theyre doing. they just dont have anything to do with this one. maybe roy just assumes this one is like the others, because why would it be different? but then again, does he really think ibm wanted red hat to succeed? why? i think roy himself says that ibm is a patent troll. gutting red hat wont help them as a patent troll? (internationally, i presume. i dont really keep track of where patents are the biggest threat). * 3 august: "How the News About ‘Linux’ Gets Manipulated to Spread FUD and Promote the Competition of GNU/Linux" http://techrights.org/2021/08/03/manipulated-linux-news/ > We quickly examine the sorts of news one gets from Google 'News' when searching for “Linux” and we conclude that real news is occluded or missing or "how can muckrights spin the real news if roys reliance on google keeps him from getting it in the first place?" > THE sad situation we’re in means that important news won’t be covered; instead, those with the money will control the press, e.g. via the Linux Foundation and other PR agencies. at least roy doesnt bow to his sponsor (directly). > We’ve noticed ZDNet perishing lately (not much output) and diverting some “content” to other domains, but there’s still ample room for misinformation and Microsoft pays for a lot of it — in the same way the EPO keeps buying buying press coverage about itself i probably made enough fun of this already, which can be found by scrolling up to july 28th (about a week ago in the timeline). * 3 august: "The Free Software Community Needs Solidarity and Stronger Resistance Against Corporate Oligopolies With Their Overlapping Interests" http://techrights.org/2021/08/04/coup-of-overlapping-interests/ or "how a divisive, lying shit like roy can pose as a mediator or voice of reason" > Don’t be fooled by the cabal of large and usually monopolistic corporations, which generally pursue back doors and government/military contracts, especially when they rear their ugly heads through their abusive operatives (social engineering with pseudo-ethical arguments) i hope leah read this article. if youve read other things ive said about #savegnu, i havent accused leah of being a shill or anything like that-- her talents are many (shes more of a hacker than i will ever be) and she is interesting politically, i am a sceptic of some of her proposals. im still eager to see how #savegnu plays out, despite any misgivings. > “Userbase” or “useds” is not what we’re meant to be; Corporate overlords want us all to be their "slaves" this includes musecorp, though (even this week) roy begs to differ. > Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman (RMS) do not have to be idolised (“cult of personalities”) but they definitely need to be defended from a longstanding and ongoing corporate coup fuck torvalds, he was hoisted by his own petard. torvalds is the stooge who got tossed away by his own bosses. he needs no defence, he was never on our side-- he was on theirs. roy wont grant the possibility that this is a rational statement, so let me spell it out. people who are sentimental about torvalds are people who have come to be believe the very bullshit that he attacked us all with. torvalds betrayed free software the minute open source came around. they used him and threw him aside, that doesnt make him our ally-- he never was. the idea that he needs our defence is ludicrous. he has nothing to offer, he cant even fork his own kernel. roy likes to suck up to him sometimes, but thats par for the course. "gnu/linux" as a pairing was wishful thinking all along, and the fsf resisted it for a long time until gnu was swept away by linux and red hat. the rest is history. today, even gcc is swept away by red hat, the latter of which built itself on open source. thats a problem for free software-- a problem, not a solution and certainly not a help. and roy just doesnt get this. the (new) fsf doesnt get it either. we were sold out by people we shouldnt have relied on, but did. that includes linus, the completely corporate schmuck that he is. roy probably falls for the idea (like many do) that linus is anti-corporate because he dislikes SOME corporations. but ALL corporate stooges dislike SOME corporations! microsoft hates google, that doesnt make either corporation our friend. it didnt make linus an ally. > which the corporations seek to justify using nicer-sounding terms like “security” (that’s how they justify added complexity such as Rust) or “safe space” (they’re collectively insulting the community as if only employees of monopolies can help combat bigotry) yep, thats how they took over linux and open source. its pretty sad that so many people could fall for something so cynical. but open source was pretty much always a scam. > Richard Stallman (RMS) has not publicly spoken since May THE REAL RICHARD STALLMAN IS NOT COMING BACK, i said-- did i not? what i said was that he would be propped up like a cardboard cutout (and i said that even before he was reinstated) and his silence speaks volumes. im not particulary glad that i was right, but i will mention that i said what i said for a good reason-- IT WAS TRUE. > (in his latest appearance he asked people so sign a petition in support of him being reinstated inside the FSF’s Board) and there has been no update for weeks in the pro-RMS petition. No new signatures added or at least none displayed. Is that stalled? Is the maintainer of this petition now doing that addition in larger batches (that seems to have been true before), more so after the 6,800th signature was registered and displayed? Some readers might say, “who cares!” or “why does that even matter?” or perhaps that it has served its purpose. unless its purpose was to get stallman to lead the movement again, because he isnt doing that. i have made it very clear that i do not blame stallman for this-- the phrase i used was "exiled-in-place". > It does not matter all that much, it might even be largely symbolic, but a similar situation happens in Linux, the kernel, where Torvalds nowadays more willingly accepts Microsoft patches the real linus torvalds never even existed. fake torvalds is the only one weve ever known. im not saying he wasnt better than his bosses-- zemlin is colder and nastier and more narcissistic. by comparison, torvalds is just a self-serving douchebag who sucks up to people like zemlin (with the trappings of a "rebellious" image, of course-- though you wont find stallman in a suit and tie) but flips off nvidia. if sticking a finger up at a company you dont work for and acting like a fool is all it takes to be a rebel, steve ballmer also qualifies. i dont know why so many people fall for linus and his bullshit, maybe its because they still use his kernel. > It has now been over 40 days since an IBM employee changed the anti-RMS/hate letter (removing a signature), but the defamation is still fully in tact inside of that letter. a good follow-up protest would be to try to get away from the yoke ibm has on the gnu/linux ecosystem, though that would be actual work while roy blogs just for fun (he said so himself, years ago-- i think he still does it just for fun actually. lying is fun for him, manipulating and bullshitting people his one of his thrills, and its cheaper in terms of labour/reward ratio than his dayjob, which hes always eager to get away from-- planning to retire in his 40s! so he can work on lying to thousands of people every day). > It continues to do harm by spreading false accusations. now, for a limited time, clearance sale on pots and kettles... > They just change the names at the bottom of of the letter. Bully de Blanc, who played a key role in it, has since been rendered unemployed. That was around the time of the last edit (21 June 2021). i have no sympathy for molly at all, though i think there are enough people hating her in particular. that doesnt mean i think the feelings are unjustified. i wonder why there isnt a bit more for other people who did what she did. in some ways i think shes obviously even worse than roy, so this is far from fanmail. shes as much of a stooge as linus as well-- but they (and lets not be ridiculous like roy, i dont just mean ibm) obviously want to make a patsy of her. why... oh! because roy is a debian apologist. sure, let debian (and others) make a patsy out of molly, and let those who are even worse off the hook. roy really is a bit stupid that way, but suck-ups often are. im not saying molly is innocent. just that her guilt is a great decoy for her bosses. they can throw her aside like they did with linus (its sort of unfair to compare molly to someone with technical chops, but im referring to linus for his industry politics, not his coding abilities) and we can miss the point from the other end: * people miss that linus is a stooge because his bosses are worse * people let mollys bosses off the hook because shes an adequate decoy its the ability for people to be distracted by one or the other, when both parties are fuck-awful. > It is very important that we defend the likes of Torvalds and Stallman, even if we do not like them or agree with them much of the time. conflating torvalds with stallman like roy does here is just punch-yourself stupid. they never had anything in common beyond the sheer popularity and relevance of their code, and the comparison is absurdly tenuous other than that-- a corporate myth, which roy perpetuates in an article about solidarity AGAINST corporations. > Because they’re being targeted (they still are! It’s thinly-veiled). i dont think targeted is the right word here. alright for stallman-- if youre trying to find what they have in common, someone has their thumb down on both of them. torvalds isnt being "targeted", hes just being shit on. the difference is that torvalds is a stooge, and fuck him-- and stallman is a real person. if you want to extend the comparison, molly is also getting shit on. that really doesnt bother me (as far as i know, only pocock has gone too far) except that many people who are worse manage to use her as a distraction. similarly, it doesnt bother me when linus gets shit on-- linus is a shit! he always was a shit. being a lesser shit isnt the same as not being a shit. bringing torvalds back now wont even save the kernel (one more thing that makes roys article a true exercise in bullshit). > Large corporations want them out of the way because leadership vacuums give way for more corporate domination thats true, of course. but it misses the point that torvalds is already out of the way. roy talks about the takeover like it hasnt already happened, or like he thinks it can be reversed. the truth? its just blogging. linus isnt coming back, you silly fuck. and its fine to keep making that point (its important and relevant to tech history) as long as youre not pretending that some kind of #freelinus thing is going to happen, and going to change anything. get real! (no matter how idealistic you are, thats silly and ignores the fact that linus is a fucking sellout/traitor anyway). > They want shareholders rather than a moral compass in charge. Similarly, EPO staff pay attention when roy talks about the epo stuff. its the one thing he talks about where he actually has something to say. so his obsession with turning everything into epo stuff is silly, but useful. its a departure from roys typical silly bullshit and the part where he dips a toe in something worth actually saying. but its a shame the way he throws free software under the bus (with his constant if-by-whiskey bullshit) just to fight the epo. * 4 august: "GNU/Linux Users, Developers and Advocates Being Painted as Unruly and Rude by Corporate Media Looking to Undermine Software Freedom" http://techrights.org/2021/08/04/rude-corporations/ GNU/Linux Users, Developers and Advocates Being Painted as Unruly and Rude by Corporate Media Looking to Undermine Software Freedom > This is a very common strategy of narrative inversion; the abuser, which is well rewarded financially for the abuse, claims to be the victim of “abuse”; we oughtn’t fall for it. Because if we do, then they will split us apart and spit into our well. Their goal is to scuttle anything that’s not serving their sponsors. dont forget triangulation, youll never spot a covert narcissist if every time you nail him for a lie he says "LOOK, IBM IS PROJECTING!" because there can be only one party doing this, it cant be ibm and also a critic of ibm lying their arses off all the time #reputationwashing etc. > We could go on and name some of the culprits (publishers, authors, etc.) but keeping the description generic enough is probably beneficial as it averts unneeded controversy and sidesteps accusations of ad hominem attacks (which is actually what those culprits themselves are doing). yes, its better to keep that in irc since youre already full of shit enough there. > Spotting the projection tactics is always worthwhile because it makes responses/rebuttals a lot easier. In due course, if liars walk away because they’re rebutted effectively, they may refrain from doing more of the same, as guilt and shame tend to accompany dishonesty. although for some people the guilt and shame produces an endless cycle of lying-- some people are depressed because theyre overweight and eat because theyre depressed, and some people are ashamed because theyre lying, and lying because theyre ashamed. dont take my word for it, simply compare what roy is saying to some information about compulsive liars and why they lie. hes telling half the story here (the half that makes ibm and guilty and himself innocent-- of course ibm is guilty, and roy to his credit, has never assisted a genocide to the best of my knowledge. give yourself a pat on the back roy, you are many things but genocidal isnt one of them). > I’ve been doing advocacy for Free software since my early twenties and I’ve seen plenty of these liars (or corporate spinners) roy, youre as bad as anybody at ibm. your advocacy mostly exploits other advocates and converts their work into something entirely self-serving. the scale is nowhere near what ibm does, its true. you could never be as bad as the company itself, with its entire legacy of death. > walking away, vanishing abruptly or gradually. We hardly hear the name “Enderle” anymore and publication volume in sites like ZDNet is decreasing. The thing about chronic lying is, overdoing it diminishes the impact and over time the incentive to do that just isn’t there anymore. dont worry, roy is still young yet. > Our hope is that the likes of IBM will quit trolling the community and defaming people; we see what proxies (if not employees then media that they pay) engage in defamation, and the financial harm caused by retaliation from communities may beget cessation. In Microsoft’s case, they’ve become more clever in the way they attack or belittle GNU/Linux because they’ve come to realise that FUD is detrimental to sales (many of their customers also use GNU/Linux). Vigilance certainly goes a long way and pointing out errors discourages repetition of these errors (or intentional lies). i dont know why hes talking about "belittling gnu/linux" when he criticises the linux kernel himself (not in a way that really leaves any hope for it, either) all the time. its just that hes a monopolist and wants to decide when and how other people criticise it, based on rules that arent even consistent. > One way to help the Free software cause is to respond and correct; oh good, youre welcome then. > if claims are being made of all sorts of “isms”, then we need to examine the underlying evidence and if there’s insufficient evidence we can talk about it. like when roy says dont bother forking audacity, or pretends to have a problem with systemd (or pretends that stallman does) or he wastes a month sucking up to the new head of freenode, or... > A lot of the time we may find hypocrisy and double standards from the accusers (projection) and talking about it publicly can certainly discourage repetition. It really does work! by all means, feel free to give examples. so far though, ive shown concrete examples of roys lies (in his own words) and it has only provoked him to lie more. my goal isnt to get him to stop. im not naive enough to think that proof of lying will stop a compulsive liar. so roys entire thesis here is certainly incomplete. there may even be categories of lies or liars that will be stopped the way he says it will, but it wont work on roy himself. im already doing exactly what he advises, and its not working. > Remember that 15 years ago we focused on responding to lies told by Microsoft and Novell. Over time they shifted the targets, moved the goalposts, and changed their story. they specifically bought github just to undo all the damage that roys blogging did. > At the end Novell simply collapsed and Microsoft’s dream of universal “Linux tax” didn’t work out. shoot for the moon, and one day you may have a patent tax on every usb stick and android device. but roy didnt bother mentioning that. i wonder if they stopped collecting on those... > It only temporarily worked to a certain extent and now they’re incapable of suing companies over patents in relation to “Linux” because it would cause a massive backlash and customer exodus. i guess thats a new development in the past 14 months, as the june before two months ago he said: http://techrights.org/2020/06/20/gnu-linux-fud-and-ridicule > Microsoft’s war on Linux and on GNU carries on; right now it reaches an incarnation of being disguised as “love”, with a new and very lousy CEO that claims “love” for Linux (while pulling E.E.E. tactics against it, not to mention patent lawsuits). so just to be perfectly clear: - june 2020 - http://techrights.org/2020/06/20/gnu-linux-fud-and-ridicule - microsoft is engaging in patent lawsuits against linux: - "Microsoft’s war on Linux and on GNU carries on; right now it reaches an incarnation of being disguised as 'love', with a new and very lousy CEO that claims “love” for Linux (while pulling E.E.E. tactics against it, not to mention patent lawsuits)." - august 2021 - http://techrights.org/2021/08/04/rude-corporations/ - microsoft cannot sue linux over patents because there would be a giant backlash from customers leaving: - "now they’re incapable of suing companies over patents in relation to “Linux” because it would cause a massive backlash and customer exodus." so thats a lot of progress in 14 months. did it change in that time, or is that another lie from roy? (also if it did change, what led to this incredible progress in the past year or so?) does roy still insist that calling people out on their lies makes them stop? because i just called him out on a lie, in an article he wrote ABOUT lying, where he says calling liars out will make them stop, out of shame no less. roy sez: "it really does work!" * 4 august: "Destroying Freenode Was Not the Objective, But That’s Just What Happened" http://techrights.org/2021/08/04/freenode-future/ > Last week (apparently around Wednesday) Freenode decided to put an end to anonymous access, which means it’s unfit for purpose; they also reject registration with ‘throwaway’ E-mail accounts, so basically it’s like a phishing expedition exploiting the old reputation of Freenode to make a catalogue of people. And considering the top-level ownership of current Freenode (notorious Kape and some ‘casino’ entity on top of it) it would be reckless to supply them with any such data. given that he was just defending the same party a while ago, while people were making a similar argument (about trust and data) about freenode, and that hes now defending audacity even more unjustifiably, i think we should question the latter in particular. > We heard from a PIA client (Ryan from our IRC channel) that even PIA now routes traffic through some dodgy entity, possibly a honeypot, at least for American clients. > Thankfully, by now we’ve come to the point where over 95% of communications happen in our self-hosted network and not any other network (there is a #techrights channel in several other networks but hardly any activity). roys non-self-hosted network... > Self-hosting has once again proven its advantage; people should be in control of their communities and projects rather than outsource to companies like Microsoft (GitHub), which will inevitably do something similar to what Freenode did in 2021. roy does not have any control of his irc hosting that is not on loan to him from someone else. his argument in irc is actually that he controls irc because he controls the domain name. this is arguably a far better option than relying a freenode, of course. but what roy calls "self-hosted" in reference to his irc channels is a farce. * 5 august: "Firefox Cannot be Trusted at the Hands of Today’s Mozilla Management" http://techrights.org/2021/08/05/lousy-mozilla-management/ > FOLLOWING the controversy about Audacity's management with its ‘telemetry’ ambitions (they always try to say it is for users’ benefit) we don’t see much of a controversy over Mozilla’s hiring of surveillance capitalists from Facebook and data collection from Firefox users. i think theres a couple of simple things that explain this... - firefox is a browser, and instances of "phoning home" have increased over the years, from googles dodgy website list to unwanted updates having unwanted effects, to the point where mozilla has already lost most of the users it will ever lose over such nonsense. in other words, firefox hasnt lost many people lately because it lost them a long time ago instead. the users it still has are the ones that havent got a better idea. and there used to be more options. - with audacity, there is no reason it needs to be connecting to the network for most of its functionality (except for updates, which, really...) and theres never been a new feature that compromises privacy in audacity before. its a brand new thing. this alone is enough to explain the discrepancy, but there arent many audacity alternatives while there are still other browsers (and as i said, there were arguably more choices when mozilla started to lose people). so people unhappy with mozilla just went elsewhere-- people unhappy with audacity... raised a stink. its not like a full daw such as ardour is necessarily what theyre looking for. > Mozilla is funded by Google and Google profits a lot from targeted (spying-based) advertising nb: mozilla and openbsd are both things roy doesnt use so hes happy to throw them under the bus, (i dont like mozilla either, btw) but he wont hold debian to the same standard here, even when its a standard that the fsfe (as a non-profit) cant do better than. this is not a defence of the fsfe, theyre closer to open source than free software and theyre traitors anyway. but you know, sometimes these donations matter more than other times. preferably in a way that has any sort of consistency, and isnt just pull-rhetoric-out-of-your-arse-as-you-go-along. * 5 august: "Then They Censor You… and Then You Win" http://techrights.org/2021/08/05/microsoft-censors-you/ > As always, we strongly urge people to examine real alternatives, including GNU/Linux distros (Apple is just a brand change). In technical terms, freedom aspects put aside, GNU/Linux has been ahead of Windows for well over a decade. whether that makes it a "real alternative" anymore is still up for debate. and roy doesnt strongly urge people to examine "real alternatives", plural, instead he actively discourages all real alternatives, EXCEPT gnu/linux. so the line "we strongly urge people to examine real alternatives, including GNU/Linux distros" really isnt honest. > A lot of things have improved since then and in terms of functionality KDE is vastly ahead of Windows i dont agree. i know roy really loves kde but imo its bloated bullshit. and i was honestly ok with that, until it became bloated bullshit that demanded so much more. i still agree that you should get rid of windows of course, just not that you should bother with kde (or that its even good). > If you’re still using Windows, give GNU/Linux a go; it’s free and if you like it, then you can keep it perpetually. It will also respect your freedom gnu/linux doesnt really respect your freedom, and roy doesnt really think it does either. but then he says stuff like this anyway. its some kind of game. > With keyloggers, “telemetry” and other malicious ‘features’ (like listening devices) becoming ‘standard practice’ in the proprietary world i think this is probably worse in windows (im certainly more concerned about it) but some of this is becoming standard practice in the free software world as well-- and roys response to that is watered down, and (inexplicably) mixed. roy telling people how to get away from telemetry while defending audacity is like microsoft telling you how to get away from malware while pre-installing windows on your computer. its absolutely ridiculous. > we need to urge people to make the switch. The sooner, the better. Our dignity sometimes depends on our peers’ choice of technology. We need to eradicate malicious technology richard stallman says that even a step towards freedom is a good thing. i agree with that. what i disagree with is roy continuing to tell people to take smaller steps, then insinuating that this is how to get away from anti-features that are present in the very software hes promoting. why would microsoft do that? because they dont care about your safety from malware, they just want to be in charge of your computing. why does roy lie to his readers? its not because he cares, its because he wants to be in charge of your choices (or at least believe his blog will tell you what you need to know, even when its demonstrably bullshit). he can always tell you to use something better and less treacherous later on-- but if so, why doesnt he do that now? * 6 august: "‘Hacker’ ‘News’ ‘Flags’ Accurate and Factual Article About Mozilla, So Let’s Say More About Mozilla..." http://techrights.org/2021/08/06/mozilla-politics/ > We’ve decided to confront censorship by saying more of what’s being suppressed, in this case about Mozilla and Firefox (which seem to have become more about politics, not the technical things they once were) i like this approach. its difficult to argue with the premise because-- i think roy plays the victim sometimes to make it seem like hes the underdog here, and i dont think hacker news is that great, but this comes down to a lesser evil argument and im not even sure which is the lesser evil in this. > THE fine line between moderation and censorship has been blurred to the point where editorial control becomes political, self-serving, or a product/service on sale (like keynotes). translation: i think its a actually a fact that hacker news has (with or without good cause) censored muckrights for several years, but NOW its political! (im sure he said it was before). > maybe we should not be surprised to see mass censorship or a ‘cull’ in sites like Facebook and Reddit.. i think its funny that roy is tying this to certain (unrelated) events, rather than simply point out that hacker news has REGULARLY censored him. i guess he decided it sounded more like a scandal if this was tied to other scandals, rather than just saying "oh, they censored me again-- like they do". > facts when they’re not convenient to some companies/editors tend to just vanish, “flagged” without as much as a reason, let alone an explanation.”This new video speaks of last night’s censorship in ‘Hacker’ ‘News’; it is part of a pattern. it is definitely part of a long-standing pattern. whether its got anything to do with the pattern roy is talking about... > Those who have followed us long enough are probably aware of other (prior) examples; facts when they’re not convenient to some companies/editors tend to just vanish, “flagged” without as much of a reason, let alone an explanation. ive followed muckrights for years, and here i guess he says "yes, theyve done this before". but not before drumming it up to be almost topical! > If they insist that Corporations are “Communities”, then why can’t we say that Corporations are “Hackers”? maybe if he stopped asking loaded questions, we could get some real answers. i stopped bothering with hacker news while i was a muckrights contributor. i think it speaks volumes of what i think of hacker news that i havent bothered to go back there, and instead read a website run by a guy who i constantly call an "arsehole" and catalogue is compulsive lying, as if that were a reasonable alternative to whatever hacker news is. but then, hacker news has (or had) a reputation as a more intelligent (and on-topic) reddit, and reddit is a giant turd. that makes hacker news amore intelligent and on-topic giant turd, and while im sure they wouldnt agree, ron would simply quibble that "no, this is personal!" i doubt it, really. they see that roy is bullshit and they flag it. i dont think theyre particularly reliable, a lot of stuff they let stay is also bullshit. but if they happen to be right sometimes, im not sure why roy thinks its special in this instance (only joking, of course i know why he thinks it is). * 7 august: "Forking is Easy, But the Hard Part is Finding a Strong Rationale for It" http://techrights.org/2021/08/07/forking-needs-reason/ > Forks are meant for particular purposes i use mine as a landmark, to help me find the spoon. > forking is not hard, but making the fork supersede or overtake the original is the hard part i love when you can see the bullshit a mile away, but roy still starts with the obvious in hopes that youll conflate the two. its a speechwriters trick, and its that much funnier when the bullshit it leads to is such egregious bullshit. > THERE were lousy attempts over the years to fork Linux (by the very same people who viciously attacked Linus Torvalds and defamed Richard Stallman). On what basis? Fabrications and lies? Of course such forks didn’t stand a chance because forking linux is just like forking any other application. except that its much easier to fork those applications, and even torvalds himself couldnt fucking fork linux at this point. so the article so far: 1. start with an obvious truth 2. find a datapoint that proves fuck-all about anything whatsoever, but insinuate just the opposite. > those involved have since then vanished and now work for proprietary software companies… because being a professional troll can pay a 6-figure salary or more than $600,000 a year. 3. irrelevant demons to stir up the reader, this is a pointless "2 minutes hate" though its in a pointless 2-bit article. > the existence of forking as an option is highly important as long as its just an option-- debian has needed a fork for half a decade, unfortunately devuan was never up to the task (and im still a fan of its leader, but he had a very hands-off approach with devuan, sadly). did roy ever do anything for devuan? NO, but i hear that in 2021 hes a "systemd sceptic!" he said similar bullshit to me in 2018, before telling the public a year later that he had always been "neutral" or "apathetic" about it, but whatever. completely hypothetical forks matter! now back to this article on why not to fork... > it keeps projects and developers beholden to some degree to those who depend on them. yes, this completely bullshit narrative that merely the THREAT of forking will convince bad developers to go straight again. or put in other terms, not forking is just as good (MAYBE EVEN BETTER!) than forking! because forking is important! > The very risk (or mere threat) of forking has already caused Audacity's new owner to try some diplomacy, walking back on some plans and apologising (which would likely be insufficient). i do not believe one word of this. > This matters to us because we’ve used Audacity that i believe! roy always goes much easier on projects he uses. i think most people do. before i switched from gnu/linux, there was a time when i had no ready alternative and all i did was talk shit about what it had turned into over the years. roy does this too-- but when he writes articles, he will often defend or recommend things that he slags mercilessly (and sometimes justifiably) in irc. is he bipolar? or is there "more than one" roy? i really dont think so, i think hes just full of shit. but either way, his articles often give a "pass" to things he still uses. because why shouldnt you use it, if hes stuck with it too? > for over a decade in TechBytes. If we can find a resolution other than forking, it’ll be simpler for everybody. and if its not a resolution, then he can just if-by-whiskey his readers all the way to hell. > Similarly for IRC networks, very similarly, since he wasted a lot of time on that bullshit as well and was completely wrong to boot. though i think that was more defensible-- its other examples (like debian) that i find egregious and dishonest. > at this stage Freenode is just shooting its very own foot and you should totally do that with audacity and debian, too! > We’re already mentioned the Glimpse/GIMP situation because a few months ago Glimpse basically died. i havent heard of glimpse anywhere but muckrights, ever. its a great example of a pointless fork, which is roys point after all. and the difference is that people actually give a shit about forking audacity. NOBODY gives a flying dogshit about glimpse, youve got to be kidding. or youve got to be roy. > Did GIMP developers flock over to his ’cause’? Of course not. So Glimpse could not keep up and therefore died, just like many other GIMP forks/branches, including those trying to ‘reinvent’ Photoshop. roy is so busy making a bullshit argument in favour of doing nothing, hes going to leave out an advantage of such forks (which is relevant to both free software applications and even competing operating system development) so im going to add this here: and thats that sometimes forks (and other derivatives) convince "upstream"/whatever to make certain changes. and in these instances its not the THREAT of forking, you know, but the ACTUAL FORK that does it. even if the fork disappears, it sometimes contributes something to the thing it is based on. of course glimpse is probably NOT an example of this, but roy is cherry picking among already picked cherries here, and his examples are silly bullshit and a fuck-awful comparison. there were also some gimp forks that served entirely different purposes. and just because they didnt convince everyone to... dont tell roy to look at text editors for examples, for fucks sake. > There needs to be a very good reason for forking. there really (generally) doesnt though. a fork that doesnt catch on rarely hurts the original-- people just use the original. people forked (or tried to fork) debian, did it hurt debian a tenth as much as debian has hurt themselves? not at all. roy is simply trying to work back from his conclusion towards an argument. he hasnt really got one. > Mastodon stays Mastodon, just like GIMP stays in tact and moves on. this is especially funny because roy used to use a fork of mastodon, a fork which his so-called "self-host" still champions. and if you are self-hosting, how can your self-host disagree with you on this in the first place? oh, because its not self-hosting. im probably taking the fork of mastodon thing out of context though, because its difficult for me to believe roy is really that full of shit. and yet i know he is, i can even demonstrate it, but its still so hard to believe that i think "no, im obviously missing some context here". am i? i dont know! roys so full of shit that even second guessing doesnt fix everything! so theres a great reason to fork mastodon, and roy used that fork, but here he says theres no reason for a mastodon fork, so mastodon stays mastodon. and yet, it hasnt! how fucking bizarre. > Then there’s the whole LibreOffice/OpenOffice situation. It was profoundly different when it was Novell’s Go-OO (Microsoft-connected disruption and thus indebted to OOXML) versus Sun. We wrote many articles back then and we welcomed LibreOffice because it tackled a real problem roy is just rambling now. forks that people care about, they care about them for a reason. forks that people dont care about, rarely do any harm. in other words, roys article has nothing of importance to say. its real purpose is innuendo, to insinuate that hes right about something or that someone else is wrong-- not that it actually says anything. but thats if-by-muckrights for you. > That’s just copyleft at work! It helps ensure forks do come about when they need to and forks perish when there’s no real need for them. then theres no fucking problem, and no need to discourage people from forking audacity. because as you said, it will take care of itself. i dont even care if people want to fork gnu (why would i? forkability is a PROMISE that gnu should keep!) i care that they tell lies about the founder and leader of the project-- i care that they try to mislead people about their organisation by abusing the trademark. mostly i care about the lying and trying to take over something, a fork is alright, indeed a fork would be better. of course that particular part of my argument could be (just barely, at least) said to be self-serving. thats not why its being made, and its also the truth. but very, very rarely is forking a problem. roy should get a forking clue. * 7 august: "When Tech Rights Go 'Mainstream'" http://techrights.org/2021/08/07/tech-rights-eff-and-fsf/ its interesting how roy paints this, as people seeing merit in his terminology and helping to spread it. > Our focus on exposing organised crime and criminals [1, 2] is generally being recognised; but the term “tech rights” also spreads a little further as the reach of the message broadens i think this is probably much closer to bullshit than reality, but its possible that im mistaken. > This is a different kind of “tech rights” video. We start by showing an embrace of the term, this time by Doctorow from the EFF * (there were some British doctors who used the term several years ago) and then we end up landing on the FSF’s site, showing this latest blog post about software patents, including a discussion of the UPC — or putting a rogue, judge-hostile EPO in charge of courts — and this still-active “End Software Patents Wiki” (whose original maintainer no longer seems to be involved with the FSF). The video is spontaneous, it talks about our future direction and focus, and it commends the FSF and some of the geeks who are still at the EFF (there are elements in the EFF which we don't like, but the EFF isn’t a monolith so we’d rather not throw out the baby with the bathwater). actually i think the eff should just go jump in a lake, but its funny how quickly roy changes his tune (or tone) about them the minute he can say "aha, you all like the title of my website, do ya?" i think its a coincidental overlap, and roy is seeing what he wants to see. but theres at least a chance im wrong, and hes right about this. that chance seems very small, but i wont rule it out without more information. * 7 august: "Microsoft Uses the Media to Attack GNU/Linux and It Also Utilises Windows ‘Defender’ to Discourage Adoption of Free Software" http://techrights.org/2021/08/07/the-market-share-video/ > “Defender” is to Microsoft just a Monopoly Defender; as it turns out, Microsoft rapidly loses its monopoly power/rents (this is the main subject of the video) and now it wants to put “Defender” even in GNU/Linux (we suppose just to censor software on other platforms as well, based on what Microsoft deems “safe”) [...] THE monopoly of Windows is waning, but the abuses of Windows have not ended. Moreover, it corrupts and infects the media. Money is being used to manipulate so-called ‘news’ sites. [...] Following this morning's charts about Microsoft's version inflation (Vista 10+1) I’ve decided to do a quick video, which ended up much longer than I had expected. It’s not a repetition of what’s of the text but rather a discussion of the tough situation Microsoft has found itself in — to the point of blocking parts of LibreOffice and other software in Windows. once again, microsofts abuses (which arent new) are painted as microsoft suffering. while i dont doubt the correlation, i question this mutually exclusive proposal where microsoft has to be waning because its being abusive. that means its been waning for its entire existence. i mean, it did things in the beginning that were dirty and desperate moves. it does things now that are dirty and desperate moves. theres something in roys fact-checking (or bullshit-creating) algorithm that i dont get here. and i follow all his other stuff about how this company or that is waning. i think a lot of it is chestbeating. i dont doubt that some of what hes saying is actually happening, its simply difficult (or impossible) to remove the hype from what muckrights says about this and derive a realistic picture based on facts. of course i dont usually watch his videos, because they plod along and i know what goes into them. ive watched the videos before, and usually its not more interesting than the accompanying text. do i think its interesting and relevant that microsoft is using their software this way? yes, but i read a similar story (and really always suspected this would happen-- im not the only one) years ago, so once again this doesnt make me think "gosh, look how far theyre stooping now-- they would have to be desperate!" yeah, that, or they would have to be microsoft. even if the conclusion is true, which i doubt, the argument seems to ignore a lot of evidence to the contrary. like you wouldnt say "hurricanes happen because its tuesday" if most hurricanes actually took place on friday and saturday. if anything, when microsoft is truly waning i expect their abuse will decrease (even if it increases first). i dont know if microsoft is really there yet. but i dont think roy has any real evidence. heres how you make a story like this: 1. microsoft are being dicks! (totally new thing for them) 2. this is because theyre desperate! the way you fight dicks like microsoft is with dick-waving like roys story does. at least roy wants us to think that. when this was an occasional thing, i thought he was trying to be cute. these days you see this sort of thing on muckrights all the time, and its just-- dick-waving at microsoft. i really want to side with the dick, but its... ridiculous. there has to be a better way to bring on the demise of microsoft than pretending its already here. i just dont buy that, its aimed at people who want to believe it so much they dont care what the real story is. thats the muckrights way. id rather create or find a victory against microsoft than make up something as flimsy as that. what i hate most of all is that roys "attack" of microsoft is sometimes so weak that it makes you feel bad for sticking with facts. but if youre going to call roy out on his same old bullshit, i dont think "LOOK, MICROSOFT IS DESPERATE!" is a reasonable shield. i strongly doubt that hes going to say anything important in video that he wont say in irc or articles. the videos are just a dump, for people who dont read articles. thats my assumption, and i think ultimately roy will prove that assumption-- if he hasnt already. * august 09: "[Meme] Stop Giving Code to Microsoft's GitHub" http://techrights.org/2021/08/09/gnu-linux-as-hostage/ > "Every line of code that is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat." -- James Plamondon, Microsoft Technical Evangelist. From Exhibit 3096; Comes v. Microsoft litigation [PDF] and yet despite this quote, three days later in irc, roy is saying: ``` Thu 04:23:10 │ schestowitz-TR │ fixosdev was pulling his hair out (metaphorically) over anything with github DEPENDENCIES Thu 04:23:18 │ schestowitz-TR │ which means almost everything ``` but i never said that that dependencies are as important as the projects which CHOOSE to stay on github (or worse, move there after microsoft purchased them) and indeed, roy could go back to one of the articles published on his own website to inform him of the reality (rather than his fud) about this: http://techrights.org/2020/04/26/fig-4-9-github-free/ > I like it to set an example for all my other projects; whether they follow the example or not. this is me saying that my favourite project is the first place that i want remove github dependencies from if possible-- theres a version/flavour of fig that i use much less, and it has extra features, and i havent touched it much since i removed pygame from the main version. ive deliberately kept the main version simpler, and its the one i rely on. i think what roy meant to say is that i take dependencies seriously. so does microsoft, according to his quote. if their goal is to overthrow every line of code possible, i think our response should at least try to be proportional. roy is exaggerating my stance a bit as a straw man, but hes done worse. maybe roy wants to water activist responses down, or maybe hes just unhappy because i have more hair than he does. i mean ive done the bald thing before, its not something im worried about because its just fucking hair. but it all grew back faster than roys ever will. and hes younger. people with male pattern baldness shouldnt feel bad, and thats not bullshit. ive always loved phil collins, (michael stipe is another one, if hes the one im thinking of he decided that bald was better than balding) and his looked like it started in his 20s or something. the first CONTEMPORARY pop album i listened to all the time was "no jacket required", and before that i listened to oldies more. i still like oldies, and i still love phil. but i got that roy said "metaphorical". i dont think that word means what he thinks it means, its not a word for "completely pulled out of my arse". should you try to remove github dependencies? of course! everything on github is a dependency. some are worse than others, but none are actually good. DO WHAT YOU CAN. as usual, roys activism consists of talking about a problem, taking too much credit for someone elses research, misrepresenting the findings of that research, and then smearing the author hes "sharing" credit with. not always in that order. when i try to actually quantify the amount of (important) software on github, he tries to handwave it away. mine at least helps people trying to avoid github. his simply placates. i mean, github and softies have that side covered already, do they not? what is roys REAL position on this? (i dont think he has one, actually). > Microsoft uses GitHub to encourage GPL violations it’s time to reassess the alleged 'safety' of outsourcing code to Microsoft this is funny too. you would think "DEPENDENCIES" mattered to gpl violations and not outsourcing code to microsoft. what are we supposed to take away from this irc revelation? that theres no problem "outsourcing to microsoft" if the project is only a library or language? that seems like an awfully big loophole. but roy isnt really that thick, hes just bullshitting. * october: this is when muckrights starts to heavily feature posts from ryans blog (that doesnt bother me). ryan is a former softie (that doesnt bother me either) who is openly hostile to microsoft now (that definitely doesnt bother me) and who doesnt use the same license for his posts that roy does (thats disappointing) and this week hes writing about how great flatpak is (thats extremely disappointing) particularly for running non-free software. thats too bad. granted, roy always seemed happy promoting non-free games, so the only real change is that non-free games are being promoted in an article. since muckrights never had a policy of only promoting free software, this isnt really a change. the thing is, in practice (and as predicted early on) flatpak is more about supporting non-free software than it is about promoting free software. ive tried a flatpak-based distro or two, and the main "draw" seems to be "this is how you get a crAPP store in gnu/linux". even if non-free software didnt exist, flatpak would still suck (my opinon) though i certainly agree with ryan that theyre better than snap packages-- in the way that a kick in the arse is better than a kick in the nuts. its actually a side note that muckrights "guest posts" are promoting flatpak this month; the main point should be that muckrights has a steady supply of guest posts again, from an author who has certainly contributed before, but maybe not as often as now (proofreading aside). * 18 october: i dont really support linus, he sold us out http://techrights.org/irc-archives/irc-log-techrights-181021.html ``` schestowitz-TR in fact, someone refused to talk to me because of Linus Oct 18 20:54 schestowitz-TR whom I don't even support that much Oct 18 20:54 schestowitz-TR I think he sold us out Oct 18 20:55 ``` i dont blame him for that, i feel the same way. but you know how last month he made linus a "founder" of the same os that the fsf made? thats a bit much, and: http://techrights.org/2021/09/25/coup-gnu-linux/ > We need to resist the coup. This means we need to support the founders, even those we don't always agree with. Power vacuums are almost always being filled by corporations i mean, linus was always a shill. hes been a shill since the previous century, for decades. plural. he said free software was "about hate" because it stood up to corporations. so how the fuck is supporting HIM going to help "resist the coup"? its not. its a lot of balls, is what it is. and roy doesnt even support linus himself, he thinks "he sold us out". so why did he say just the opposite just 3 weeks ago? change of heart? no, its just that roy has more rhetoric than actual positions. this isnt really a nuanced issue-- we dont really need to support linus if he sold us out, nor can he do fucking anything to help (nor would he if he could) but roy bullshits. a lot. saying we needed to support linus because hes a "founder" of gnu/linux-- he isnt. hes a co-hijacker of gnu, among worse hijackers. roy knows that, he just needed to talk about the coup in terms that are absolutely bullshit. roy gets the coup wrong all the time-- because it means nothing to him at all. it doesnt matter to him. its just something else he can bullshit about. peoples positions change, but when they change theres a sequence of events that more or less explains the changes over time. then there are bullshitters, who just say whatever, whenever, for whatever reason suits them for 5 minutes. thats what a lot of stuff on muckrights is. a fucking LOT of it. the epo stuff is probably consistent. no reason (that i know of) for it not to be. => https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org

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