[Video] How Much Will It Take for Most People to Realise "Open Source" Became Just Openwashing (Proprietary Giants Exploiting Cost-Free or Unpaid 'Human Resources')?
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Openwashing Freedom Out of Existence
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THE situation at IBM isn't particularly encouraging because money is being wasted while CEO "AK is turning "Open Source" into proprietary software. He takes away from the Commons."
"It's one thing to build a product with a proprietary codebase," Jeff Geerling wrote last week (he's a high-profile voice), "and charge for licenses. You can still build communities around that model, and it's worked for decades."
We took note of that in Daily Links, but to repeat:
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Corporate Open Source is Dead
2024 is the year Corporate Open Source—or at least any remaining illusions about it—finally died.
It's one thing to build a product with a proprietary codebase, and charge for licenses. You can still build communities around that model, and it's worked for decades.
But it's totally different when you build your product under an open source license, foster a community of users who then build their own businesses on top of that software, then yoink the license when your revenue is affected.
That's called a bait-and-switch.
Bryan Cantrill's been sounding the alarm for years—yes, that Bryan Cantrill, the one who posted this gem: [...]
This problem isn't limited to IBM.
There's also this video, "Corporate Open Source is Dead" in which Jeff Geerling points out the 'rug pull' done against FOSS contributors.
If Techrights gets its message across effectively, there will be lots more people like Geerling out there - people who realise what had gone on until they belatedly saw all the evidence. All the information is out there, but more "mainstream" sources and social control media act as barriers, led by rich owners with rogue interests.
"Geerling sees the value in Software Freedom," an associate says, "but via infiltration by Microsofters the Raspberry Pi Foundation (RPF) no longer does and will eventually do something untoward. For the RPF to turn around and get heading once again in the right direction it would take cleaning up (out) the staff roster a little and the board of directors. That includes, especially, their web forums."
"Jeff [Geerling] sees IBM for what it is. Byran Cantrill is one who 'they' tried to cancel. I think there was partial success because it has been so hard to find talks from him in recent years or articles about talks by him."
"However, I wonder what the Microsofters in RPi Foundation will now do to Jeff and his collaboration with RPi as a result of the above post. I wonder how all that fits into Bruce Perens' new project."
In some sense, Bruce Perens and Geerling are too late. But even though Boycott Novell goes back to 2006 (almost 18 years ago, same issue) the petition by Perens against the Microsoft/Novell deal predates us by a few days.
"Looking back," the associate says, "it may have been a mistake to split off 'open source' from Debian, but I wonder what it looked like at the time. Also given the dire situation within Debian as an organization, I wonder if it is slightly better off for it, OSI notwithstanding."
Microsoft is now a national security problem and it is controlling the OSI. A really bad situation...
"There is a sort of amnesia in the community which needs to be overcome," the associate asserts.
"Regarding IBM see 'financialization'," the associate concludes. "IBM 'makes' more money playing the stock market than with the products and services which it has acquired. The product and services are acquired only to 1) be able to pretend to be in a particular field, and 2) offload debt."
My personal thoughts are in the video above. Apparently, according to insiders' rumours, IBM had layoffs last week. █