The GNU Project is Bleeding Into Microsoft

TechRights ^ | 29 June 2020 | Thomas Grzybowski

[ShadowAce]

WITHIN the conduct of human endeavors we usually think of Work in the categories of various forms of interpersonal reporting hierarchies, even if sometimes modified into something of a web. You can see these hierarchies when we discuss politics or corporate structures. Yet these paths of influence can often cross nominal boundaries, such as state or national boundaries, or corporate boundaries. Sometimes we can see the boundaries breaking down, with new inter-and-intra-community structures forming. In this flux I see the the GNU Project bleeding into Microsoft.

There are a number of empirical signs of the breakdown of boundaries between Free Software and Microsoft, such as the “Windows Subsystem for Linux”, but most insidious is the movement of GNU development processes onto the Microsoft-hosted platform, GitHub.

If one goes to the GNU Home site where they list their official packages there are some alarming observations to be made:

When you click on: https://gnu.org/software/nana/
Where you actually end up is: https://github.com/pjmaker/nana/

I find this deceptive and very concerning. For a number of important reasons, hosting GNU development on a proprietary Microsoft platform should be verboten. And for users to be programatically redirected away from the GNU site to the Microsoft site is ethically criminal, and foreboding institutional death.

Now try these other GNU projects:

https://gnu.org/software/macchanger

https://gnu.org/software/jwhois

https://gnu.org/software/fribidi

https://gnu.org/software/httptunnel

https://gnu.org/software/which/

https://gnu.org/software/guile-dbi

A sad situation. Interestingly, most of these redirections seem to have made fairly recently, not long after Richard Stallman was ousted.

And then there are other disturbing development projects – if you take a look: GNU Bison consistently sees quite a lot of very current activity on GitHub (https://github.com/akimd/bison); and Flex, an important component of GNU Bison, is located entirely GitHub, provided under a BSD license.

https://gnu.org/software/flex/flex.html –> https://github.com/westes/flex ; https://github.com/westes/flex/blob/master/README.md .

GNU Radio, also a GNU project, goes a step further and conducts the major parts of its development cycle on GitHub. It’s not clear that they use the GNU sites for anything other than mirrors.

https://github.com/gnuradio/gnuradio/

https://github.com/gnuradio/gr-dpd/

https://github.com/gnuradio/gnuradio/pulls/

https://github.com/gnuradio/gnuradio/issues/

The growth and attraction of GitHub is based upon a number of factors, especially the social nature of the software development environment. Microsoft primes the pump for a “network effect” through the GitHub project sponsorship program:

https://help.github.com/en/github/supporting-the-open-source-community-with-github-sponsors/about-github-sponsors

Monetary grants given to projects make moving there more attractive, and the monies can be used by the project leader to make the project more attractive to developers. Because the Free and Open Source Software world is interconnected, as each particular migration or action takes place, the effects connect to the community on a global scale. As more and more developers and users become focused towards Microsoft GitHub, the resources and interfaces there become increasingly difficult to resist depending upon, and the paths or streams of community influence become too strong. The GNU Project is being swept away in a river of powerful influences.

Some folks have seen the process described above as a “loss of GNU integrity”, and it is that. But a large part of this “loss of integrity” is simply a lack of desire to resist competition, or even recognize the nature of the threat. Most importantly and most immediately the very core machinery of the Free Software Movement is being undermined and swept away by strong currents into a Microsoft-controlled domain: github.com █

[Regulator]

TECO still rules

:^)

[zeugma]

HELLO!!!--------HELLO!--------- What about systemd?

Indeed. systemd is evil incarnate.

[sauropod]

bkmk

[null and void]

That’s like getting rid of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

Watched the gnus lately?

[poconopundit]

I love what GNU has done. Three free GNU licensed software are invaluable to me:

GIMP - a free Adobe PhotoShop.
Audacity - a free audio editor.
Inkscape - a free Adobe Illustrator

Now on the Microsoft side, there are also free or almost-free software available.

Expression Web 4.0 — a great HTML editor (discontinued and now free)

Visual Foxpro 9 — a great object-oriented programming tool (discontinued, but will work as long as the 32-bit Windows OS is supported). Hard to find on web, but usually available for a few hundred dollars

[M Kehoe]

LOL.

5.56mm

[Wuli]

Your pic said everything, and gave me a good morning laugh as well. You get today’s “Wuli’s morning chuckle prize”. Thanks.

[no-s]

Stallman was cancelled as an sensitivity challenged old white guy.

On one hand I'm outraged that MIT and FSF folded over such obviously false accusations. OTOH I'm have trouble preventing bouts of uncontrollable laughter because I definitely recall him as a devout observer of all things politically correct. I remember having a great conversation with him in the 90's where I realized the only common ground we had was the unwavering dedication to the four freedoms. I told him as much and I hoped that his personal politics wouldn't hurt the FSF. But this outcome is beyond what I imagined.

At this point I'm afraid the integrity of the FSF will be tainted by association with corporate interests and it will become as challenged as the Mozilla foundation at maintaining a separate agenda from it's corporate sponsors.

[no-s]

systemd is evil incarnate.

But it's LGPL2.1+? Must be an insidious evil!

All kidding aside I'm thinking of a fresh start, switching to a distribution where I can control init. Currently evaluating NIXos.

[beef]

“observer of all things politically correct”

Cancelling RMS is just one more example of the left eating their own.

“Mozilla foundation”

Firefox has become a bad joke. They like to position themselves as the privacy alternative, and yet they want you to log in with them and use the Pocket thing. If they cared about privacy there would be no such features. I switched to Brave and haven’t looked back.

[Bob434]

Well, i have Good Gnus and I have Bad Gnus- which do you want first?

[Bob434]

[[free as in speech.]]

So, not very free then?

[Calvin Locke]

Early 1980s, I first used Emacs. I asked out loud "What's this 'moving moby region'"? An MIT guy said "Moby, as in whale. A big whale...". "Oh." was my response.

Must have been a PDP 11/70 running a flavor of Unix.

[Bob434]

for us tech dummies- what does this mean? Linux is morphing into windows? Possibly Going pay at some point?

[Red Badger]

No gnus is good gnus...................

[EEGator]

I didn’t think anyone would get the reference. :)

[Wuli]

I like that version of the Gary Gnu face, because without any words or Gary context, it could be captioned: “What the hell did he just say?”. That it was Gary and with that expression just really hit my funny bone this morning. Thanks again.

[goldbux]

GNU's Not Unix.

EINE Is Not Emacs.

ZWEI Was EINE Initially.

But you knew that. I just like writing it.

[martin_fierro]

Bmfl