Who needs Git (a Linus Torvalds project) when there’s proprietary Microsoft GitHub?



Source: Microsoft, via

Summary: The disturbing turns of the self-described “Linux” Foundation, which seems to be promoting proprietary software and even Microsoft rather than Linux and Free/Open Source software while the role or capacity of Torvalds is being gradually diminished

T HE Linux Foundation is sadly becoming a bridge to Microsoft, not to Linux. That’s like the Russian military hosting on AWS or GNU projects using Visual Studio. Projects that have nothing whatsoever to do with Linux, the kernel, are being ‘gifted’ to Microsoft. The following new (hours-old) press releases with our comments added hopefully sum things up (these are consortia that involve surveillance firms, including Palantir with its notorious, racist agenda):

The Linux Foundation’s Artificial Intelligence Community Announces New Acumos Release Focused on Creation of AI/ML Models [Ed: The "Linux" Foundation calls itself "collaboration platform" (or similar), but this new one shows that it's just outsourcing all this collaboration to Microsoft in GitHub (no kidding). The "Linux" Foundation pays a lot of money (salaries) to the father of Git, yet it cannot host its own Git instances and instead outsources it to Microsoft proprietary software, a centralised surveillance platform called GitHub?] The LF AI Foundation, the organization building an open AI community to drive open source innovation in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL), today announced the new release of Acumos code named Boreas. This latest release of the open source framework and marketplace will enable the creation, training and license verification of AI, ML and DL models and apps, among other benefits to the community of developers and data scientists.

The Linux Foundation Will Host the Federated AI Enabler to Responsibly Advance Data Modeling [Ed: Original posted here, in tandem, by Craig Ross, not a familiar name (maybe external PR). This project is on GitHub (advertised in massive fonts on the front page). Yet another new example of the “Linux” Foundation outsourcing everything to Microsoft. Takeover complete? Only days ago the Linux Foundation announced its new Vice Chair, Wim Coekaerts, who had worked for Microsoft.] KubeCon + CloudNativeCon – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it will host the FATE (Federated AI Technology Enabler). It is a federated learning framework that fosters collaboration across companies and institutes to perform AI model training and inference in accordance with user privacy, data confidentiality and government regulations. 4Paradigm, CETC Big Data Research Institute, Clustar, JD Intelligent Cities Research, Squirrel AI Learning, Tencent and WeBank are among the first organizations committed to the new Foundation.

I’m at a loss for words. It’s all happening so fast. Those who know how E.E.E. works (and have seen many examples of it over the years) cannot simply ignore/dismiss all the evidence. Should we all sit aside until it’s too late? To avoid offending the culprits?

Some of the above sites, we should also note, give the visitors empty pages unless one enables JavaScript (e.g. https://www.fedai.org/) and it’s a sign of unsavory design that encourages surveillance (https://www.fedai.org/ has malware in it, there’s Google Analytics watching your every move).

“If Torvalds was to step down, we know who would take his place (the interim maintainer while he was away). He used to work on Microsoft projects and put Microsoft code inside Linux when Novell was his boss (and in turn bossed by Microsoft).”The staff of the Foundation hardly uses GNU/Linux. Some of them, who contacted me in the past, used Microsoft. Jim Zemlin uses Apple. How many people in the management of the “Linux” Foundation actually use GNU/Linux? Same question for the Board…

I reckon very few of these people care about GNU/Linux and/or have used it, based on what I know about some of them. The Linux Foundation is not about Linux; it is more about keeping GNU/Linux under corporate control than about spreading it. Today, June 25th, marks 2 months since the “Linux” Foundation effectively sacked all Linux.com staff (even the editors). No original work has been published there since (only a few links to the Linux Foundation’s site, e.g. the one about Wim Coekaerts). In our daily links we’ve meanwhile included the following link as well:

What has the Linux Foundation become? It protects Microsoft from its critics (saying that it’s “like kicking a puppy” while Microsoft staff 'greases' things up) and it’s slamming Torvalds — who stepped down temporarily — for exercising free speech and carrying out quality control, which may mean rejecting code that is like cow’s feces (‘bulls**t’) and yet repeatedly being pushed onto Torvalds, whose tone understandably escalates over time, seeing that polite messages aren’t getting across effectively enough. Are they trying to just weaken him as boss of his own project? If Torvalds was to step down, we know who would take his place (the interim maintainer while he was away). He used to work on Microsoft projects and put Microsoft code inside Linux when Novell was his boss (and in turn bossed by Microsoft).

So far everyone we’ve heard from shares our concerns on these matters. Everyone. Few are however willing to speak about it. No news site touched the subject. It’s all PR. And speaking of PR, watch what Slashdot published 3 days ago under the modified headline “How OIN’s Linux-Based Patent Non-Aggression Community Drove Open Source Growth” (it links to ZDNet).

“We expect things to get yet worse over time because the Foundation isn’t communicating any of these issues. It never airs these concerns and it hasn’t even said a thing about Linux.com being effectively disbanded.”This headline is nonsense (yet it was promoted by OIN staff in Twitter); in fact it’s a promotional lie. The growth coming from OIN is a software patents growth, not “Open Source Growth” (more on that in our next article about IBM, which pretends Open Source would not be possible without software patents) and there’s no evidence to support this title. It doesn’t take much research to see that OIN is about making FOSS more like large corporations with their software patents, not making those corporations more like FOSS. The same goes for the Linux Foundation. They both just misuse the “Linux” brand to promote the agenda of companies such as IBM. To say that the Foundation exists merely “to pay Torvalds’ salary” is also quite misleading because nowadays it pays dozens of people ~$300,000/year in salaries. They’re not technical people; few actual coders get paid; they’re the likes of Zemlin, riding the coattails of Linus Torvalds and his project, Linux, to get as much as a million bucks a year. It’s truly discouraging to see that in the same way oil companies thoroughly corrupt politics Microsoft corrupts FOSS groups like the Linux Foundation, OSI and so on. Money buys silence if not complicity. Over at Tux Machines we’ve shown (over the weekend) that Microsoft’s role inside the Foundation keeps growing yet more. They have a lot of power and influence inside this Foundation, so should we be shocked to see Jim Zemlin saying that being against Microsoft like “kicking a puppy” (his words)? Is self-defense like animal abuse? Violence against puppies? We’ve warned about this for well over a decade (e.g. Zemlin urged people to “respect Microsoft” more than a decade ago). Microsoft’s work for ICE doesn’t seem to bother him, but Trump does bother him. Palantir does not seem to bother him either (the Foundation now names it as a member, even in press releases, while acting as a front group to it). This is not good and it’s only a matter of time before the “Linux” Foundation gets associated with things like concentration camps (which Microsoft proudly profits from, it even brags about it in its blog and lies about it to employees).

“…for Azure training they have budget, but not for Linux.com.”Here’s another new ZDNet piece (same author, who is connected to the Foundation) that promotes the Foundation’s work for Facebook, a company that gives all its data to Microsoft and was nearly acquired by Microsoft (instead they became strategic ‘surveillance capitalism’ allies with a shared warehouse of people’s secrets). We expect things to get yet worse over time because the Foundation isn’t communicating any of these issues. It never airs these concerns and it hasn’t even said a thing about Linux.com being effectively disbanded. Yesterday they published a press release about training (Clyde Seepersad), highlighting a program that promotes Microsoft Azure; for Azure training they have budget, but not for Linux.com. █

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.





Permalink Send this to a friend