They try to divide us and spur infighting, betrayals

Summary: Attempts to ‘sanitise’ or ‘socially-engineer’ Free software communities are underway; it may mean that we’re winning the battle (causing stress among corporate giants), but we must also be clever and cautious about it

What we nowadays see at the FSF, the Linux Foundation and even Debian is a sign of stress in corporate boardrooms. They strike hard at the very heart and core of Free software. Many people will likely be hurt — perhaps as a sort of ‘collateral damage’. Microsoft boosters have also stormed our IRC channels lately. We’ve learned this morning that they did the same thing in other GNU/Linux forums. We’re doing OK, we’ve learned to mostly ignore them (we don’t block or censor, ever).

“Microsoft boosters have also stormed our IRC channels lately.”Word to the wise, clue to the cautious: be careful what you say these days. The kapos are lurking, waiting for the next person to ‘make an example of’ for so-called ‘wrongthink’ (which may be something as trivial as criticising a government or a corporation that gave money to a project). They’re right there among us, sometimes as ‘fake’ community members, typically contributing no code but just lecturing and whispering, choosing targets for exclusion and shaming. █

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