1 Topic by freemedia (edited by freemedia 2018-11-04 01:46:22)

  • freemedia
  • Guest

Topic: is this why the linux foundation exists?

im not saying i buy into the theory, i just took it and ran with it. im not saying its accurate at all-- and finding a way for it to "fit" the other things going on doesnt mean "oh, that proves it then!" it just means i stuck two concepts together.

but i had some fun with this tidbit i found on the puppy forum today:

There's a conspiracy theory that Microsoft is actually sabotaging Windows because they want to kill it off...

so heres where i took that:

i thought they were going to buy red hat after they bought github, maybe ibm thought they were too and said "hmm, what if instead we could charge them for it?"

not that ibm ever seems to go according to plan (unless thats the real plan, etc. etc. etc.) ive compared ibm to jacques clouseau a lot recently. they always come out alright, but its hard to tell how:

"you idiot! that was a 34 billion dollar acquisition!"

"not anymurrrrrrr..." microsoft will buy things just to kill them off, ibm i think wants to keep things they have only a little use for as pets and charge people money for admission. i imagine in the large business sector theyre doing more than that-- plus, you know, research.

is this really a strategy of theirs, or is it just an old habit? can old companies learn new tricks?

maybe the moves from microsoft are better explained by older motivations than newer ones. sure, you have to look fresh. youll need a really big marketing department, and to make moves that are at least, different on the surface. as for microsoft breaking into hardware-- i used a microsoft "inport" mouse in the 80s. not just a dongle-- it came with its own card for the xt bus!

sure, they have their own hardware platforms now. i mean, copying things apple does to make money... microsoft certainly never tried that one before. "lets try the phone first, and if that doesnt work we can make a laptop for 'creative' types." if youre making money on something, being surprisingly lousy at doing the same thing rarely stops microsoft from trying. we can laugh at ballmer for the zune, but maybe the surface is the zune of laptops. at least we know the windows phone was the zune of that market. how was that a real change?

the surface is a windows ipad that comes with its own keyboard. man, thats original! (to be fair, i knew a guy with one of microsofts clunky digital tablets circa 2002. which was only a much-improved ripoff of the newton, complete with stylus.)

just dont try the strategy of shamelessly copying "other companies ideas" yourself-- they have an extensive collection of bogus patents, which they are still getting people to agree to so it matters less if theyre completely illegitimate.

step 1: write bogus patent
step 2: brandish patent at competition unless they sign agreement
step 3: use signature to prop up the patent (we arent there yet, but why bother with step 2 otherwise?)

its like the matrix: we know the legal environment microsoft works in is fictional, we have david ruschke standing in for morpheus-- but the stupidity of organisations makes it real.

"i dont understand. how do you invalidate a patent that one of the largest, most litigious corporations on earth backs up with a practically unlimited legal team?"

"you cant bend the system itself, it will fight back harder than you can try. you just have to realise: there is no patent."

"there is no patent."

if microsoft kills off windows (that is a pretty wild theory, it would be funny if its true) they will say they own gnu/linux again. and theyll have the testimony of lots of companies that its true.

maybe this is why the linux foundation is so important-- linus props up suse-- and suse props up microsofts portfolio. years later, when it comes around full circle, you have the linux foundation: open source has finally made itself the julia roberts to microsofts richard gere that it always dreamed of.

even if thats all as bogus as the patents themselves, it gives them a lot more time to charge money for this complete non-service to anybody.

heres what i would say if i were a real conspiracy theorist:

the linux foundation is open sources legal bunker for the day when the patent portfolio "s-h-t-f."

then lets get sillier: microsoft adds a similar patent agreement to github, and joining the open invention network?

"false security and the element of surprise."

bing!

in all honesty, its just too much like a movie. however, i feel confident enough that at least one tenth of this is plausible. which is bad enough, really.

other than something barely (a little) akin to all this, the linux foundation seems pretty worthless except as a monument to torvalds ego. when your code is in a device practically everywhere you go, thats kind of redundant. or, maybe torvalds is the closest thing to steve jobs we still have.

i usually write things vaguely like this because i think theyre important. this one is sillier, deliberately, and more for fun. in the past, i thought we would use chips to replace floppies because it would be fun-- i thought we would store our entire music library on our computers, because it would be fun. and i thought we would have cpu chips that can be reprogrammed with other architectures, because it would be fun. actually, i never thought they would commercially justify doing what today we call the fpga, but they did anyway.

i am often wrong about some of the details. yes, i thought digital music collections on hard drives were inevitable, point for me when i sampled that cassette single to my < 1gb double-height hard drive. but i scoffed when lossy compression was used. i predicted flac, not mp3 players-- while people were telling me "file compression only works on plaintext where theres lots of redundancy." yeah, if it works like a .pcx file. the first time i saw mpeg video on a non-lcd display in a store, i thought: "wow! they can DO that? now? this is amazing!"

2 Reply by zapper

  • zapper
  • zapper
  • Hyper Cyber
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2017-10-18
  • Posts: 1,075

Re: is this why the linux foundation exists?

That does sound scary, but I would hope, really hope, that the linux foundation wouldn't allow something as heinous as what you described to happen... aka microsoft trying to take over linux and gnu all in one. That would be a diaster after all.

It does sound farfetched, still though... things are getting crazy in many countries across the world.

HyperbolaBSD: The Future of Secure Libre Lightweight Operating Systems!

3 Reply by freemedia (edited by freemedia 2018-11-22 19:15:49)

  • freemedia
  • Guest

Re: is this why the linux foundation exists?

zapper wrote:

I would hope, really hope, that the linux foundation wouldn't allow something as heinous as what you described to happen... aka microsoft trying to take over linux and gnu all in one. That would be a diaster after all.

but it wouldnt be a disaster if it happened gradually over a long period of time. it would be a series of triumphs for "open source" proving that its worthy of the top of the mainstream-- lions and hyenas together at last, like in the lion king.

besides, microsoft is mostly owning more and more of our software via gradual legal moves and acquisitions.

its redhat (ibm) that "owns" more and more functionality via accretion and systemd.

and its open source that tries to own our movement (and through argument, insist that we sell out to them.)

if i were trying to sound an alarm, it would be laughable. imagine a train rolling at us from a mile away, at about 1 foot per second, and someone yelling "RUN! GET OUT OF THE WAY!"

theres a lack of dire emergency.

no ones going to take over gnu/linux, theyre just going to slowly eat it until its digested.

the "emergency" is that the longer people wait to do something about it, the more it nourishes a very dirty monopoly and undermines everything we do.

the longer we wait to acknowledge this (if it is a realistic threat at all-- which is harder to demonstrate when it moves this slowly) the more difficult it will be to reverse.

does that mean we will lose? absolutely. its really a question of how much we lose-- maybe a little, maybe a lot. we are losing, and winning, all the time.

the more we understand whats going on, the more we have the opportunity to win, and the less it costs. i wonder what an "alarm" for that would sound like.

perhaps it would something like: "um, by the way..." but i hope if its still a real threat, we would take it seriously.

also, at some point perhaps people stopped treating problems as real things, if they werent also threats. maybe threat is the wrong word. is it a problem? can we act on problems that arent threats? which decisions should we be making to address problems that may or may not also be threats?

the cool thing about free software-- and i am happy ot be critical of the free software movement, im not just a cheerleader or fan. im sometimes a critic. but the really cool thing about free software is, its the sort of movement that takes (most) issues seriously enough that we can talk about something like "the health of the free software ecosystem" and if you can prove that something is good for that, people will actually do it.

i mean, imagine if everything was like that, how many things would be improved by it.

but this is stuff that is bad for our health-- and like the pollution in the air and water, the costs to our health are generally for the benefit of an industry we disdain-- not because all of us are anticapitalists (some are, thats fine with me) but because of the corruption and lack of regard the industry has for the public.

the linux foundation is apologist, and smells like astroturf. theres no reason to pretend they exist in our interest.

they exist to further prop up open source, which exists to further prop up industry pollution of the gnu/linux ecosystem with corporate propaganda and corporate aquisition.

thats why there was github, thats why microsoft claims to love us, thats why there are patent agreements:

because open source and the linux foundation prop up these gradual, persistent efforts to undermine every single thing we stand for.

we could compare it to the sun, although thats giving it too much credit-- we rely on the sun (not really open source, even if they probably think otherwise) for our existence.

but the sun is also an existential "threat." it will eventually explode, and if nothing else-- thats it for life on earth.

if we intend to live past that time (ambitious to say the least, so just remember, i said "if") then we have no choice but to find a way to get out from under this threat in time.

the sun wont explode for you or me or our grandchildren, so theres nothing to panic about. but if we intend to survive it, we should at least keep exploring our options.

i would say thats true about open source and the linux foundation. they are opposed to what we work for. we may or may not need a fortress-- but whether thats the right metaphor or not, i think its safe to say that the health of the gnu/linux ecosystem is important-- that systemd is a sickness, microsoft has never for a day abandoned its war with us, and people who think that freedom can make everlasting peace with monopolies are very silly.

whats the alternative? everlasting war?

no, eternal vigilance.

4 Reply by zapper

  • zapper
  • zapper
  • Hyper Cyber
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2017-10-18
  • Posts: 1,075

Re: is this why the linux foundation exists?

Yeah... Like you said, vigilance is needed.

Microbugs (microsoft) is indeed a threat due to how easily it gets hacked, however mac os x is an even greater threat, not in outside malware, but in, restrictions and inside malware.

Gaggle (google) on the other hand is a sly fox and could easily be almost as dangerous as crapple (apple) due to their leader's beliefs combined with their rather strange method of using free software licenses for evil purposes and getting more support due to appearing open...

Which is different then libre of course and...  I suppose makes microbugs the least harmful of the three? Scary... but yeah, they all are a threat in their own way.

So yeah, the first sentence of this post is really true: vigilance is far more imperative then even stallman would understand.

He is a puzzle to me on a few things, but his views on proprietary software, hardware and gmos are all opinions I support.

HyperbolaBSD: The Future of Secure Libre Lightweight Operating Systems!

5 Reply by freemedia

  • freemedia
  • Guest

Re: is this why the linux foundation exists?

zapper wrote:

mac os x is an even greater threat, not in outside malware, but in, restrictions and inside malware.

im really not sure thats true as of windows 10. ive spent years complaining about apples restrictions, theyve relaxed those a bit (its still heinous, just relative) and meanwhile, this: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/commen … _to_track/

could easily be almost as dangerous as crapple (apple) due to their leader's beliefs combined with their rather strange method of using free software licenses for evil purposes and getting more support due to appearing open...

i dont like them either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_tech_companies

Which is different then libre of course and...

certainly

I suppose makes microbugs the least harmful of the three?

dont write them off yet. i would say all the big four are extremely antisocial/pathological in their attitudes towards consumers.

but yeah, they all are a threat in their own way.

with no disrespect whatsoever, i would say the reason you feel this way is that youve stopped paying close attention to microsoft. or worse (pure speculation and not attached to this notion) their new image is starting to affect even how people that should know better feel about them.

"yeah, evil, but definitely not as much as the competition." because its important to give credit where due (particularly regarding evil companies) i think we do the public a disservice by downplaying even the relative evil of microsoft.

theyve gotten a lot more evil over time, not less.

im not trying to downplay apple or facebook or google either. take what i said about micro$oft and it applies to them too.

vigilance is far more imperative then even stallman would understand.

thats a solveable problem, hyperbola seems to be doing more about that than most distros.

He is a puzzle to me on a few things, but his views on proprietary software, hardware and gmos are all opinions I support.

oh hes the best of us, as far as a single person goes. i firmly believe that if enough of us were devoted to the idea, we could combine in a way that was greater still.