Techrights

I appreciate the engagement, but it’s become clear that this particular user has been repeatedly following my posts to respond negatively - a stalker if you will [1]. I’d prefer to keep the discussion focused on facts, not personalities.

The key point, you don’t have to trust us, and we don’t want you to. Trust code, not people. That’s the foundation of the entire effort.

As for the Freenode situation, the popular narrative has been repeatedly misrepresented. The core claims were debunked and the receipts are here: http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/lee-side.pdf.

To clarify a few historical points:

1. The so-called “takeover” was being organized long before my involvement, as shown by domain registration dates and internal meeting notes. I was a more convenient target than Christel, which might explain why she asked me to buy it from her.

2. False narratives were already being circulated to open source projects before any administrative changes occurred. The subsequent channel topic changes were a reaction to those actions, though I’ve acknowledged those decisions weren’t ideal in hindsight.

On broader context, much of what’s now called “funding FOSS” doesn’t reach active developers. It tends to reward organizers and promoters rather than those writing meaningful code. Supporting individual developers directly remains a better way to sustain real innovation.

Ironically, several of the ex-staff I defended for years against serious allegations (search…

Care to share sources corroborating any of this?

All I can find is anonymous stuff on a website called http://techrights.org/ which has a series of articles trying to in some way associate Nat with [redacted]'s domestic violence.

The "best friend" claim seems to have started with a weird "teaser" post on techrights.org wherein an anonymous source claims that "many others" can confirm that [redacted] was close to Nat. That of course doesn't even come close to establishing that either of them considers the other their "best friend", if it's trustworthy to begin with.

Then techrights.org cites their own teaser in other posts as saying that [redacted] claims Nat is his best friend (not true, or at least not supported by the source).

Now you are, I guess, using that as your basis to claim that they ARE in fact best friends.

I realise it's possible you're entirely honest and have sources I don't, but this looks like a pretty cynical smear job to me, especially given that none of the sources I've managed to find asserting that the two were close date from before this domestic abuse case. I don't have any insider knowledge, but the superficial appearance of all this is that a handful of activists with something against Nat have cooked up this "best friend" narrative for some reason, gradually escalating the claim each time they cite each other, and ultimately it all hinges on an anonymous source saying that other anonymous sources say that the two were close once.

In the end, MS is a profit-seeking entity, as is Google, Apple, etc. It's best to take anything that any tech company does with healthy dose of skepticism, but at the same time it's OK to give them a nod when they do something beneficial. I agree that it can be hard to do this with MS when you are used to Ballmer's more predatory vision for the company.

For the record, I'm very happy with what MS is doing in the development space. I'm less happy with the "cloudification" of Windows and the infiltration of ads there, and I'm not at all happy with how MS continues to fund entities that aggressively pursue patent lawsuits in a sort of protection racket [0]. I'm on the fence (and somewhat nervous) about their embrace of Linux and their growing influence there.

Most people seem to treat technology companies as sports teams. This is foolish to say the least. Every company does bad things, and you shouldn't look past those things, even if you are generally happy with the company's behavior. Ignoring the negatives just ensures that there will be no pushback, and the companies will increase their bad behavior if there is an incentive to do so. At the same time, it's OK to like a good thing that a "bad" company does, and encouraging more of these things may help to shape incentives and behavior over the long term.

[0] http://techrights.org/2018/10/26/texas-intellectual-ventures-dominion-harbor/

Regarding #techrights, reading some of the comments from http://techrights.org/irc-archives/irc-log-social-290521.html aimed at libera.chat gives me the real creeps. They seem to come from a person and/or people who have a black-and-white vision of some aspects of the world to the point of sheer fanaticism. It's scary.

Some "mentionworthy" quotes:

> Libera chat: yeah, let's just show how "liber" we are by outsourcing our 1) site code 2) site hosting 3) projects to a bunch of criminals who badmouth and bribe to undermine #freesw

> The free in #freenode stands for freedom. The Liber in Libera Chat stands for (neo) liberal.

> Libera chat is all #microsoft (technially), except the IRC daemons.

> Libre chat: we don't know how to set up and manage a git server (funny that, even I can do that... with little experience) but trust us to run a whole IRC network...

> All you mindless fanatics who flock over to libera.chat (185.199.110.153), be aware that they have outsourced to #microsoft #proprietarySoftware #monopoly ( cdn-185-199-110-153.github.com ). So they don't exactly value freedom or "libera"... it's just shallow rhetoric. Because it's an ego think against #freenode

If that's one of the main channels performing Freenode support, I'm getting convinced that I made a good move by jumping off Freenode.

Browser developers are going to innovate new features. A standards body doesn't drive innovation. Innovation is not a top-down process. A standards body exists to ensure some level of interoperability between browsers.

What Prefixgate shows is that a W3C standard is not a rigid set of laws like the 10 commandments. Rather a W3C standard is like a peace treaty - all adherents agree to respect certain protocols and behave in certain ways, buy are free to pass whatever laws they want within their own boundaries. Assuming that these proprietary laws do not conflict with existing treaty stipulations.

Peace treaties give us access to the best of both worlds: vendors are free to innovate as they see fit, yet they still commit themselves to some level of interoperability. Innovations influence the standard and the standard ensures that all vendors adopt the best innovations at some point.

The comparisons between IE of old and Webkit are incorrect. Microsoft has a history of implementing standards incorrectly (http://www.quirksmode.org/css/quirksmode.html) and bullying standards bodies (http://techrights.org/2011/09/06/michel-levy-comes-out-swinging/). When it comes to standards Microsoft does not act in good faith.

> Didn't realize how much Canonical was helping with WSL, though it of course makes sense that they're doing so, unfortunately.

Eh, they have a dedicated team for enabling WSL/Ubuntu desktop in Canonical. They're fueling the effort.

> Eh, I think interoperability is good, and reverse-engineering Windows frameworks/technology has a long history in the open-source world (WINE & Samba being two prominent examples).

IIRC, De Icaza left GNOME, joined Microsoft, developed Mono on open specs, founded Xamarin and sold it back to Microsoft.

His joint venture with MS what turned everything sour for many people, incl. me. However, we all love Wine, esp. when they implement things bug-by-bug without knowing it (and without help from Microsoft). The cursor (or Icon or WMF) exploit was a great laugh. We all love SMB too, because it's done despite Microsoft.

The language on this page is loaded (in a way I don't like), but it keeps a good roster of the events: http://techrights.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza