Summary: Today’s part talks about what’s left of Sirius ‘Open Source’; about two thirds of the people listed in the “Meet The Team” page of Sirius ‘Open Source’ aren’t there (some left years ago), the company is unable to recruit, and LinkedIn is linking the company to people who don’t work (or barely ever work) for Sirius ‘Open Source’

THE pension fraud at Sirius ‘Open Source’ is still being ignored by Action Fraud. This won’t end well because Sirius ‘Open Source’ is connected to Action Fraud through its likely biggest client (if it’s still a client at all). Are they waiting for the company to simply vanish as a legal entity with the word “LIMITED” added to its name, leaving the culprits off the hook? Because it would contribute to the perception that the police becomes an actual facilitator of the crime, for self-serving purposes at least.

We’ve meanwhile noticed that Sirius ‘Open Source’ makes itself look bigger than it really is. Here’s an example:

Sirius ‘Open Source’ has maybe paid him for hundreds of hours of contract work over the past decade. That’s a few dozens of hours per year. Don’t be fooled by Microsoft’s LinkedIn. It helps companies, not just people, craft a fictional image/perception of themselves.

Video download link | md5sum 0cf753fb90aab5992efe0bfd625e24fb
Political Escalation
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Today’s video mostly covers part 3 of the series while stressing the relevance to Free software and the British government; Sirius ‘Open Source’ did play a big role in adoption of Free software in the UK, so its crimes against staff (that worked on government computer systems) matter a lot, except the British police prefers to overlook this matter

THE pension fraud at Sirius was a serious crimes and the perpetrators of the crime have not been punished yet. For context, this is a company that once upon a time sponsored the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for several consecutive years and wasn’t reluctant to put GNU logos in its Web site.

Things soured over the years. A decade ago I went to a meeting which helped secure a very important deal for the company. I’d rather not name the client, but let’s just say it supervises (or is in charge of) the people who run Action Fraud — basically the very same folks who turned down my report of a crime, a crime committed not only against myself. This is confirmed, it’s not merely a suspicion.

Action Fraud, what about action? Where’s Action Fraud?

Are they trying to hide something?

It has been three weeks already and they’re not even responding to my elected representative, who (to her credit!) seems eager to get to the bottom of it.

The video above is a verbal update on the issue. We still have a lot of material left to publish and many steps remaining to explore, bodies to escalate to, issues to scrutinise etc. This cannot possibly end well unless the perpetrators are held accountable. All of them. Facilitators are another matter as they’re only indirectly culpable. ?

‘ve just gotten the latest numbers from ONS. About 10 minutes ago ONS released Week 22 numbers for 2023 (15 minutes ago an updated file wasn’t there yet).

Notice how this year compares to last year or prior years. 29.5% higher.

Back to work, folks Pandemic is over, according to WHO.

Today in Gemini:

So, some quick advice: Don’t get COVID.

I went back to Seattle in the beginning of March, wore a mask the whole time (my partner did not. I think this is important). We got to drop in on Emerald City Comic Con, which was well missed, and I was so happy to be there, and also just walk around the city again. I miss walking around cities.

My partner was sick by the time we were done at ECCC (they did wear a mask there, as we do for conventions). By the time we got home, I had cold-like symptoms. That Tuesday I was fully sick with it.

[...]

Anyway, three months out, I still have a little bit of a cough, and my brain fog has mostly cleared up. I truly believe it could have been so much worse, if I had not gotten vaccines.

Summary: Sirius ‘Open Source’ scandals have opened a can of worms; why isn’t a government contractor being held accountable for crimes committed against its staff?

THE company that once upon a time sponsored the Free Software Foundation (FSF and KDE among other things) might cease to exist any day now. In the previous part (with video) of this mini-series we argued that, based on the hard evidence, Sirius loses staff and clients rapidly. There’s almost nobody to actually run what’s left of the company. If the company tries to recruit people, they lack the interest. We have evidence of this too.

Tomorrow morning we’ll release a video to explain how British police is failing to respond not only to reports of a crime but also messages from British MPs. This will lead to further escalations that generally embarrass the system and there’s room for suspicion that the “Establishment” (government) is using one hand to wash the other and in turn wash the face.

This series will hopefully coincide with breakthrough in the progress sense. As noted above, it’s relevant to Free software advocacy because what we have here is a former FSF sponsor basically robbing (defrauding) Free software advocates, who were exploited and subjected to “value extraction” for many years, grossly underpaid and moreover embezzled behind their backs with a pension that never existed.

We’ll hopefully be able to illuminate what’s happening behind the scenes by disclosure of some redacted communications.

Video download link | md5sum deb923a8340805a0040d08074d87dd02
Sirius Cannot Retain Anything
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ aside, it seems like the company has no chance of surviving; its 25^th anniversary is later this year, but it’s understaffed and running out of clients

THE company that once upon a time sponsored the Free Software Foundation and KDE resorted to defrauding its own staff in 2011 if not even earlier. Former staff is finding out and coming to grips with it.

The company has meanwhile lost several more clients (the ones it openly admits losing; usually it lies about that loss or keeps it secret for a long time… for the sake of ‘morale’). Many people, including managers, are mortified to discover what went on. Some leave and some are preparing to sue (albeit the company is in hiding, so it’s not easy).

Perhaps none of this should be particularly shocking. I know and I’ve seen attrition crises in the company over the years (dating back to 2011). But this one is different. This one the company cannot recover from and the fake ‘founder’ might even up in a jail cell. This is the first part of a series that we hope can become daily in the installments sense. There are things we cannot publicly state at this moment, but sooner or later it will be safe to blurt them out.

Summary: The end of Sirius ‘Open Source’ is near; we shall explain what goes on there these days, as the company may only last weeks or months longer (with obligations to staff it robbed and potentially arrests of current and past managers)

MY wife and I resigned from Sirius 6 months ago (10 days ago it was exactly 6 months). We think we know what triggered a chain of events, but cannot definitively prove it at this point (maybe some other day, we’re in no hurry with this investigation).

The company is in a state of disarray and since we left about 50% of the remaining staff also left. With staff fleeing, and the company unable to recruit the people it needs to fulfil obligations to remaining clients, it will soon have no clients at all, i.e. no source of revenue.

We are getting there with accountability. After fraud committed against Sirius staff, we’re now successfully escalating to a political level (the company has a lot to do with political bodies in the UK). This will be a source of embarrassment to bodies and companies other than Sirius itself.

While source protection is paramount, we are still able to share some details that highlight the chaos in this company, where things have never been the same since Microsofters and Bill Gates intervened, occasionally mentioning me by name as they tried hard to destroy my source of income. They’ve been doing this since 2005. This will actually be the subject of a separate series or article.

Sirius is a cautionary tale about companies that defraud their own employees. What makes it relevant to this site isn’t myself but the fact the company fancies itself or describes itself as a leader in “Open Source” (it used to also say “Free software”) in the UK — that’s also the reason I joined this company 12+ years ago.

Video download link | md5sum cd10c506a34bdc112395c0e2c16921ce
HMRC a Money Sink
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: What we’ve been demonstrating or highlighting so far this year is a defunct system of accountability, wherein the government officials and their associates are essentially above the law; can they endure the negative press that entails?

AS noted earlier in a meme, it’s now 3 weeks since reporting to HMRC that Sirius ‘Open Source’ lied in its tax filings when it issued false payslips. It told staff that pension payments had been made (every month for more than half a decade), but no money was paid. The company’s managers basically stole the money. It’s a crime, it’s embezzlement, and punishment for this crime is severe (there are many crimes committed all at the same time).

As the above video notes, seeing that HMRC doesn’t seem to care (probably too busy scrutinising the accounts of activists or political ‘enemies’), we’re progressing and moving onwards to additional steps. Many points of escalation remain. Thus far, the experience has been boding ill/poorly for the system of justice and enforcement in the UK. It’s like some kind of Kafka novel, wherein one turns from place to place like a ping-pong ball. Somehow some people are pretty much “above the law”. What might this do to public confidence in the “checks and balances”… or in slogans we’re shown on TV and radio (mass broadcast) about no escaping the wrath of the Rule of Law? We’ve written for nearly a decade about immunity and impunity in the EPO and now I (along with former colleagues) witness the same in the United Kingdom, a country where a “prince” can sleep with underage girls and then pay our tax money to “settle” and avoid extradition/arrest. The only person arrested over it was a protester who had ‘heckled’ him at his mom’s funeral.