I might write a detailed analysis about this some time in the future in a more Linux-centric site, but I need a unique and useful angle. I don’t have that at the moment.

Now a major goal is to teach people about Software Freedom, not just “Linux”.

The election is tomorrow.

“Daniel Pocock wins the award for the person who has travelled the longest distance to take part in this circus,” someone wrote some hours ago, he “as he gives an address in Australia.”

So what?

There is another Australian in there.

GNU/Linux is on its way to become “top dog” in desktops and laptops. I am super-happy that now, in 2026, we’re having those sorts of debates.

However, will the philosophical battle for Freedom be won too?

This is not a given.

Because “the politics like Daniel and you are fighting will worsen for a while,” as it was put to me. “Here there is a problem because there is not a single place (AFAIK) to learn even the smallest amount of ICT anywhere in the entire nation,” someone told me. “All have been replaced by Microsoft resellers [...] The digital sovereignty question is not a technical matter, but one of politics and specifically about how to purge the Microsoft resellers from their entrenched positions where they block teaching and learning of ICT across the EU…”

Consider for example what they do in schools (paywalled article). “Teachers talking about GenAI [sic] in schools more trouble than it is worth? [...] we are beginning to see signs that GenAI is starting to lose its lustre.”

Why did this nonsense manage to (or was allowed to) enter schools in the first place? What were they teaching and why? Who for?

“Is Microsoft in schools more trouble than it is worth?”

“Yes. It is,” I was told. “Are Microsoft cults in school administrations more trouble than they are worth? Yes, they are.”

We need to oppose not only proprietary software but also social control media and chatbots. They have no inherent value, they’re mostly instruments of indoctrination and “population control” or “social control” (the latter is less loaded a term).

2 days ago: Non-Techs Using Slop Run Fedora and It’s Turning Out to be a Total Disaster

5 hours ago:

2022: GNOME (IBM/Red Hat Staff) Promoting Microsoft’s ‘Security’ Scam With the ‘Secure’ Boot Sham (this developer now publicly complains that IBM forces him to paste in slop instead of code)

2024 (‘Secure’ Boot sabotages dual-booting): Good Reason to Delete Windows, Not Dual-Boot, and Call Out the Microsofters Who Worked to Impose ‘Secure’ Boot, Undermining Antitrust Complaints

Last week (FUD against dual-booting): Poor Piece From Valnet: Microsoft Keeps Sabotaging GNU/Linux, So You Should Quit Using GNU/Linux

ou want to use GNU/Linux? To join 7.7% of the world? Why would you want to do that? Use Windows. Try WSL.

That is what they are trying to tell us and the companies that employ us. GNU/Linux is “dangerous”, “untrusted”, and “unreliable”.

Why? Because Dr. Stallman (RMS) will be giving a talk there soon.

“Hi Dr. Schestowitz,” it said. “Thank you again for your support – it truly means a lot! We officially purchased RMS’s flights to Atlanta last night, and we’re all incredibly excited about the upcoming event.”

It’s about more than just the talk, it’s a statement of sorts. See what’s at stake.

“You’ve absolutely got a new ally here at Georgia Tech through us at LibreTech Collective, and you’ve also gained a new regular reader in me. I already follow Phoronix and a few other tech blogs, so when your Techrights post popped up in my newsreader a few days ago, it genuinely made my night!”

Techrights is a bit ‘different’ a site, http://tuxmachines.org has more ‘conformist’ material.

Techrights deals with whistleblowers. “Whistleblowing isn’t impulsive but premeditated,” as noted yesterday. “Impulse can lead to errors.”

Our reporting is certainly hurting all the “right” people. So we’re on the right track.

Those people could, instead, buy several houses. But no.

Instead they chose to give ‘firepower’ to the FSF, the real and true protector of Free software, unlike opportunistic copycats or splinter groups. “One of the reasons for my complete resignation from the organization is the deception of a volunteer who gave them a bequest of €150,000,” Daniel Pocock recalled. Last year when he ran for European politics he said: “Research found that some of the world’s largest companies have spent over $120,000 trying to censor me even before I announced my candidacy. I guess that I might have something to say that is in the public interest.”

Last year and again this year my wife and I filed three lawsuits against men who had attacked women and Free software luminaries [1, 2, 3].

They were on the payroll of monopolists when they did this.

Lawsuits are not cheap, but they are the necessary thing to do in this situation.

In life, people must make sacrifices to do what’s right and just.

“Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.”

-Mark 12:41-12:44

“He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.””

-Luke 21:2-21:38

Summary: The crimes committed by my last employer are becoming very apparent and crystal clear to see; meanwhile there are other crime victims coming out of the woodwork and we shall give them a voice, not just further information

THE Sirius ‘Open Source’ series is being followed closely by a lot of people. It’s routinely mentioned in Techrights and Tux Machines, even my personal site for more important topics/aspects.

Many people are impacted by this issue, even if one person is more vocal about it (I’m fortunate to have a platform in which I can speak about this). For the sake of geeks, and for human/labour rights (or “tech rights”), we need to expose what happened in the company I knew from the inside for nearly 12 years. We have lots left to publish and plenty is still being investigated (several things are always being investigated in parallel).

As the a video above notes upfront, I didn’t expect to cover any criminal aspects, but while doing the first batch I stumbled upon anomalies and started contacting authorities, companies, former colleagues etc. It didn’t take long to realise what sort of hydra we had all along dealt with; many workers were robbed and bullied, but the company threatened people not to speak about it with colleagues. Well, enough is enough and the ‘dirty laundry’ will come out. The world needs to see a workplace that isn’t just toxic but also corrupt. Many insiders (back then) didn’t realise the scale of the abuse, but they realised this afterwards or are coming to realise it now (with more facts being made publicly available). The company must have had several hundreds of workers over the years (if one counts associates and partners, maybe 300) and quite a few of them got burned. They’re not alone anymore and accountability will be pursued. The CEO of the company ran away last month, but he too cannot hide. He’s still in the UK, hiding in his ‘tax shell’ (registered at the address of the accountant). At the moment we explore all the legal avenues; exposing what was in the NDA (signed with the Gates Foundation when staff was compelled to sign a new contract in a likely illegal fashion) would be a cherry on the cake. Maybe there will also be arrests, but that can take a long time. That’s OK. We have patience. The facts are on our side.

Summary: The company known as Sirius ‘Open Source’ generally rejected… Open Source. Today’s focus was the migration to Slack.

THE above video discusses the migration/transition/downgrade from Jabber to a truly terrible, centralised, proprietary and vulnerable platform known as Slack. Aside from technical problems and various glaring limitations, Slack was a risk not just to Sirius ‘Open Source’ but also to its clients.

No matter the hard evidence and how much I pointed this out (maybe a dozen times, at personal risk), that always fell on deaf ears. The company was already governed by incompetent people.

It was abundantly clear that many colleagues did not like this. Some opposed this. Some faced disciplinary action for antagonising. That would include me. So in a company called “Open Source” we’re meant to assume that adopting proprietary software — and not because some client requires it — is considered acceptable. Whereas insisting on the company’s values is considered an offense.

From what we can gather, Red Hat staff was subjected to similar treatment after IBM had bought the company. It’s hard to believe that later this year it will be 5 years since that announcement.

Summary: A look at half a dozen posts published here yesterday, ranging from security failures to dodgy business practices and status (or several shells registered and accommodated under false pretences)

THE past few years at Sirius ‘Open Source’ were somewhat horrifying not just to me personally; we’ve already shown some hard evidence that colleagues suffered abuse from managers only months after a new shell in the US had bagged money from the Gates Foundation at a very mysterious time (we explained this mystery yesterday). My wife suffered similar abuse — something which according to Tim Bray has some history when it comes to Microsoft.

The video above shows some very dodgy things the company (its management) was doing and saying in recent years. The video limits itself to stuff we covered in the past 24 hours alone. Later this month we’ll provide more detailed and ample evidence.

While it’s totally unclear whether there’s a correlation between the Gates money and the way the company was managed (denial would definitely be possible and there’s an NDA) the reality of the matter is, Sirius was gradually moving away from Free software — including infrastructure it had already had for more than a decade! In turn, the company was becoming several shells (at least 3) and at the moment everything is registered with some accountants rather than a real address of a director or an office.

This series will hopefully become a cautionary tale not just about openwashing companies (or formerly Free software companies). A lot of these things can happen and do occasionally happen in other “IT” companies. It’s important to know when to leave.