Linux

Linux has become captured by the US empire

So moving to a BSD then? Linux is mostly packages written by big tech. People have to eat.

Most of the fundamental packages in your Linux distribution are primarily written by Red Hat. Do you use Glibc, GCC, gnu utils, systemd, GNOME, podman, pipewire, Wayland, Xorg, or Flatpak for starters?

Red Hat is hardly a free rider in the open source world.

It is also worth noting that Red Hat created the Fedora Project. They created it so they could have RHEL (corporate) and Fedora (community) instead of just Red Hat Linux which they had before.

It always makes me laugh when people worry about Red Hat “taking Fedora corporate”. Fedora was created explicitly to be the community offering and is a key part of the Red Hat strategy. I guess not everybody knows their Linux history.

Many of the Fedora leaders and maintainers are Red Hat employees.

As for US influence, that has always been a thing. US law dominates the thinking. What you really need to worry about is the Linux Foundation.

any FOSS project being used to benefit a profit driven company

That's a tough thing to avoid with android and a BSD out there powering most of the phones on the planet.

I hate what rh have done to enterprise Linux, but you need to keep clear what they're selling and what they're buying.

They provide support licenses for enterprise Linux but dont make money off Linux directly. They also foot a LOT of development on projects and apps that aren't systemd and are thus not a cancer on Linux. Please explore more with an open mind.

Your logic is sound.

The motive and skillet are certainly there.

But there sure are many eyes on RedHat's source code, and IBM has a lot to lose if they got caught putting in a back door.

Plus, the US government uses it for their own sensitive stuff, so one would hope they have the wisdom not to shit where they eat, installing a back door that 100% would get used against them.

None of my arguments really outweigh yours, if I'm honest.

But I also don't blame anyone who trusts RedHat Linux, today.

(sexism, ableism, complete delusion, I've gone insane reading this website...)

I know nothing about the history and politics of Debian, but the stuff this guy is saying is bizzare.

• Timeline starts with the publication of Orwell's Animal Farm. This is going to be good...

• He seems to interpret people's personal lives as caused by Debian - talking about Joel Espy Klecker's death, he makes it sound like the Evil Debians were chaining him to a rock and forcing him to write software, even describing it as "modern slavery" - does he think that people wih chronic illnesses shouldn't contribute to free software?? Unless someone was actually coercing Klecker (which would obviously be bad), it seems like he was just choosing to contribute... Pocock asks if it's fair that Klecker received no compensation despite companies that use Debian making lots of money. That's how free software works...

• Daniel Pocock refers to Daniel Pocock in the third person a lot, which makes it less obvious that this is his firsthand account and not someone else's documenting of the story.

• "The Debian Pregnancy Cluster" (???)

• Claiming that women are only participating in Debian because of their male partners. Followed by a mention of a woman who met their husband through Debian (so was presumably involved in it independently before that).

• Spends a lot of time listing people who died, even if their death is unrelated to their Debian participation. There's even a graphic of people holding knives at the bottom, as if to imply that Debian is murdering people??

• Quote "wheelchair fascism" - I am just going to provide this quote in full: "Bücherratten is demonstrating a certain amount of passive-aggressive behavior, wheeling herself up to the FSFE table at CCC, putting on the brakes and using her wheelchair to become the center of attention even before she speaks." What the hell? I have no words here... What does this person expect? They've just described someone using a wheelchair to go up to a table in a normal way. They don't elaborate on becoming the center of attention. This is equivalent to describing an ambulatory person's "passive aggressive behavior, walking up to the FSFE table at CCC, putting their feet on the floor, and using their legs to become the center of attention" (https://danielpocock.com/en/fosdem-nazi-pass-fsfe-wheelchair-fascism-facts/)

Debian has always attracted zealots, many of whom were extremely... impolite... during the systemd wars, on both sides of that schism. Sadly, as in most things, the majority of reasonable, quiet, hard working community members get drowned out because, well, they're reasonable, quiet and hardworking.

This is really something to complain to government about.

You have to be invited to Epstein's to make an impact like this

The actual community boards and such are independent of Red Hat otherwise.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to add in the main post that I've researched that too. I know about FESCo and I understand what you're saying about it being kind of a counter-weight to Red Hat. But there is a pretty big problem:

Out of 9 current FESCo board members, 6 are Red Hat employees, one of them is an ex-Red Hat employee, which leaves only 2 members that are not affiliated with Red Hat. Now, I understand that there's probably not some big conspiracy there, I assume it's just that their job at RH allows them to work on Fedora a lot more than anyone else, and in turn, they're chosen for the board because their contributions will usually be very noticeable. But at the end of the day, I think there is a conflict of interest there. When faced with a heavy choice, do you stand with your employer who puts food on your table or a community of strangers that doesn't really give you real life benefits?