LF's Zemlin: Nothing's Changed Quit Complaining
In response to yesterday's revelation that Section 3.3(a) of the Linux Foundation's governing by-laws was changed to removed individual involvement, Jim Zemlin this evening released a response. In his post Zemlin said that nothing has changed and folks should stop being so nasty on social media about it. In other news, Sam Varghese took Red Hat to task over its continued involvement with the spy and mass surveillance unit National Security Agency.
Zim Zemlin, Executive Director Linux Foundation, this evening wrote his "immediate response" to the firestorm created from their changing the by-laws to exclude individual developers from voting in leadership elections. He said, "First, The Linux Foundation Board structure has not changed. The same individuals remain as directors, and the same ratio of corporate to community directors continues as well." He said they were trying to "improve" the value they provide individuals by removing their vote and, he added, they may improve it some more in the future.
But then on to the more important topic of hurting folks' feeling on social media. "The conversation has devolved into personal, inappropriate and offensive remarks directed against some members of our community, and in particular against Karen Sandler." He said she spent her career defending free software and those on the LF side should "fight back." Zemlin said the Linux Foundation does not condone that type of behavior yet he encourages LF supporters to "fight back against the personal, and often sexist, attacks." Interesting.
Sam Varghese published quite the expose on how unopen Open Source Red Hat is. Jim Whitehurst's promotional video for his latest book set Varghese off. Whitehurst said that The Open Organization mirrors the way Red Hat operates. Varghese replied oh yeah?
How about telling us why Red Hat is continuing to do business with the National Security Agency — you know, that little outfit that carries out mass surveillance of all Americans and a goodly proportion of the rest of the world — when the agency is using Red Hat enterprise Linux for doing those very tasks?
Or does Red Hat support mass surveillance which, incidentally, has been shown time and again to have absolutely no value when it comes to detecting potential terrorists or their plans?
Open organisation, you say? Then how about living up to your claims in the real world?
But he wasn't done yet. He asked, "Jim, how about telling the rest of the world the details of the settlement of the patent suit with Acacia? Was Red Hat violating its own licence when it settled?"
Why is it that an open organisation like Red Hat always answers pointed media queries by saying that there is no spokesman available to answer? And tell me, Jim, do you encourage those values of openness among your employees? Maybe you still have to have a chat about openness with Lennart Poettering, the chief developer of systemd. Or is it not your concern that some of your employees appear to subscribe to a different set of values from those you publicly advocate?
If Red Hat is such an open organisation, why do you send an employee to your rival SUSE's yearly conference in order to play the role of industrial spy? I met the bloke who came to Orlando in 2014. Spying? Is that why you appear to support the NSA's spying?
In other news:
* Kali Linux Gets a Rolling Edition: Kali-Rolling
* Brave new browser: Eich returns with Chromium Based Browser to Block Ads