 Welcome to another edition of Unfettered Freedom, your weekly Gadoo Slash Lennox News video podcast. Packing so much freedom into each episode, it ought to be illegal. There's so much freedom packed into this podcast, some might say it's bloated, I just think it needs to be refactored. On this episode of Unfettered Freedom, we're gonna talk about web browsers that are based on Chromium, but are not open source software, they're in fact proprietary software. Because there's this misconception out there that things like Chrome, Edge, and Vivaldi are open source, when they're actually not. I was recently contacted by a viewer asking me to recommend him a more free, as in freedom, Gadoo Slash Lennox Distribution than Ubuntu, he currently uses Ubuntu, and wants to know is there a freer distribution out there, we're gonna discuss that. Lessons from a patent troll incident, we're gonna talk about what the Ganon Project recently learned dealing with their patent troll. Clem LaFave, the creator of Lennox Mint, he recently sat down to do an interview, he doesn't do these very often, this is a rare event when Clem doesn't interview, but he recently sat down with the folks over at Fossbytes, and he had quite a lot of interesting things to say. We're gonna talk about the Lennox Foundation and some of their recent fiascos, we're gonna talk about the Free Software Foundation versus the Free Software Foundation Europe, and the upcoming Free Software Foundation awards and nominations. All this and more on Episode 6 of Unfettered Freedom. I am your host, Derek Taylor, also known as DT or DistroTube over on YouTube and on Library. This podcast, as well as all of the video content on the DistroTube channel, it's community-sponsored. Because of the community support that I receive, there are no corporate sponsors or product shilling of any kind in these episodes. I can thank as I please and say the things that I want to say and the things that need to be said. In short, I can be independent. If you'd like to support my work, please consider doing so. I'd greatly appreciate it. Please subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. And our first topic is one that I know confuses a lot of people, because I have dealt with this so many times in the course of doing the YouTube channel and doing videos on Library and doing the podcast is I often call proprietary software, proprietary garbage. It's usually my nickname for all proprietary software. And I talk about Google Chrome being proprietary garbage and Microsoft Edge being proprietary garbage and Vivaldi being proprietary garbage. And then I've had people defend all three of those web browsers coming to me like definitively saying, hey, no, Chrome is open source. Edge is open source. Vivaldi is open source. You can go find the source code here and, you know, whatever. And I understand why people are confused by this. So I don't get angry at these people. These people are not purposely trying to spread misinformation about these browsers and their licensing. These people really believe that Chrome and Edge and Vivaldi are open source software because of the way the marketing teams behind those browsers market themselves. What they do is they come out and say, hey, we are Microsoft Edge and we are built upon the open source Chromium engine. Vivaldi does the same thing. Hey, we're Vivaldi and we are built upon open source using Chromium as the back end. Same thing with Google Chrome, of course, is built on the Chromium engine. But none of those are actually licensed under a free and open source license. None of them are licensed under a license that qualifies as either open source or free software because to qualify as open source, there are 10 criteria that you have to meet as defined by the open source initiative. To qualify as free software, you have to meet the four essential freedoms. And Edge, Vivaldi, and Chrome do not have a license that is compatible with either the open source definition or the free software definition. So what prompted me to want to discuss this this evening is because a few days ago, I made a video talking about some of the software, the free and open source software that's available on Linux. That's also available to people that are stuck on Windows. And one of the things I recommended them is, hey, get rid of that proprietary browser you use such as Microsoft Edge and install Firefox. And I had people just come out of the woodwork saying Microsoft Edge is open source. You're calling it proprietary and it's not. Well, it's in fact proprietary software. I didn't want to get angry at these people because, again, I know why they're confused about this. Microsoft purposely confuses people in their marketing of Edge. The same thing with Vivaldi. Vivaldi purposely kind of makes people think it's open source. Even though the Vivaldi guys, if you straight up ask them, they will say it's not open source. Same thing with the Edge, guys. Now, Microsoft Edge has a subreddit over on Reddit. If you go and post, hey, is Microsoft Edge open source? You're going to get an immediate answer from somebody and it's going to be no. Just one word, no. But if you go to the Microsoft website, you know, all the marketing stuff talks about all of the open source stuff. And like I said, I can't get mad at people for being duped by shady marketing, really. I mean, it's almost dishonest. Some of the things that Microsoft and the Vivaldi team and quite frankly, Google with Chrome put out there. You know, they make you think that it's free and open source software and it's not. And how do you check? Well, one of the things is I went ahead and pinned a comment on that video I did the other day because I was getting so many people confused about this. Because I think you guys need to know how to check if something is free and open source software. Typically, if you use a search engine, any of the big search engines, but especially Google, if you just Google name of program and then the word license, the very first search result will actually just tell you what the license is. Google will actually tell you if it's one of the free licenses and if it's a proprietary license of any kind, it will just say proprietary software like those two words will come up in the search result. You know, so if you type Microsoft Edge license, the very first result in Google is it's just going to answer you proprietary software. And if you were even more confused than that, you want a more free solution as far as a free service to go check on that Wikipedia. You know, you can go read the Wikipedia page for any big software projects such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi. And it will tell you the license on the Wikipedia page, all three of them the license reads as proprietary software. Now, some people wanted to debate me further when I told them that, well, Google can be wrong and Wikipedia can be wrong. Anybody can edit Wikipedia. Okay, so maybe both Google and Wikipedia get it wrong. Go download the source code for that project. And that's what I did because so many people wanted to debate facts. Even though I know Microsoft Edge is proprietary software, I was like, okay, let me go download the source code. I went to the Microsoft website. And if you go to the Microsoft website, if you're on Linux like I am, it's going to say not supported for Linux. So there's no download link. But if you click the drop down, you can choose a different operating system I chose Windows 10. And I downloaded the source code. And I had to really look through the source code to find the license. But if I did a search for terms, I think somewhere in the 3.6 gigabyte zip file that I downloaded for the latest version of Edge, you find the Microsoft Edge software license terms. And it is not the MIT license. Like people were telling me that Edge is licensed under the MIT license. No, this is not the MIT license. The MIT license is like one paragraph. This thing is a page. It's basically a Microsoft end user license agreement. It's a EULA. And it talks about all the restrictions as far as you, the user, you know, you can't really share this with anybody and do anything you want. Can't modify, you know, this is not, again, it doesn't qualify as open source in any way. It doesn't qualify as free software in any way. Now, this is the second time I've had to address something like this on camera a few months back. I actually made a video about Vivaldi because I was getting so many people telling me Vivaldi was free and open source software that I made a video. It's titled I think Vivaldi is in fact proprietary garbage. That's the thumbnail. And yes, it's over the top. It's clickbait, but I wanted it to be clickbait because I think not enough people understood this about Vivaldi. Yes, it's built on open source chromium. But the stuff that Vivaldi puts on that nice user interface that everybody loves to talk about with Vivaldi, all of that stuff is proprietary. That's all licensed under a proprietary license. They have an end user license agreement, again, that restricts your freedoms in a lot of ways. It doesn't qualify, again, as either open source or free software under the standard definitions of those terms. And I really don't want to just keep beating a dead horse, but it's so prevalent in the Linux community right now in the open source and free software communities, because you see people all the time try to tell people that Chrome, Vivaldi and Edge are open source and they're not. Some of these people, again, are just confused. The marketing makes it confusing. I know that some of these people probably also use those browsers and I think they're trying to defend their use of those browsers a little bit. I think a lot of people that use things like Chrome know it's not really open source software. Vivaldi the same way, Edge the same way. They know it's not really open source, but if I can, you know, fudge the facts a little bit because in their marketing, they're fudging the facts. So if they say they're open source, I'm going to go along with them and say it's open source too. And if I tell enough people, other people might believe it's open source and then I won't feel as bad about using this browser that I know is proprietary software. Guys, if you like Chrome or Vivaldi or Edge, use it. I mean, you make your own decisions in life. I choose to use free and open source software where possible. If you guys make a different choice, that's totally fine. It's up to you. Make that decision. Live with your decision. But we don't need to be spreading misinformation or sometimes outright lies about things. When you lie about the licensing of these web browsers, you're really doing the community a disservice. You're really harming the open source community because you're lying about what open source really is. You're also giving Google and Vivaldi and Microsoft a pass on these browsers by saying, yeah, I know you're not really open source. But, you know, for now we're just going to say it's okay. No, no, hold their feet to the fire. None of these browsers are completely open sourced. Make them open source their browsers, right? You've got to hold to your convictions. If you believe in the free software movement and you believe in the open source movement, you don't compromise. You don't say, well, you know what, they're halfway to being open source. That's good enough for me. No, you're either open source or you're not. And the next topic I want to discuss is I had a comment from a viewer of the channel the other day. He wrote to me and I'll just read it very briefly here. Quote, after playing around with and having Ubuntu as my daily driver for about a year now, I'm starting to look into some other distros that are more free as in freedom. Since I've heard that Ubuntu, which is owned by Canonical, isn't fully free as in freedom. Any good recommendations? I've been seeing if vanilla Debian might be a good change, or maybe I should try another flavor. I've also looked into Arch, but I'm hesitant to have that as my full daily driver. All right, so he is a newer Linux user probably says he's been using Ubuntu for about a year. Ubuntu is actually a very good GNU slash Linux distribution. Now, when he talks about looking for a freer Linux distribution, this is where it gets weird because how free do you want to go? And that would be my question to him is you really have to understand why Ubuntu and 99% of most desktop Linux distributions include some proprietary software. They are not including usually proprietary web browsers or office suites, proprietary text editors. They're not installing that all of your daily applications are going to be free and open source software on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch, I mean on Arch, all your desktop applications are the ones you installed. So there's proprietary software there, you installed it. No, but all of them do have proprietary software as part of the core packages they install. It's because you're going to need proprietary drivers for some of your hardware. Most hardware out there is going to need proprietary drivers. There's no open source solutions sometimes, for example. Many laptops have Wi-Fi chips that don't have an open source driver. So if you're going to put a Linux distribution on it, you need the proprietary driver. So there's no other option. So if you try to go 100% free software, you know, one of the free software foundation approved for Linux distributions. That's 100% free. If you have certain Wi-Fi chips on that laptop, you'll never have Wi-Fi working. If you have a desktop or a workstation that has an Nvidia card, maybe you bought one of these really expensive Nvidia cards, like the 2080 Ti that costs like $1,200 or whatever the heck the thing costs, you know, because you do serious work with video editing, 3D modeling, maybe you do a lot of stuff and things like Blender, and you need maximum performance out of that card. And the only way to get that is to install the proprietary driver. There's an open source driver for the Nvidia cards, but it sucks really bad. It's horrible. It's almost unusable. Nobody buys an Nvidia card and then tries to run the open source Nuvo drivers. They just don't do it. You have to. And I would do the same. If I paid for a very expensive Nvidia card, I'm going to use the proprietary drivers. I just am. And I'm a free software zealot, but I'm telling you right now I would never use the open source Nvidia driver. So all of the GNU slash Linux distributions that you know of as far as desktop distributions, so Ubuntu, Fedora, Sousa, Debian, Arch, Gen2, Mint, Elementary, you know, Manjaro, all of them are free and open source for the most part. There are proprietary bits in all of those distributions, but it's stuff. There those proprietary bits are there because you really need them. If I'm being honest, you need the proprietary drivers. Some of the proprietary blobs in the kernel, you need that for hardware support. Can you go completely 100% free? Well, if you are absolutely dead set on trying to be 100% free, you can go to the Free Software Foundation or actually go over to GNU.org. They have a list of free GNU slash Linux distributions 100% free. There's not very many of these things. They list about 10 or 12 of them. Some of them like they're not very active. There's three or four that look like they're pretty active. Geeks is one that I've talked about a little bit on the YouTube channel. It sees pretty active development. That's a tough one to get into though. You mentioned you've only been on Linux for a year and been using Ubuntu for a year. Geeks is probably not what you want to try. Parabola is an Arch-based Linux distribution that's 100% free isn't freedom. That's another one that may be a little tough to get into. Triscoll, you know what that might be one to try. It's Ubuntu based, so you're already used to the Ubuntu ecosystem. Maybe try out Triscoll. I click on the logo here. Those of you watching the video version, you can go to triscoll.info. Now, again, it's a distribution you could try, but you're going to have to check with your hardware. If you have an Nvidia card, are you going to run the open source driver? If you have an Nvidia card, I would just suggest not even trying this to be honest. You're going to want the proprietary driver. If you're going to put this on a laptop, check the Wi-Fi chip and make sure it's compatible with the Linux Libre kernel. By the way, the reason all of these distributions are 100% free isn't freedom and why GNU and the Free Software Foundation endorses them is they run the Linux Libre kernel. That is a Linux kernel that has been stripped of all proprietary blobs and modules. It's 100% free isn't freedom. That kernel can be kind of limiting on some hardware. You can do it. You can definitely go 100% free isn't freedom for your Linux distribution. You just have to know that there are going to be some pain points and if you have certain hardware, it's either not going to be possible to run these distributions or you're going to have to change that hardware. One thing that did kind of stick out to me with this guy's question is he mentioned that he had been hearing that Ubuntu wasn't that free. Well, Ubuntu is as free as again 99.9% of the other distributions out there. So I think some people like to hate on Ubuntu and he's probably one of those Ubuntu noobs, right? People love to call everybody that runs Ubuntu a noob and hey, you need to get off that. You need to go to Debian. You need to go to Arch. You need to go to Gen2 because Ubuntu is it's evil because it's made by a corporation and all the software that's installed by default on Ubuntu again, other than some low level stuff, it's all open source. There's no proprietary bits in it really. So I would just ignore those people you got to understand. Unfortunately, there is a certain level of toxicity in our community, especially when you bring up certain topics. Anytime Ubuntu is mentioned, you know, the haters are going to come out and anytime system D is mentioned, the haters are going to come out and anytime you mention snaps or flat packs or app images, the haters are going to come out. Now, one thing I will mention because we're talking about Ubuntu snaps, there are snap packages installed by default on the latest versions of Ubuntu and the back end to snaps is proprietary, the server, but the software that's installed as snaps on Ubuntu by default, it's all open source software. So the proprietary back end as far as dealing with snaps, if that bothers you, you could just not use snaps if that bothers you or you could switch your distribution to one that maybe doesn't have snaps enabled by default, but as far as I know of, all the snaps that Ubuntu pre-installs for you anyway. It's all open source software. There's no proprietary software there. And the next topic is lessons from a patent troll incident and this is from one of the GNOME guys talking about lessons learned from dealing with Rothschild patent imaging, which is a patent troll that came after the GNOME project and GNOME was very successful at fending off Rothschild. And this blog post is written by James Bottomley and I will link to the blog post in the show description for those watching the video version on YouTube or library. James goes on to write that the Rothschild modus operandi is to obtain a fairly bogus patent. So just obtain any random patent. It could be something very generic, not very specific at all. You know, and then you just sue as many companies as you can with vaguely related businesses for infringement. So you have this patent and you just find people to sue even if they really have very little to do with your patent. It doesn't matter for the most part. The main thing with a patent troll is you scare people. You come after them with this patent and hey, you know what? I could take you to court and I'd probably win. I could get millions from you. But you know what? If you give me $50,000 right now, we'll settle and I'll go away. And these patent trolls unfortunately are very successful with this tactic. That's why so many of them exist. One of the problems with these patent trolls is they get these patents and anybody can get a patent. And you get your patent through the U.S. patent office here in the U.S. And any court has to presume that that patent is valid. You know, they just can't make a decision. No, you're a troll or this patent is bogus. It's ridiculous. They have to assume that anybody that comes to court with a claim as far as a patent is legit. So you have to go to court and you have to fight it. It's expensive. You have to hire lawyers. Most corporations, most organizations and most individuals don't have that kind of money to mount that kind of defense. Now one interesting thing in this GNOME case is Rothschild was suing a specific GNOME project, Shotwill. And Shotwill actually predated the filing of Rothschild's patent by several years. So whatever they were suing Shotwill for, Shotwill had been doing for years, many years before Rothschild ever obtained that patent. So it was pretty obvious that Rothschild was just a patent troll and probably would never have won in court if somebody wanted to take this to court. Now thankfully the GNOME project, it's a rather large organization and they did put up a fight. And one of the things that James writes in this blog post is that if the target of the patent troll, in this case GNOME, if they put up any kind of fight, any fight at all, Rothschild or any patent troll, they know that they have very little as far as merits to their lawsuit. They're not going to win if a judge actually hears this thing. So they immediately start trying to settle. And that's kind of how GNOME played it. They put up a fight and Rothschild basically settled with them for practically nothing. One of the great things about the open source community is when GNOME put it out there that they're under attack by this patent troll, that the community really came to the rescue and GNOME also received some pro bono representation from some lawyers Sherman and Sterling. I'm not familiar with that particular law firm, but they got some lawyers that were willing to fight for GNOME pro bono. Now the legal representation for GNOME, one of the first things they did when they took the case is they filed a counter claim against Rothschild, alleging exceptional practices and bringing this claim, basically saying, hey, this is a bogus claim. So we're going to counter sue you for even trying to sue us. And it was great because it worked. Basically Rothschild started trying to settle, you know, the price gets lower. Hey, we'll go away for this amount. But GNOME, one of the cool things that GNOME did here is they made it very clear that any agreement that they came to had to involve Rothschild agreeing to get rid of these patents, basically to make sure that Rothschild could never sue any other open source project over these particular patents that was trying to sue GNOME over. Near the end of this particular blog post, James writes that there were really four lessons that people need to take away. The first lesson is that if you're on the receiving end of a patent troll attack, tell everyone about it, right? Put it out there. Tell everyone that will listen that you're being attacked because the great thing about the free and open source software community, we are generous and we will gladly give somebody money to fight a fight that's worth fighting and defending yourself against a patent troll. Yeah, I'll open up my checkbook and write a check to that cause any day. The second lesson is that the community will rally behind you. And again, that's kind of goes with the first lesson. Yeah, tell everybody. And when you tell everybody, the second lesson is the community as a whole is just going to come together and get behind you. The third lesson is to always file a counter claim. This gives you significant leverage over the troll and settlement negotiations because when they know you're not going to go away and that you're filing a counter suit, you might win the counter suit, right? And not only will they not get money from you, it may actually cost them money. They are really going to try to settle at all costs even if they get no money from you. And the fact that they won't lose money from you at that point may be a win for the patent troll. The fourth lesson is to always refuse to settle less than the neutralization of the threat to the entirety of the open source community. So GNOME didn't just want to make Rothschild go away. They wanted to make sure that Rothschild could never sue another open source project over what they were trying to sue GNOME over, right? They wanted to eliminate that threat completely. And I think job well done, GNOME project. And the next topic is Clem LaFave, who is the creator of Linux Mint. He recently set down to do a rare interview because Clem does not like doing public interviews. You will never find Clem doing a video interview. He's very much sticks to just being the lead dev of Linux Mint. He doesn't do any kind of community interaction, right? He's not, you know, most Linux distributions, especially big Linux distributions, Linux Mint has a lot of users. You know, the person that is the lead dev, you know, the lead maintainer of that distribution is usually out in front, you know, promoting that product. And, you know, Clem has never been that kind of guy. And Linux Mint has been around for like 14, 15 years, so it's not a new project. But Clem, again, it's very rare he sits down and answers questions from anyone. But he sat down with a journalist over at Fossbytes for an interview. And I will link to the full interview in the show description for those of you watching on YouTube and Library. But the interviewer asked some good questions here Of course, he gave him some softballs here at the beginning asking, hey, how is COVID-19 affected Mint development? And Clem said that the pandemic and the shutdown really didn't affect the development of Linux Mint at all. He also goes on to ask how Clem got into Linux and developing open source software. And Clem gives a little bit of his back story. He went to college in the 90s, late 90s. He finds Linux. He discovers the free software movement and what he calls free software principles. And he installs Lackware as his first Linux distribution. He also goes on to make this comparison from the late 90s to today, quote, nowadays the Linux community is completely different. It's much bigger, more mainstream, less passionate to a certain extent. I would agree. I would completely agree. Somebody that's been in the Linux community for a long time, right, it's much bigger. There's much more of a community. But it does seem like it is less passionate, especially when it comes to principles and ideals as far as free software and open source software. The interviewer asked Clem, why did he choose to base off of Ubuntu instead of Debian or Red Hat or any other distribution at the time? For those of you not familiar with some of the history here, Ubuntu started in October 2004. So Ubuntu 4.10 was the first release of Ubuntu. I believe that was Warty Warthog. That could be wrong about the code name. But late 2004, Ubuntu starts. In 2006, Linux Mint begins. So two years later. So really Linux Mint has been around almost as long as Ubuntu. Clem tells the interviewer that they based off Ubuntu because Ubuntu had done such a good job of pushing the bar as far as a new user-friendly Linux distribution that anybody could install. Because running Linux on the desktop was not normal in 2004 when Ubuntu started. And really very quickly, Ubuntu became very popular very fast. And it really did the most as far as getting people to seriously consider Linux as a desktop operating system. Because before, it was strictly for servers. But Ubuntu changed all that. So that was why Linux Mint had so many other Linux distributions based off Ubuntu. He also gave credit for Mandrieva back in the day also being very new user-friendly. And those two particular distributions really pushed the bar in the early 2000s. Clem was asked about the Linux Mint Debian edition. And Linux Mint is interesting because they have two different bases. They have your standard Linux Mint and the three flavors, Cinnamon, XFC, Monte. All of those are based off of Ubuntu. And that's really what they want you to install. They want you to go install the Ubuntu-based Linux Mint because that's the real Linux Mint. But they have a Linux Mint Debian edition. And Clem is very straightforward on this. It's really Plan B is what he calls it. Plan B in case we need to switch our base one day. So if Ubuntu ever goes crazy or Microsoft ever buys Ubuntu or Ubuntu just goes away or the Linux Mint guys just no longer can work with the Ubuntu base anymore. They have this side project that they've been maintaining. Linux Mint Debian edition. And they know they can make that work if need be. So that's why it's there. It's just a Plan B for them. They don't really want people to install the Debian edition. At least that's the impression I get with Clem. It's really if you're confused about what you should be installing for Linux Mint the one you need to install is the Ubuntu edition. Clem is asked about some of the tools that are involved as far as developing Linux Mint as far as the development team. What do they use? Of course they use some of the standard stuff like GitHub. They use Slack I guess for communicating. Now Slack is proprietary software but we really can't fault any open source project for using something like Slack or even Discord. So many open source software projects if you go try to get support. Many times one of their official support channels is actually a Discord channel and usually that's the best one to get support for. It's one of the reasons why I have a Discord account is because there are many software projects that sometimes I want to go get support for that are on Discord and free and open source projects even. I don't fault these people for doing that because at the end of the day you want as many people to be exposed to your piece of free and open source software as possible. It's kind of like me doing video content about free and open source software. I am on free platforms like Library and Library platforms like YouTube. Why? Most of the people that are going to watch my content are going to come across it on the big YouTube platform and those are the people that need to know about free and open source software the most. So that's why I post to both. Same thing with these open source projects these software projects is where are most people at as far as a chat platform? Discord is one of the largest ones so that's really where you need to be. I had mentioned earlier that Linux Mint comes in three official flavors Cinnamon, Monte, XFCE they used to have a KDE edition I think I know they used to have a Fluxbox edition way back in the day like in the very early days of Linux Mint they had a Fluxbox edition because I had installed the thing and it was fantastic. But these days they just support three desktops Cinnamon, Monte, XFCE and Clems says right now that's all they want to support that's all they're doing is those three desktop editions they have no plans to ever expand that. The interviewer did ask Clem about the controversial decision to remove snaps from Linux Mint 20 and Clem answers that with quote if snap was fully optional like it was in the past we wouldn't disable it. If snap was open and it could point to multiple servers and anyone could make a snap store we'd probably support that like we do with Flatpak so he has a problem with I guess the back end of snap being proprietary and canonical owns the store and I can understand him having a problem with that but I have no problem with snaps not being installed or enabled on Linux Mint. The way Clem and the Linux Mint team went about this was completely the wrong way they wanted to make it harder for people to get snaps working on Linux Mint. That is something you never do even on an open source project free and open source Linux distribution you never go out of your way to make anything harder to install even if it's proprietary software I don't know of any Linux distribution that goes out of its way to prevent users from installing proprietary software you just don't do that and this is kind of what they're doing with the snaps they want to prevent people from even getting snaps installed on the thing they want to make sure people have to really jump through some hoops to get snap D installed I don't like that I think that is a rather petty thing to do and I really hope they change that in the future. You don't have to ship with snaps already installed or even have snap D installed but if somebody wants to do a pseudo apt install snap D that should be all they need to do. They shouldn't have to go edit some plain text file and the slash Etsy directory or something to be able to get the snaps that they want installed. Now the fifth and final topic I want to talk about is actually a combination of a bunch of topics but most of this discussion stems from a video I did about a week ago on the YouTube channel and on library I did a video about the Linux foundation and the Linux foundation is publishing reports on the Linux foundation website those reports if you check the metadata of these PDFs they were created on Macintosh computers using Adobe InDesign which is of course proprietary software Mac OS is proprietary where the Mac OS doesn't even use the Linux kernel is just strange choices and in that video I completely trashed the Linux foundation because I called them a bunch of hypocrites and a bunch of frauds because Jim Zimlin the head of the Linux foundation has been seen many times more than once using Mac books and iPads and iPhones sometimes in public even in public presentations like he's at a conference and he's presenting something for the Linux foundation and he's doing it on an iPad so I felt like I needed to clarify some stuff because there were some people that didn't know some of the back story like I mentioned Jim Zimlin using a Mac to do these presentations and stuff people were like is that really true he's been spotted many times doing this I found an article all the way back in 2017 Linux foundation president uses Apple OS and in this article this article was published three years ago they said that Jim Zimlin was spotted twice in the last four years and this was in 2017 using a Mac to present stuff you know for the Linux foundation everybody knows he has an iPhone he's presented stuff on iPads before this is just common knowledge that the president of the Linux foundation is an Apple fanboy and all of his devices are Apple devices but one of the things that I mentioned in that video is the Free Software Foundation Europe said that the Linux foundation is dominated by corporate interest and I also said that I was surprised that the Free Software Foundation Europe is also dominated by corporate interest because if you go to their site here you know Google is their top donor which is very weird it says Google accounts for more than 10% of their yearly budget for the Free Software Foundation Europe and if you know anything about the Free Software Foundation like the official Free Software Foundation f.org you know they're not going to be so beholden to some company like Google or Microsoft they never take their money and they certainly you know wouldn't proudly say hey you know more than 10% of our money comes from Google we love Google it was strange but and I actually thought the Free Software Foundation Europe was officially part of the Free Software Foundation it turns out they are not because after I made that video Dr. Roy Shestowich who I follow on Mastodon and I think he also follows me on Mastodon he sent me a post or a toot over on Mastodon it's like hey stop calling the Free Software Foundation Europe the Free Software Foundation there's no direct connection and he's right if you look it up the Free Software Foundation Europe does actually state they have no connection at all with the Free Software Foundation the Free Software Foundation does not endorse the Free Software Foundation Europe apparently they have had arguments over using the name Free Software Foundation Europe and it doesn't look like the Free Software Foundation Europe really is much of anything anyway when you look at their donor page I mean if you look at all the donors for for example the Linux Foundation there's a million donors and you look Free Software Foundation Europe they have about 8 or 10 corporate sponsors and then the bronze donors which are usually just individuals 40 maybe 50 people that's not very many donors so I don't think too many people are giving this organization money and I can understand why now is probably most people understand that it's not actually connected to the Free Software Foundation I didn't I just assumed because of the name but that was my fault I should have done more research I am glad that Dr. Roy here did let me know about this because it is strange why would you use that name it's just like they're purposely misleading people the only reason the FSFE even uses the term Free Software Foundation is to do people into donating money and especially corporations that could never donate money to the official Free Software Foundation because I don't think the Free Software Foundation just knowing those guys I don't think they would want to be associated with Google and certainly not Microsoft I know the Free Software Foundation would never want to be associated with Microsoft so I should have done a better job of spotting that fraud but I'm afraid I didn't I do apologize about that getting back to some of the clarifications about the Linux Foundation from that video you know people were like well maybe it's a one-time thing that they made that document using a MacBook and using Adobe InDesign no because what is today I am recording this podcast on September 9th on September 8th yesterday they posted this report why open source matters to your enterprise it is a PDF and if I downloaded it and check the metadata which I've already done it is created on a Macintosh using Adobe InDesign and the title of it is why open source matters to your enterprise they created that on a proprietary operating system using proprietary software one thing I did not mention on that Linux Foundation video from a few days ago and I should have but most of you guys probably know this has been known for a while is that individual donors to the Linux Foundation where does that money go now the corporate donors you know if you donate $500,000 or more a year you get a seat on the board of directors at the Linux Foundation and that's what people are interested in that's what Microsoft and Facebook and Google and all those companies are doing but what about you you just the individual donor you care about Linux development open source software I want to give the Linux Foundation a few bucks because I want to help support the movement well if you go to donate on the Linux Foundation page you will see right here 100% of donations go toward funding diversity programs so it's a social justice warrior kind of thing I guess your money is going to social causes it's not even going to help develop the Linux kernel that's just weird the Linux Foundation is just a complete and total joke at this point now the free software foundation it's not a joke I'm a member of the free software foundation if you're not a member you should join but right now they're asking the community to nominate people for their awards the free software awards and one of the interesting things about this as far as this year is one of the very first people that somebody nominated if I go to the mailing list here is somebody is nominating Richard Stallman because he's actually eligible for the award now because Richard Stallman is not an official part of the free software foundation anymore now when he was a member when he was the president of the free software foundation you could nominate somebody that's part of the free software foundation for an award it's got to be somebody that's not associated with the FSF I think it also has to be somebody that's not currently associated with the GNU project as well I don't know about Richard's involvement with GNU at the moment and I think that would be a classy move by the free software foundation now that Richard is no longer the head of that organization to give him some kind of recognition a lifetime recognition even just give him the damn award previous winners of the award include names that many of you guys know just looking at some of the list of past winners of this award I see names like Matthew Garrett Theodorat Guido Van Rossum of course Miguel de Acasa and Larry Wall now one thing that may prevent Richard from actually getting a nomination and being able to receive this award somebody did have a question is Richard actually a member of the awards committee is he a part of the selection although I think if somebody wanted to nominate him surely Richard and the committee could let Richard recuse himself from having any kind of say so in the vote one of the comments in this thread that I found hilarious was this one here quote the award is to further push for free software recognition and giving the free software award to RMS it's like giving the Nobel prize to Nobel I completely agree it is a little strange Richard Stallman founded the free software movement he founded the free software foundation he founded the canoe project and giving him the free software award I can understand that's a little weird but quite frankly I think the man deserves it and that is it for this edition of unfettered freedom I try to release unfettered freedom every week typically you can look for it late Wednesday early Thursday depending on time zone and where you are in the world before I go I need to thank a few special people those of you watching the video version of this podcast are going to see a list of names I need to thank Michael, Gabe, Corbinion, Mitchell, Devon, Fran, Art5530, Akami, ChannelChup, Claudio, Donnie, John, George, Caleb, Devil's, Lewis, Paul, Scott and Willie these guys they are my highest tier patrons over on Patreon they are the producers of episode 6 unfettered freedom I also need to thank each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen this very long list of names you're seeing these are all my supporters over on Patreon because again unfettered freedom and the DistroTube channel does not have any corporate sponsors it is just me and you guys the community you'd like to support my work please consider doing so you'll find DistroTube over on Patreon alright guys peace