[ale] Linux Foundation quietly drops community representation

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:26:39 -0600
Preston <preston.lists at gmail.com> wrote:

> Very disappointed with this:
> 
> "Up until recently, the Linux Foundation allowed the individual
> members to elect two board members and ensure that the voice of Linux
> community is considered at the board meetings. In a shocking change,
> the Foundation has erased this clause and decided to benefit the
> corporate companies rather that whole community."
> 
> 
> http://fossbytes.com/why-linux-foundations-latest-change-is-a-bad-new-for-open-source/
> 
> Preston

This surprises me not one bit. Linux Foundation is organized for big
corporations, not for the unpaid developers and non-corporate users who
built Linux in the first place. Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

============================================================
Its funding comes primarily from its Platinum Members: Fujitsu, HP,
IBM, Intel, NEC, Oracle, Qualcomm, and Samsung and for many years
Hitachi.[23] These nine each having a representative on the Board of
Directors, they hold a majority on the 16-person board.[24]
============================================================

What I find quite scary about this is that the Linux Foundation
possesses one of the few all-distro methods to boot with Secure Boot.
The microsecond their major contributors decide an all-distro method to
boot Secure Boot is contrary to their bottom line, none of us have an
all-distro method, unless we find the last version, and fork it.

According to gummiboot Wikipedia page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gummiboot_(software) :

=============================================================
In May 2015, gummiboot was fully integrated into systemd to form its
systemd-boot component that serves as a UEFI boot manager.[2][3]
Following this action, the source code repository of gummiboot was
emptied out in July 2015.
=============================================================

"The source code repository of gummiboot was emptied out in July 2015."

Makes it just a little harder to fork, doesn't it?

>From where I stand, corporate Linux will foreclose user choice if such
foreclosure enhances the corporation's bottom line.

Unless you own or are paid by a big corporation, Linux Foundation is
not your friend.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
January 2016 featured book: Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
http://www.troubleshooters.com/28