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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday January 23 2016, @06:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-stay-bought dept.

Matthew Garrett reports

The Linux Foundation is an industry organisation dedicated to promoting, protecting and standardising Linux and open source software. The majority of its board is chosen by the member companies: 10 by platinum members (platinum membership costs $500,000 a year), 3 by gold members (gold membership costs $100,000 a year), and 1 by silver members (silver membership costs between $5,000 and $20,000 a year, depending on company size).

Up until recently, individual members ($99 a year) could also elect two board members, allowing for community perspectives to be represented at the board level. As of [January 18], this is no longer true.

The by-laws were amended to drop the clause that permitted individual members to elect any directors. Section 3.3(a) now says that no affiliate members may be involved in the election of directors, and section 5.3(d) still permits at-large directors but does not require them[2]. The old version of the bylaws are here--the only non-whitespace differences are in sections 3.3(a) and 5.3(d).

These changes all happened shortly after Karen Sandler announced that she planned to stand for the Linux Foundation board during a presentation last September [YouTube]. A short time later, the "Individual membership" program was quietly renamed to the "Individual supporter" program and the promised benefit of being allowed to stand for and participate in board elections was dropped (compare the old page to the new one). Karen is the executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, an organisation involved in the vitally important work of GPL enforcement.

Roy Schestowitz at TechRights entitled his coverage
The Linux Foundation Has Become Like a Corporate Think Tank; Microsoft Influence Included

[Our extensive coverage of malfeasance at the European Patent Office] has prevented us from covering as much about the Linux Foundation as we used to, including payments from Microsoft, services to Microsoft, and abandonment of GPL enforcement efforts because GPL enforcers went after a Microsoft executives-run VMware.

Several of the places that covered this remarked about the extremely quiet nature of the process.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by M. Baranczak on Saturday January 23 2016, @07:17PM

    by M. Baranczak (1673) on Saturday January 23 2016, @07:17PM (#293678)
    So under the old rules, the regular people elected 2 out of 16 board members? There's not a huge difference between that and 0 members. Sounds like the corporate takeover already happened a long time ago.
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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by isostatic on Saturday January 23 2016, @07:49PM

    by isostatic (365) on Saturday January 23 2016, @07:49PM (#293689) Journal

    So under the old rules, the regular people elected 2 out of 16 board members? There's not a huge difference between that and 0 members. Sounds like the corporate takeover already happened a long time ago.

    So why get rid of the last 2?

    • (Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Saturday January 23 2016, @08:17PM

      by M. Baranczak (1673) on Saturday January 23 2016, @08:17PM (#293700)
      I said there's not a huge difference, not that there isn't any difference. My point was that this move is just a minor part of a larger process.
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by HiThere on Saturday January 23 2016, @09:07PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 23 2016, @09:07PM (#293719) Journal

    Do remember, however, that "The Linux Foundation" is the name that the creators of the foundation chose for the organization, and does not now and did not ever speak for the community. It only pretends to. Sometimes its goals align with those of the community, but frequently they don't. I think this was one of the groups behind trying to make RPM the official way to update software packages, and refusing to accept debs. So they published their official guidelines, and some people paid attention, but many didn't.

    I've been skeptical of them since I first heard about them. This is just the last step making it plain were their allegiences lie, but it was already pretty clear. They aren't necessarily "bad guys", but when they use that name they're sailing under a false flag.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.