Originally this was a reply to this article about a Windows feature called Recall, but there’s a good argument the author’s concerns resonate far beyond Windows and Meta to proprietary generally.
Originally this was a reply to this article about a Windows feature called Recall, but there’s a good argument the author’s concerns resonate far beyond Windows and Meta to proprietary generally.
They do have Linux foundation Europe, which has a hq in Brussels. Afaik, all of the Europe OS projects supported by LFE are hosted in Europe also. They also claim to be independent; though I’m not sure if that means from LF entirely. Checking the job boards show roles in California and Germany however; suggesting they are the same entity. (Though I suppose that could just be collaborative?).
The very nature of open source means someone else could just pick it up even if the entirety of LF were wiped out. (There are 5000+ collaborators on the Linux kernel git repo) But the reality is a large portion of those actively working on the kernel, are likely involved in LF in some capacity. Add the fact that LF fund multiple Open source projects, The impact of losing LF would be drastic for the future development of not just Linux, But the FOSS ecosystem as a whole.
This isn’t the only threat to FOSS either; The fact that GitHub is owned by Microsoft is a concern imo.
Not only that, but it also affects the decision making. For example, quite recently Russian maintainers were removed from the Linux kernel, citing “compliance”.
It’s easy to imagine same thing happening to Chinese maintainers, for example. And then from other countries. This, too, can strongly affect not just Linux, but FOSS landscape as a whole.
Thanks for bringing up the European foundation, I’ll look into it!