A reader of my critique to the “Linux owns the Internet” slogan just made the comment integrally copied here:

I agree that some of the big companies are pure evil when it comes to user’s data, but your suggestion that this is Linux’s “tragicomical proof of failure” is just plain wrong, even more than the catchy title you linked to. Linux and the GNU software collection provide a flexible and solid server system. Period. You don’t blame a sharp knife just because someone used it cut the throat of someone else.

I know what you meant, but trying to prove the other article wrong you went too far, and now your article looks like trolling against Linux. I’m not sure you’re helping your fundraising effort with this.

This comment is important enough to deserves this whole new post as an answer.

That post is deliberately written in the same way as the original article, just to show how dumb that point and way to present the issue is. I wrote “this is proof of the failure of “Linux”” because the original post says that “Linux” owns the Internet.

This said, it is true that my critique is towards certain advocates and ways to advocate FOSS, not against FOSS in and by itself (and that this may not be clear enough in that post, I agree!). This is not news, I’ve been saying this for a long time, see for example here.

I AM aware that the critique in that other post is unlikely to get me funds from FOSS advocates of certain kinds. But I frankly don’t know how to fix or how to avoid this, and I don’t think I could. If those people had had a different attitude, it is very likely that the percloud, which after all is just another Gnu/Linux distribution,would have been done by them at least 5 years ago.

If you check what I wrote (and when) about VPESs, or in my first explicit post about already existing FOSS alternatives to Gmail/Facebook and in the links it contains, you’ll soon realize something: I have said to the FOSS community the equivalent of “let’s do a percloud”, every time I could, for years, and nothing happened.

Therefore, it is very likely that that other post of mine will only prevent funding by people who would have never funded it anyway, no matter how I put it.

As a matter of fact, so far the greatest interest, as well as the first percloud funding pledges, have come from people who, even if they already use Free Software, are not FOSS hackers or FOSS “GNU style” advocates by any means.

And that’s OK! Please note that I am NOT angry about this. Just a bit baffled, maybe, because I am SURE that the percloud will open to a whole new service market for all FOSS small companies, Web hosting providers and single consultants.