Waiting for the Cylons

Note: The central metaphor and several of the key
observations regarding corporate strategy in this piece came
directly from a discussion with a good friend. Credit for the
premise goes to them.

For forty years, the Cylons had been silent. To the
citizens of the Twelve Colonies, the war was ancient history
• a dark chapter taught in schools, but utterly disconnected
from their modern, prosperous reality.

Against this backdrop of unprecedented peace, Admiral
William Adama continued to enforce a strict, fiercely
unpopular rule on the aging Battlestar Galactica: absolutely
no networked computers. To the younger crew, the press, and
the politicians, Adama was a paranoid dinosaur. He was an
artifact of a bygone era, stubbornly clinging to an outmoded
view of a world that had long since moved on.

For a modern free software advocate, looking at Microsoft
today feels exactly like standing on the un-networked bridge
of the Galactica.

Those of us who have been around long enough remember the
First Cylon War. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Microsoft's
posture toward free software was defined by overt,
existential hostility. It was a war of survival, and the
attacks weren't subtle. We saw the leaks of the Halloween
Documents, which explicitly detailed Microsoft's internal
strategies to disrupt and undermine. We watched their
executives publicly brand the GPL a "cancer." We lived under
the constant, looming shadow of software patents, wielded as
a bludgeon to threaten and trap us.

But today, we're living in the armistice. The tune has
drastically changed. The corporate messaging is plastered
across the tech industry: "Microsoft Loves Open Source." They
bought GitHub and became its top contributor. The overt
patent threats have gone quiet.

Yet, if you listen closely to this modern diplomacy,
there's a massive, glaring tell regarding their true
motivations: Microsoft explicitly and constantly praises
"open source," but they carefully, deliberately avoid ever
talking about "software freedom."

That omission isn't an accident. "Open source" is a
development methodology - a highly effective, profitable way
to build and maintain software. "Software freedom" is a moral
philosophy. Microsoft eagerly adopted the methodology because
it served their bottom line, but they never adopted the
ethics.

Which brings me back to the DRADIS console. When I look at
the landscape today - the free software licenses, the
corporate treaties, the sudden influx of goodwill from a
historic enemy - the lingering question remains. Am I just an
outmoded version of Adama for still looking over my
shoulder?

Why the Cylons Stopped Attacking

So why did the attacks stop? Why did the empire that once
called the GPL a "cancer" suddenly put down its weapons,
embrace our community, and start publishing its own code as
free software?

If you listen to the PR, it sounds like a corporate
redemption arc. But looking at the board, the reality's far
more pragmatic. It wasn't a moral awakening. The Cylons
didn't suddenly develop a conscience, and Microsoft didn't
suddenly realize the ethics of free software.

They stopped because they were losing a massive,
existential war.

While Microsoft was busy trying to crush free software,
the battlefield fundamentally shifted out from under them.
The industry's future moved to "the cloud". And in the "cloud
computing" space, Amazon (AWS) had become the dominant
empire.

Almost overnight, Microsoft found itself in an unfamiliar
position: the underdog. Their traditional tactics - locking
people into proprietary, Windows-only, heavily patented
environments - were failing spectacularly against the
flexible, predominantly free software-based infrastructure
that AWS offered. People were leaving in droves because
Amazon gave them the tools they actually wanted to use.

Microsoft was bleeding relevance, and they needed a new
strategy to survive. As industry observer Matt Asay pointed
out, "open source is the weapon underdogs use to break a
monopoly."

When you can no longer beat the dominant player with
proprietary software, you embrace the community to undercut
them. Microsoft's massive pivot wasn't a true peace treaty;
it was a calculated flanking maneuver. By making their
frameworks free, contributing to the free software movement,
and suddenly playing nice with the community, they weren't
surrendering to it; they were embracing it. They were
weaponizing the "open source" methodology to recruit
developers, hoping to use that goodwill to fight a much
bigger enemy.

The Locked Patent Hammer

If we accept that this is a tactical maneuver rather than
a philosophical awakening, we have to ask: why don't they use
their massive patent portfolio to crush free software
anyway?

The answer is mutually assured destruction. Attacking free
software today would be corporate suicide.

Microsoft's entire strategy relies entirely on developer
goodwill. They've spent years painstakingly building a
narrative that they're the friendly, developer-centric
alternative to Amazon Web Services' cold, calculating
machine.

To maintain this narrative, they had to sign an armistice.
In 2018, Microsoft joined the Open Invention Network (OIN),
bringing tens of thousands of its patents into a defensive
pool designed to "protect" us. They issued corporate patent
promises assuring that they wouldn't sue us for building
compliant software on ecosystems like .NET.

These agreements are the locks placed on the patent
hammer. Microsoft keeps that hammer locked away because they
know exactly what would happen if they ever took it out and
started swinging it around at free software again. The
backlash would be instantaneous and catastrophic. Years of
carefully curated "Microsoft Loves Open Source" PR would
vaporize overnight, and developers would immediately migrate
their infrastructure back to AWS.

Right now, in this specific phase of "the cloud war", the
risk of Microsoft filing a patent lawsuit against the free
software community is effectively zero.

But this is where the Adama mindset kicks in. A locked
hammer is still a hammer.

If you read the fine print of these armistice agreements,
you see the escape hatches. A company can legally withdraw
from the OIN with just 30 days' notice. Corporate "promises"
are policy decisions, not irrevocable, binding freedoms like
the GPL.

We're living in an illusion of safety, built entirely on
current market conditions. The Cylons haven't dismantled
their weapons; they've just turned the safeties on because
firing them would damage their own ship. And history tells us
that peace treaties only last exactly as long as they're
strategically convenient.

Will We See the Basestars on the
Horizon?

This brings us to the most dangerous question of all - the
one that keeps the Adama mindset alive. We know why the
Cylons put down their weapons. But what happens if they
actually win?

What happens if "the cloud wars" end, AWS is defeated or
marginalized, and Microsoft regains absolute, unchallenged
dominance over the tech industry?

The moment they're no longer the underdog, the entire
strategic calculus changes. The desperate need for developer
goodwill, which is the very foundation of this current peace,
vanishes. When you're the only game in town, you don't need
to play nice. You dictate the terms.

If Microsoft reclaims that monopoly, its tone and attitude
will inevitably shift. The armistice agreements that protect
free software today will suddenly become strategic
liabilities for a dominant empire. Corporate "promises" might
be easily revised. The locks on the patent hammer, secured by
a flimsy 30-day exit clause, might be quietly opened.

But if they do go Cylon again, what does a modern attack
actually look like?

They learned from the First Cylon War. A barrage of direct
patent lawsuits against free software is loud, messy, and
instantly rallies the resistance. Today, the attack would be
a Silent Fleet.

It would be a quiet enclosure of the ecosystem. Because
they've spent years luring people in with the "Come here, we
have Linux, we love it" trap, they already control the
underlying infrastructure. The modern attack takes those
foundations and gradually introduces proprietary extensions
that work only on Azure or Windows - starving the free
versions of their tools of crucial updates. In contrast, the
proprietary versions get all the optimization.

They won't need to sue the free software community.
They'll just slowly, quietly extinguish our software freedom
by wrapping it in a proprietary web until we can't move.

Looking at the DRADIS

This brings us back to the Old Man and his un-networked
ship.

To be clear, this isn't a manifesto to immediately purge
every piece of Microsoft-backed code, avoid C#, etc. This
isn't about declaring that using their free software tools
today is strictly "good" or "bad."

It's simply about recognizing the board's reality.

There's a moment early on in Battlestar Galactica where a
civilian teacher confronts Admiral Adama in the corridors of
the ship. She's frustrated by his archaic rules, telling him
that a computerized network would simply make it faster and
easier for the teachers to be able to do their jobs. She
accuses him of just being afraid of computers.

He apologizes for the inconvenience, but firmly declares,
"I will not allow a networked computerized system to be
placed on this ship while I'm in command."

To many, things like C# and .NET are exactly that
integrated network.

Personally, I don't find C# or .NET technically
interesting or appealing in the slightest. The pressure to
use it doesn't come from its technical merits; it comes from
the sheer gravity of its ecosystem. When a prgram written in
C# is the only existing free software compiler for a language
you want to use, the path of least resistance is to just
install it and get to work.

But just because everyone else is eagerly wiring their
ships together doesn't mean it's safe.

Adama didn't refuse to network the Galactica because he
hated technology or progress. He refused because he
remembered who the Cylons were. He understood that a
prolonged period of quiet doesn't change the fundamental
nature of an empire. He knew that the moment you sacrifice
your systemic independence, you leave yourself entirely
vulnerable to the whims of an entity that once tried to
destroy you.

As I see people using their tools and happily embracing
them, I have to ask myself: Am I just an outmoded version of
Adama for still wondering about this? Is my skepticism just a
relic of the First Cylon War, completely out of touch with
this new era of corporate benevolence?

Maybe. But if the situation does change - if Microsoft
wins "the cloud wars", sheds its underdog status, and the
strategic necessity of playing nice evaporates - what happens
next? Will the free software community notice the basestars
assembling on the horizon in time to react?

Or have we grown so comfortable that Caprica will burn
before we even realize the network's been compromised?

In the meantime, my DRADIS console is still scanning.

Copyright © 2026 Jason Self. Unless otherwise noted
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