FOSS Force’s Top Five Articles — For the Week Ending July 24, 2026

Did you miss this week’s top articles? Here are the five most read articles on FOSS Force for the week that just ended.

1. 

   The XZ Backdoor Long Con Chronicled in ‘Half a Second’: At first the book Half a Second looked like a welcome addition to the open source canon, then we discovered its dirty little AI secret.

2. 

   Elon to Open Source X’s Codebase. Believe It When Git Happens: Elon Musk promises to open source all of X, ‘no exceptions,’ once the security team is done poking at it. The missing detail: what ‘open’ actually means in Musk‑speak.

3. 

   FreeBSD 16 Cleans House: No GPL Left in the Base System: The removal of GPL code from FreeBSD 16’s base system isn’t just housekeeping — it reflects a BSD vision of “software freedom” that differs from FSF, Gnu, and Linux.

4. 

   Codenotary Offers ‘Permanently Free’ Security for 25 AlmaLinux Machines: Although every VMware user knows that nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky, the security firm Codenotary is offering free security for up to 25 machines running AlmaLinux — with no expiration date.

5. 

   Microsoft’s Formats Are the Real Cancer Redmond Blamed on FOSS: Redmond once branded Linux the “cancer,” but the real infection was already inside Microsoft Office: proprietary formats designed to keep users and governments dependent forever.