This is a dispute between prominent ‘free software movement’ activists. The free software movement advances a philosophy and practice which values the freedom of users to create and share software enabling internet access, and challenges the dominance of ‘big tech’ software and systems over the online experience. That includes a preference for internet relay chat (‘IRC’), an online instant messaging system dating in origin from the 1990s, over the big social media platforms. The challenge the free software movement makes is not only of a technical, but also of a social, economic or ethical nature, and it espouses some wider sets of values accordingly.

The Claimant, Dr Matthew Garrett, describes himself as a software engineer, computer security expert, and free software activist, with an academic background in (computational) genetics. He gained his doctorate at Cambridge University, and has worked with ARM Ltd, a Cambridge-based software design company, throughout his career. He is currently based in ‘Silicon Valley’ in California, where he holds a senior position at NVIDIA, one of the top half dozen big tech companies globally, and a part-time lectureship at the University of California, Berkeley, teaching operating systems security for a masters course. He sets out that he has worked on some of the most significant projects in the free software movement and won a Free Software Foundation award in 2013 for his work on Secure Boot, UEFI and the Linux kernel (at the time, he states, the FSF was one of the most important organisations in the world for the advancement of free software).

The Defendants are a Manchester-based married couple, each of whom operates a UK website focusing on free software information, interests and campaigns, and hosting an IRC channel. Dr Roy Schestowitz describes himself as a software engineer, interdisciplinary researcher and fair competition advocate, with an academic background in medical biophysics. He operates the website www.techrights.org (‘Techrights’). Mrs Rianne Schestowitz describes herself as a computer scientist who works for a FOSS (free and open-source software) specialist. She operates the website news.tuxmachines.org (‘Tuxmachines’). Both websites have been in operation for some two decades. These websites are declared by Dr Schestowitz to be not-for-profit undertakings – they are, he says, a committed labour of love on which they both publish tirelessly to the extent of thousands of articles a year.

Dr Garrett brings a claim in libel over a series of 24 publications appearing on either Techrights or Tuxmachines or both, in August and September 2023. The publications complained of appear at Annex A to this judgment. Dr Garrett brings a further claim in data protection in respect of these and a number of other publications appearing on the websites at around the same time. Dr and Mrs Schestowitz counterclaim in harassment.