this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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The idea of free software is extremely socialist/communist. People working together to create something that anyone can use for free, with profit being a non-existent or at least minor motivator.
It's a real shame that generally lefties don't really care about or 'get' software freedom. You should be pushing for free software on all levels. In your personal life and in government. It's crazy how much power a company like Apple, Microsoft or Google has over everyone.
I was leftie before I was techie. If you don't know anything around tech and computers you wouldn't know what to do. Even as a fairly tech-adjacent professional it took me quite a while.
Then again, I only became a real leftie again after kicking all the corpos out of my computer.
Tech used to be (and still is) obscured by heavy gatekeeping. We who understand a little more like to joke about those who don't, and I guess we'll have to stop that if we really want to unite the left. Don't ridicule, explain. The person might never have had a chance to learn the concept.
I explained to finance why we had to purchase licenses for for a UI library. To justify the costs, they asked what the alternative was. I told them we don't have the talent or resources to develop our own UI library... But I offered up free open source alternatives.
Unfortunately the FOSS stuff never gets approved by IT due to vulnerability / threats.
But is FOSS actually more vulnerable?
Depends, sometimes not always. Having source available makes it easy for hackers to find exploit but also makes it easier for community to identify and address exploits.
So... For a large active community project, it's likely fairly secure but for smaller projects with 1 or just a few developers it might be vulnerable.
Yeah, if a stereotypical construction union rep feels judged by the FOSS world why would they try.
My local bike coop apparently used to run mint on their computer, but when the person who set it up left town it was too much for the bike nerds who weren’t mad engineers (this person also built an electrolysis tub, that had to be gotten rid of when they left Idk if they were actually an engineer by profession, but my dumb engineer ass keeps hearing they did shit I want to do). They’d go back if it was the same, but windows just works for them and linux needed someone to make it work.
There's definitely a gatekeeping issue, but free software doesn't automatically mean 'force people to use Linux', there's stuff like Firefox, Libreoffice, Nextcloud, etc.
It's things like councils working together on common software platforms instead of going with commercial vendors, supported by local companies instead of shoveling billions to Google and Microsoft that gets sent overseas immediately. It's federal governments hiring developers directly to work on software instead of using commercial vendors.
It’s pretty hard to fight hegemony when your salary is just built on donations. A lot of important tech is also paid for via government grants then the private sector gets to use it and erect the walled gardens when it should be in the commons.
It's really too bad the original innovators got subsumed by capitalist 'tech bros.'
The hippies were always capitalist adjacent. Many of them became the Jesus freaks and yuppies.
There were actual leftist movements happening at the time, but those were more of minorities beginning the discussions on how to actively demand power. Black power, gay liberation, women’s liberation, and American communism. Some of this did coincide with the tech hippies.
The California ideology was there from the start.
As a linux leftie, I fully agree. It’s hard to convince people though. Also, I don’t necessarily think it’s the best intro to leftism for layfolk. It’s a great into to leftism for tech nerds and a great intro to tech for left nerds, but the punk who just uses the library computer doesn’t care. Unions are often the easiest intro to leftism for people and not many union folks are interested in learning free software.
I was out drinking the other day and an IBCW friend introduced me to a union brother of his and they’re smart guys who believe in the power of labor, hell they even excitedly showed me that there’s a professionals union in the AFL-CIO, but if I tried to explain a terminal to them they’d look at me like I grew several heads at once.
Free software is great praxis, but it often suffers by the fact that it isn’t what people are used to. That there are intro free softwares like GIMP, libreoffice, and basically anything where FOSS is the default. We can do this, but I think it’s definitely going to not be the easiest sell.
It's mutual. I don't necessarily extend my expectations of a machine doing what I tell it to, out into geopolitics.
There's a lot of overlap in useful terminology and philosophy. There's a bit of overlap in organizational problem-solving (and problem-having). But you can be aggressively capitalist, and still recognize the benefits of stone-soup development. Even in hardware - RISC-V is going to undercut low-end ARM in embedded applications, and hard-drive manufacturers are not exactly Spanish republicans.
You're missing the entire point of the free software movement. Free as in freedom does NOT intrinsically mean free as in absence of cost. Linux exists because of companies like Cygnus who successfully marketed the Bazaar, as opposed to the Cathedral, to investors.
Stallman and Torvalds themselves have gone on record multiple times stating the utter lack of political motivation in being able to modify the software on your machine.