Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    Linux and open source in general completely blow apart capitalist arguments that profit motive is necessary for innovation and technological advancement. Open source ecosystem primarily run by volunteers has produces some of the most interesting and innovative technologies that we’ve seen. The reality is that people make interesting things because they’re curious and they enjoy making stuff. Pretty much nobody makes anything interesting with profit being the primary motive.

    • zabadoh@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      I disagree somewhat.

      A lot of high tech development comes with a greed motive, e.g. IPO, or getting bought out by a large company seeking to enter the space, e.g. Google buying Android, or Facebook buying Instagram and Oculus.

      And conversely, a lot of open source software are copies of commercially successful products, albeit they only become widely adopted after the originals have entered the enshittified phase of their life.

      Is there a Lemmy without Reddit? Is there a Mastodon without Twitter? Is there LibreOffice without Microsoft Office and decades of commercial word processors and spreadsheets before that? Or OpenOffice becoming enshittified for that matter? Is there qBittorrent without uTorrent enshittified? Is there postgreSQL without IBM’s DB2?

      The exception that I can see is social media and networked services that require active network and server resources, like Facebook YouTube, or even Dropbox and Evernote.

      Okay, The WELL is still around and is arguably the granddaddy of all online services, and has avoided enshittification, but it isn’t really open source.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        The idea that these things wouldn’t exist without commercial analogs is silly. You do realize that things like BBS boards and IRC existed long before commercial social media platforms right? In fact, we might’ve seen things like social media evolve in completely different directions if not for commercial platforms setting standards based on attracting clicks, and monetizing users.

    • Auli@lemmy.ca
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      2 years ago

      This is so wrong. It’s not volunteers writing this code it is people employed by companies who are paid to write this code. You do know people have to eat.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        Open source has existed long before companies started getting involved with it. Meanwhile, people having to eat has nothing to do with the argument being made which is that capitalism and profit motive are not required for creativity and technological progress.

  • Patapon Enjoyer@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    The Linux to trans anarchocommunist catgirl pipeline is very real. The moment you move to Arch it’s already over.

    • Koffiato@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      Seriously. I just can’t escape. I think it’s nice to have people who support xism while also having people that support yism and zism, as it creates a healthy environment where we can discuss things throughly; since each member will see, recognize, and interpret what they see differently and possibly contribute more.

      Vast majority of Lemmy users are in the same demographic which barely provides differing opinions so there’s basically nothing to discuss (apart from things do not sit well with said demographic).

      I really do hope this platform somehow attracts users from every ideology much like Tildes.

    • monobot@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      People also misuse other *ism words, it is quite normal to make general stereotypes of *ism especially for jokes.

    • Sarcasmo220@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      But that is sort of why it’s the first step. You were using Windows and were bothered with ads. So you may have looked into an alternative you heard about called Linux. You are new to Linux and maybe ask some questions on forums and interact with people from all over the world that are taking time out of their day to help you, which gives you a sense of community. Then you learn that Linux is licensed as Open Source Software, and that people are working together to create something for the benefit of people, not for profits. Then you start to wonder, what else in my life that bothers me is a result of profit motivation?

  • Koffiato@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    What? These things are not related to each other by a good margin. In fact, since the FOSS is completely orderless, it goes against communism; which requires some sort of order just to be able to function. But either way, the parallel is not there or questionable at best, not to mention irrelevant.

    Can we NOT drag useless politics into FOSS?

    • Cinnamon3431@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      being against big corps is both a grassroots FOSS thing and an anticap thing. Also Socialism (step between capitalism and communism) requires “some sort of order” while communism needs as little or as much as FOSS does

    • erwan@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      I agree, FOSS not only appeals to communists but also to the most extreme libertarians.

      Everyone acting in their own selfish interests, using the code they need and writing code to scratch their itch. Forking when they want.

      The idea of a fork (I’m not happy, I’m going to do my own thing) is absolutely not a communist concept. Communism is usually centralized planification.

  • whou@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    I too just turned into a Marxist after finding out about Linux and software freedom in 2020 lol

    I think there might be more than a handful of us. Welcome, comrade.

  • Imnebuddy@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    For me, it was around 2015ish when I first installed Linux after learning about it from someone that was detasselling in a corn field with me. Then around 2017-2020ish, I eventually became radicalized (2017 is when net neutrality was killed, even though around 80% of Americans supported it, which made me question our government and economy).

    • puppy@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      democratized private ownership and made it serve our community.

      Isn’t that what communism is? In an ELI5 level?

      • Imnebuddy@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        I am not sure if you meant to reply to the other person’s comment or refer to them in mine, but I think this video does a pretty good job at explaining socialism/communism to people wanting to understand it: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=fpKsygbNLT4

        I’ll try to give my own explanations later.