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submitted 1 year ago by imAadesh@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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

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[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 147 points 1 year 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.

[-] FaeDrifter@midwest.social 52 points 1 year ago

capitalist arguments that profit motive is necessary for innovation and technological advancement

I don't know who is arguing this because it's incredibly stupid. The greatest scientific minds of history, the mathematicians, the physicists, the inventors, were not capitalists, they're people with passion for their work.

If we move to a society that guarantees basic human needs and good education, we're only going to have more scientists and engineers that progress technology even faster.

[-] agent_flounder@lemmy.one 35 points 1 year ago

And while we are at it... novelists, poets, painters, musicians, philosophers, ...

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[-] S_H_K@lemmy.fmhy.net 23 points 1 year ago

The innovation argument is shaky at best many of the corporations innovations are brought or copied really. Is a story that became pretty common in the latest decades one guy come with a good idea some other mofo takes it and profits with it.

[-] ConfusedLlama@kbin.social 40 points 1 year ago

That's why it's important to use hard copyleft licenses like the GPLv3 instead of merely open-source MIT or BSD licenses wherever possible when you publish software.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 33 points 1 year ago

Indeed, the corps did a whole campaign lobbying for permissive licenses precisely so they could plunder open source work. Hard copyleft should be used for any serious project.

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Context for those who are baffled (I was)

https://news.itsfoss.com/linus-torvalds-woke-communists/

No Linus hasn't grabbed a red rag and isn't off to foment revolution

[-] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I liked the take by the utterly clueless Polish guy in the comment. I think his complete lack of understanding of any context is quite typical of online political conversation, especially when semantics come into play.

Also Linus did call for "Total world domination" (I have the tshirt).

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[-] Zehzin@lemmy.world 83 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Caitlynn@feddit.de 25 points 1 year ago

I'm feeling called out

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[-] ConfusedLlama@kbin.social 68 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

rant:

I have been using Linux since 2006, a lefty and against the super-rich and big corporations since I remember (to the point of avoiding their products like the plague), also never having understood or accepted gender roles and other stupid traditional concepts, yet never turned into a communist 🤷

It baffles me that so many people think that respecting gender equality, understanding the evil in big corporations and avoiding them, valuing community and being tolerant (except for intolerance) and against discrimination somehow equals communism... I say this because I've been called a communist by many people who know me, while I have always rejected it explicitly!

/rant

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[-] stepanzak@iusearchlinux.fyi 54 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I love the FOSS philosophy and I would be a communist if I didn't know that in my country and in every other country where communism is/was, it became a dictatorship doing reallly horrible things. I simply don't have the trust in people to believe communism is possible without violation of human rights. It's sad.

[-] Shatur@lemmy.ml 24 points 1 year ago

in every other country where communism is/was

There is not a single country that has achieved communism.

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[-] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 52 points 1 year ago

Linus Torvalds is a "full-blown woke communist"? Citation needed.

I have been a FOSS enthusiast since my preteen or early teenage years (mid-to-late 2000s), yet I am not in any sense a communist.

[-] RegalPotoo@lemmy.world 46 points 1 year ago

"full-blown woke communist" is US-speak for "Scandinavian socialist"

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 25 points 1 year ago

The term you want is social democrat, which isn't socialism but hey, it tries to like, stop people starving to death on the street, if only because it looks ugly.

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[-] Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz 48 points 1 year ago

Fuck communist statist, foss is pure anarchism.

[-] ZombieMantis@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago

My ~~brother in Christ~~ Comrade in the revolution, Communism is a stateless, moneyless, classless society. Whatever self-proclaimed "Statist Communists" thare are, are no-more Communist than the National "Socialists" who sent our kind to the death camps.

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[-] bear@slrpnk.net 45 points 1 year ago
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[-] Koffiato@lemmy.ml 43 points 1 year 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?

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[-] tal@kbin.social 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

https://moneyinc.com/linus-torvalds-net-worth/

How Linus Torvalds Achieved a Net Worth of $150 Million

Red Hat and VA Linux went public, and since they acknowledged it would not have been possible without the programmer, Torvalds received shares reportedly worth $20 million. Before it went public, Red Hat had allegedly paid Torvalds $1 million in stock, which the programmer claims was the only big payout he received.

He revealed that the rest of the stock Transmeta and another Linux startup awarded him were not worth much by the time he could sell them. However, in the case of his Red Hat stock, it must have been worth his while because, in 2012, Red Hat became the first $1 billion open-source company when it reached the billion-dollar mark in annual revenue.

Whether he exercised his stock options is unclear, but the money he makes from the gains could be the reason why his net worth has continued to soar.

Well, that's one definition of being communist, I suppose. Myself, I think that it's fairly safe to say that Torvalds is okay with private ownership of industry.

[-] spookedbyroaches@lemm.ee 23 points 1 year ago

People may have read this and got too excited. He just believes in socially left policy. He's probably not a communist.

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[-] Wogi@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago

ITT: people who have no idea what communism is

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[-] whou@lemmy.ml 35 points 1 year 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.

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[-] citrusface@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago

...I just didn't want windows advertising to me.

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[-] thebrownhaze@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago
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[-] Commiunism@lemmy.wtf 27 points 1 year ago

Literally same, even the years match up lol

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[-] mwguy@infosec.pub 26 points 1 year ago

Ironic as I went the other way. I was a Communist when I got into FOSS and as I got older I realized I could never defend the historical record of Communism.

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[-] kariboka@bolha.forum 23 points 1 year ago
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Shit this is too accurate

[-] naeap@sopuli.xyz 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just wait for the next stage as a libertarian socialist, without a leading communist party, because we can take care of us ourselves - it's usually called anarchy (which doesn't mean no social norms, just self-organisation without leadership)

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[-] Stuka@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 year ago

So many kiddos arguing ridiculous politics here.

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this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
1508 points (100.0% liked)

Linux

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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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