I had a journey
I had a journey
Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)
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.
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
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
welcome comrade!sudo apt-get install anarchismFine, but dont defend tyranical regimes. They are bad no mather who they say they read. They could could claim to be following the teachings of fucking Mr Roggers but if they have concentration camps then thats not utopic or very humanitarian in my opinion, specially if ther is some mad dictator in power with everything no matter how manny extra steps are in between.
Part of how I got here involves reading an assload of textfiles from the '90s and growing disillusioned with the fruits of that optimistic '90s techno-libertarianism
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.
Shit this is too accurate
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?
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.
relatable
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).
I think we may be the same person.
Use the right tool for the job, I say.
I made a decent chunk of change with capitalism. I have a modest house and am well positioned for a middle-class retirement.
Now I work for the government in a field for which I find the capitalist options wanting.
I give away my programming guides for free online with no ads, but sell paper copies of the books for profit.
Could I make more money by charging for the online versions? Sure. But some things are worth more than money.
The quest for money doesn't ruin everything, but it sure ruins a lot of things.
Bell Labs of yore would be my dream company to work for.
In my view Torvalds is more of a pragmatic stoicist.
Yes, I agree, I am at stage 3 and stage 4 looks more enticing every single damn day.
Eric Raymond, Communism and Free Software Eric Raymond, Communism and Free Software
Just began using Linux, was already Marxist
So many kiddos arguing ridiculous politics here.
it be a slippery slope
I don't really see the link to communism though I can see the parallels to social democracy.
Private ownership of computer code should lead us to a hellscape where all code is owned by a handful of huge companies and wealthy elites. But instead of doing away with private ownership and making all code public domain we added regulation in the form of free and open source licensing that democratized private ownership and made it serve our community. Perhaps that is the real lesson, not communism.
Me too frfr
I think there is something fundamental about the pull of investigating, understanding, and reading that leads to so much crossover between the two.
I believe you are not alone. I have the exact same journey. Started installing Ubuntu 20.04 on a mid-2011 iMac. Now, I consider myself as a near-libertarian communist, I spend my free time reading books on communist theory.
Permanently Deleted
Follow the white rabbit: https://lemmy.world/post/5739196
In my experience I've noticed Linux tends to (disproportionately) attract both libertarians and socialists/communists. I feel like I run into more of both within the Linux community than I do in other communities.
I started using Linux because I couldn't force myself to use Windows 8. Up to that point I used whatever version of Windows came right before the graphical interface but 8 was too awful so I started playing with mint and never went back..
I got off the capitalism train in the middle of that but that was only because I decided to major in business and when I saw how the sausage was made I jumped ship but I didn't know anything about socialism or communism or marxism or whatever you want to call it. I was so not into politics or economics that I literally had to search the Internet and ask people on social media what was an alternative to the crap I was reading for my classes.. And then I went down that rabbit hole. If was enlightening. I learned a lot.
Also... for people who think college is Marxist indoctrination...Marx was brought up for one paragraph in one book at the very very end of my 4 years. But by that point I already knew who he was just from the rabbit hole I went down when I was curious for some alternative to what I was being taught.
FOSS always struck me as a lib left construct rather than an auth left one.
I used linux for about the same time and i still think communsim is for genocide deniers
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This is the Linux content I was looking for. So relevant and insightful to Linux itself. Like, wow, this is so much better and so much less insufferable than Reddit’s userbase, amirite, guys? It’s so refreshing seeing the same ideology leaking into literally every community, the diversity is so nice to see, like, wow, yes.
You do know Capitalism was making the slave trade unfeasable. Technology is superior at mass production. It increasingly made sense to invest in machinery etc. The most skilled slaves were eventually given free reign and only had to pay a fee to their master. White nations and their Capitalist technology ended slavery - at least in the Western world.
