• Elsie
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    42 years ago

    FOSS is an active political statement!

    • Hemingways_Shotgun
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      52 years ago

      Was just coming here to say that. The entire Ethos of Open Source is basically the people owning the digital means of production. So some people really not grasp that?

      • OrangeSlice
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        02 years ago

        So some people really not grasp that?

        Actually, yes, the original FOSS movement had more right-libertarian roots than anything to the left, although nowadays some might see it as “common ground”.

        • @[email protected]
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          2 years ago

          The politics of folks like RMS (personal issues aside) were far above average, but the Free Software Movement was very steeped in liberalism from its onset, and that explains many of of its present shortcomings. Its biggest failing was to believe that Free Software would ultimately win on its merits. In the early days this was understandable, when free software was often playing catch-up to replicate the functionality of established commercial offerings. When the GNU project was just a C compiler you could install on proprietary UNIX systems to dick around with.

          Today though, Free Software is more often than not superior to commercially available offerings, with the exception of some niche industrial segments. But still, Free Software adoption by end users remains incredibly marginal. No matter how many merits Free Software stacks in its favor, the “Year of Linux on the Desktop” never comes. We are still drowning in proprietary iOS and Android phones. The overwhelming majority of PCs still ship with Windows. All of it deliberately engineered to become E-waste in a couple of years.

          Folks, this won’t change unless we take over the factories where these PCs and phones are manufactured.

    • Drew Got No Clue
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      12 years ago

      I despite this “trend” of considering just simple opinions and basic statements as “political”. It’s been watered down and turned into a meaningless tag.

    • @[email protected]
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      52 years ago

      In Canada it’s starting to become “political” since our morons are egged on by the morons down south.

      • HomoScotian
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        12 years ago

        It’s so exhausting, they treat it like a sport, it’s not about making anyone’s lives better it’s all just about their team winning

        • @[email protected]
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          2 years ago

          It’s people creating their own victories because they’re lacking their own.

          Love your username, btw!

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      Politics used to be something people engaged in. Now politics is the core to a lot of people’s identities, which means disagreement or debate is perceived as a personal attack and people will embrace a tremendous amount of cognitive dissonance to avoid being wrong.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      Hello I’m a trans person from the UK here to tell you this is sadly not the case at all.

  • @[email protected]
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    12 years ago

    I don’t see how his, very reasonable, views makes Linux itself (more?) political. What is the point of this post?

    • beepnoise
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      12 years ago

      I don’t think the title is good, but I do think it’s notable to some extent. With people having weird, shitty opinions, it’s nice to see someone who is relatively famous in the tech community for having somewhat sane opinions and being vocal about it.

      In my experience, the Linux community has got its own bunch of free speech weirdos who would reject some of these political points (especially the trans position), so I do think in that context it is kind of important.

    • Andreas
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      02 years ago

      Gloating? Complaining? I thought the FOSS community has matured past “creator’s views = views of everyone who uses their creation”, honestly. And isn’t Linus supporting the Democratic party already well known?

    • ElectronSoup
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      02 years ago

      I’ve seen people on other sites malding about how this proves linux and the GPL are communist. I suppose it’s important to know just what those people are melting down about this week.

      • Andreas
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        02 years ago

        Surely that already happened in the Code of Conduct drama a few years back? Or the “Linus is rude and difficult to work with” callout even before that?

    • Lilium
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      -12 years ago

      Well, there was drama here yesterday about Lemmy’s creator and maintainer being a tankie or whatever and one person trying to say “Lemmy bad” because of that.

      This post doesn’t seem to be here by coincidence.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 years ago

        This post doesn’t seem to be here by coincidence.

        As the person who posted the original post: i don’t like/trust tankies and them being tankies is one of the reason i deleted my lemmy.ml account.

        My impression is that Linus also doesn’t speak in his post about tankies, but instead i think the word “communist” is equal to some general leftist.

        But i kind of agree, that this post can be seen as “in support of tankies”. hmm.

        my impression is, furthermoore: because the more tankie politics is on lemmygrad.ml, an instance which is easily blocked, it is not that bad / could be worse. I kind of hope instances like beehaw.org have the most users someday, because they are really awesome i think

        • @[email protected]
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          02 years ago

          I just want lemmygrad defederated. I geniuinely thought the whole instance is satire but holy hell

    • @[email protected]
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      12 years ago

      The man can say what he wants and it’s nothing to do with Linux. And, his gun stance seems fair to me. I think he is an intelligent man, and I think he’s allowed to say his thoughts without some lame arse trying to tie his ideals to the OS. Move on, nothing to see here.

      • jurrasicjonn
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        02 years ago

        This is exactly what I was thinking as well. Why is it so hard for folks to separate what someone creates from the creator? If we found out the person who created, say, the bandaid, was a militant Nazi homophobe who advocated for marriage at the age of 6, should we feel guilty every time we need to cover a cut or scrape?

        Personally, I don’t know much at all about Linus, what he prefers for breakfast, whether he wears slippers in the house or goes barefoot, and so on. He could staunchly advocate that my country do away with its present form of government and declare him dictator for life for all I care.

        I like Linux. I use Linux. It gets the job done. End of story.

  • SolNine
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    02 years ago

    Incredibly sensible take on all accounts in my opinion! I share all of the same opinions, though I lack the platform to be listened too haha.

  • GadgeteerZA
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    42 years ago

    Every human opinion is essentially “political” in some way, and is even interpreted differently be country? But open source software as a technology should not be taking any stance for or against gender, guns, rights, race, etc…

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      Well, it’s not any official statement by the Linux Devs as a collective.

      It’s simply the personal opinion of Linus - who also happens to be the person who created Linux and still manages it.

  • @[email protected]
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    02 years ago

    All sensible points, nothing extreme, except maybe the Linus trademark super blunt delivery