image transcription:
big collage of people captioned, “the only people I wouldn’t have minded being billionaires”
names(and a bit of info, which is not included in the collage) of people in collage(from top left, row-wise):
- Alexandra Elbakyan, creator of Sci-Hub. perhaps the single-most important person in the scientific community regarding access to research papers.
- Linus Torvalds, creator of linux kernel and git, courtesy of which we have GNU/Linux.
- David Revoy, french artist famous for his pepper&carrot, a libre webcomic. inspiration for artists who are into free software movement
- Richard Stallman, arch-hacker who started it all. founded the GNU project, free software movement, Emacs, GCC, GPL, concept of copyleft, among many other things. champions for free software to this day(is undergoing treatment for cancer at the moment).
- Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president of VLC media player for 2 decades now
- Ian Murdock, founder of Debian GNU/Linux and Debian manifesto. died too soon.
- Alexis Kauffmann, creator of framasoft, a French nonprofit organisation that champions free software. known for providing alternatives to centralised services, notable one being framapad and peertube.
- Aaron Swartz, a brilliant programmer who created RSS, markdown, creative commons, and is known for his involvement in creation of reddit. he also died too soon.
- Bram Moolenaar, creator of vim, a charityware.
on the bottom right is the text reading, “plus the thousands of free software enthusiasts working tirelessly.”
You must log in or register to comment.
And even if it’s contrary to popular opinion, I don’t mind Bill Gates being a billionaire. I mean, I’d love to have invented the sole operating system for Windows and get all that money. My feeling is, if you make something that worthy you deserve to get paid over and over again.
The problem with that thinking is that his wealth wouldn’t be possible without a ton of other people’s work. His work relied on hardware and other software, and was built on the work of his predecessors, like all software is. He certainly came up with a good product and did well with it, but it wasn’t done in a vacuum. There’s no such thing as a “self-made” billionaire.
I can’t believe that anything that one person produces is worthy enough for a billion dollars. It’s like saying it’s worth more than a year’s worth of work from 65,000 people (based on min wage in the US). Nothing can be worth that much, in my opinion.
Oh I don’t dispute that, I couldn’t list all the names that I’m sure were involved in making Windows a viable system. I think a lot of them did make tons of money, at least I hope so. I don’t mean to suggest one man invented the whole thing by himself.
My question is if no one man is worth a billion dollars - why are athletes worth several million. Unions aside, I know these people would be playing their sport even if nobody paid them at all. And I’m not saying they don’t work hard. I just don’t see how anything one person does in sports is worth several millions of dollars a year.
I’m with you in that I think some athletes are overpaid. That being said, there’s so much difference between several million and a billion.
For reference, one million seconds is 11 days. One billion seconds is 31 years. The numbers don’t seem that different when they’re written down, because our brains can’t really grasp those numbers, but the difference is enormous.
I agree with bringing into question earnings like some athletes get, but the billionaire problem is much bigger and more urgent.
That’s also true, though at some point I think having hundreds of millions might just as well be the same as having billions. Not saying I would turn it down either - if someone offered me that kind of salary to do what I love. But I do have two relatives who are considered (on paper) to be billionaires, a cousin and my older brother. My brother bought a 19 million dollar mansion in Florida and now wants me and me mum to come live with him there - it’s very tempting. I mean to him, money isn’t an object because, it’s not something he has to worry about.
In a way it’s nice, in a sort of Great Gatsby way - being around the rich makes you feel rich, and you get to benefit from the blessings. I don’t think it’s necessarily an evil thing to be that rich. A lot depends on what you do with that money and also, whether you made it on the backs of slave labor or exploitation (and in many cases it’s almost impossible not to have done so).
there’s still stories going around that Gates copied chunks of CP/M …
I’m sure he didn’t really invent the system out of whole cloth, most great inventions were copied from ideas of others.
He stepped back from running his company and got into philanthropy. That’s what all billionaires should do.
Once you’ve taken enough, you’ve gotta work on how to give it all back.
Well I agree, that’s actually why I mentioned Bill Gates. He does a give a lot back in philanthropic enterprises and also just to give to charities. And I agree that is something you should do if you have more money than God and King Midas combined.
If they were billionaires, they likely wouldn’t be the people they are today.
I meant billionaires for their actions and creations, and not by birth like most techbros are.
That seems worse because it means they went out of the way to get so rich, rather than just having it handed to them.
I was thinking more along the lines of “if they had that much money, their projects could’ve received more impact.”
like if free software would become mainstream.though now I realise that’s an idealistic view and with money, people will become corrupt.
If they received a lot of money from their work and they used it to increase the impact of their projects, they wouldn’t be billionaires. The money would have been spent on the projects. If Linus headed a non-profit that received 10B a year revenue and spent most of it, leaving Linus with 0.5M-1M yearly salary, he wouldn’t be a billionaire and the billions spent on the Linux project would have had a significant impact. If on the other hand he pocketed 1B a year, there would be 1B less for the Linux project. And Linus would have been/become a different person.
then the lore of Linyos Torvoltos would’ve been true :p
I’d strongly disagree there too. Y’know basically the entire internet runs on Linux right? Our global communication system containing the sum of all human knowledge is like 99% Linux servers. And the reason a whole bunch of companies sponsor the hell out of Linux now is because it’s just that good and just that important on a global scale.
That’s worse. You see how that is worse right?
yeah, now I do see that.
Ooh, I’ve met three of them on this list. Jean-Baptiste was the best though ;)
There’s a whole bunch of people that deserve to become billionaires a lot more than people in tech and that would have a much better impact on the world if they did. I would much rather have a bunch of billionaire physicists, immunologists, virologists, pediatricians and so on.
that is a nice conundrum. almost like it is impossible to become a billonaire if the desire to benefit society is too high on your priority list.
Patrick Volkerding could use a shout-out — founder, maintainer, and benevolent dictator-for-life of Slackware.
Ian Murdock, founder of Debian GNU/Linux and Debian manifesto. died too soon.
ACAB
I never heard the acronym before.
also, you could say that in case of Aaron Swatrz too.What do people shout when they are hurt by police then?
Why are you saying that in relation to Ian? What do cops have to do with him?
Hummmmm…Lennart Pottering?
If we’re putting developers on the list, it should be Fabrics Bellard or Graydon Hoare.
if Arnold Swartz was a billionaire lemmy wouldn’t exist and most likely kbin also
Idk man we just saw a week ago how atrociously Linus used to treat people. Imagine combining that with enough greed to hold onto a billion dollars. Imagine what any of these people would be like if they were the type to ruthlessly exploit others to get rich. I think a billionaire Linus would be worse than Bill Gates. At least Gates is a nice guy.
It is the act of holding onto that much wealth that is immoral, not who is doing it. This is just fantasizing from a painfully neoliberal perspective: OP is imagining the world would be better if the good guys hoarded inconceivable amounts of wealth and exploited the labor of others.
I haven’t met gates and I agree these days he comes across pleasantly, but perhaps you are not old enough to remember stories of what he was like in his 30s and 40s when Microsoft was younger. He was a tyrant and viscously anticompetitive. As a husband my understanding is that he cheated on his wife (not uncommon I know but still hurtful). He might have become a somewhat better person, maybe, but he certainly wasn’t one when he was making his fortune.
Oh yeah I know how predatory of a businessman he was, I just assumed he did it politely.
I have an unfavourable view of gates despite his philanthropic actions. mainly because of his buying of large farmlands and his opposition to freely licence astra zeneca’s vaccine.
I have a question:
almost every single person that you know as a good guy may have a little but of an uncanny side. at which point does a person not remain an overall good person?or do we take the person for who he/she is, and use(and learn from)his/her actions as an example, both good and bad ones?
I’m asking primarily because I don’t know an answer to it.
I would be OK if the guy that made Stardew Valley became a billionaire.
Oh wow Ian Murdock commit suicide :(
I dont want anybody to be a billionaire, also they couldn’t because to be one you have to be exploitative and a bad person
That’s not necessarily true. My cousin is the nicest person you could meet, he was a programmer who tinkered around with a package delivery tracking system, and Fexex bought him out for almost 2 billion. He became one of our wealthiest citizens overnight. And he’s amazing, he doesn’t exploit people and he is not a bad person by any definition.
Did he keep the 2 billion for himself?
I think the point is that anyone who gets and keeps that much money is not a good person. A billion dollars is more than any person could ever need for themselves. Consider that having a meager 10 million in the bank at a pitiful 2% return of interest would provide $200,000 per year, which is a very comfortable life. Who can justify keeping 100x that? And how can you justify it when a tiny fraction of that would revolutionize thousands of people’s lives?
John Gruber created Markdown but Aaron helped and tested it.
no one should be billionaires.
