Comment Linux/OSS is freedom, socialism is not. (Score 1) 261
Living in a northern european country that has had mostly socialist governments after the war (not a
east block country) I feel I know something about socialism in real life (not theoretical stuff, we don't
listen to marketing people when we select our SW and HW, so we don't mind what socialism
theoretically should/could have been)
1. Had linux/OSS been socialistic in its nature we would have _had_ to contribute a percentage of
our coding/consulting/sysadmin/work to linux/OSS. We would have had no choice how much, and
we would not have been able to decide what part of linux/OSS we would contribute to.
2. What path linux/OSS development should follow would have been decided by a small group of
leaders. Quite possibly directly or indirecty chosen by democracy, but still a small group.
3. The leaders would have a large group of bureaucrats to control the
coders/sysadmins/consultants. This group would be as big and probably bigger than the
"coders/sysadmins/consultants" group. This group would have a complete pencil pushing fetish
and be almost infinitely ineffective. This group would answer to now one except maybe parts of the
leader group (particularly not to the user and "coders/sysadmins/consultants" group).
It is obvious that this is not how the linux/OSS community work. Instead we have complete freedom
to decide how much we contribute, and to what projects.
If we don't like the way something is done we can fork the code and do it some new way. If we don't
like how a project is handled we can crate a competing project or fork a new project.
Linux/OSS is freedom, socialism is not.
east block country) I feel I know something about socialism in real life (not theoretical stuff, we don't
listen to marketing people when we select our SW and HW, so we don't mind what socialism
theoretically should/could have been)
1. Had linux/OSS been socialistic in its nature we would have _had_ to contribute a percentage of
our coding/consulting/sysadmin/work to linux/OSS. We would have had no choice how much, and
we would not have been able to decide what part of linux/OSS we would contribute to.
2. What path linux/OSS development should follow would have been decided by a small group of
leaders. Quite possibly directly or indirecty chosen by democracy, but still a small group.
3. The leaders would have a large group of bureaucrats to control the
coders/sysadmins/consultants. This group would be as big and probably bigger than the
"coders/sysadmins/consultants" group. This group would have a complete pencil pushing fetish
and be almost infinitely ineffective. This group would answer to now one except maybe parts of the
leader group (particularly not to the user and "coders/sysadmins/consultants" group).
It is obvious that this is not how the linux/OSS community work. Instead we have complete freedom
to decide how much we contribute, and to what projects.
If we don't like the way something is done we can fork the code and do it some new way. If we don't
like how a project is handled we can crate a competing project or fork a new project.
Linux/OSS is freedom, socialism is not.
