1年前

I had a journey

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

549 留言

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.
- Also without open source the capitalist tech sector would collapse
  
  It wouldn't necessarily collapse (it wasn't exactly suffering before FOSS stuff "hit the shelves", so to speak) but the gatekeeping that comes with it would certainly cause a tremendous amount of stagnation
  
  The counter point would be - with only state protectionism in the form of IP the crony-capitalist sector would monopolise and dominate.
- 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.
  
  And while we are at it... novelists, poets, painters, musicians, philosophers, ...
  
  Capitalists argue this because it gives them the appearance of a moral high ground.
  Enshittification shows how untrue this - capitalism by its very nature will always devolve into worse and worse offerings because it's reliant on squeezing out ever more profit.
  Capitalism will only ever puh out the bare minimum of technological advancement. And keeping people in indentured labour (aka employees) to the capitalist system so that they either have no time to come up with innovations themselves or they own the intellectual property of any indentured workers means that the overwhelming majority of innovation is monopolised by capitalism too. Which also contributes to the appearance of pushing advancement.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  What's more is that corporate driven research is necessarily biased towards whatever is profitable which is often at odds with what's socially useful. For example, it's more profitable to research drugs that help maintain disease and can be sold over a long time than drugs that cure it. Profit motive here ends up being completely at odds with what's beneficial for people who get sick.
  And of course, any research that doesn't have a clear path towards monetization isn't going to be pursued. This is precisely why pretty much all fundamental research comes out of the public sector.
- This is true to some extent, but the best, most successful open source software is nowadays to a large extent made by for-profit businesses developing it for their own use but sharing it with the world.
  There is a strong correlation between "is this kind of software mainly used by businesses vs. individuals" and "does this kind of software tend to be open source". Hardly anyone uses proprietary version control or web server software anymore. But (other extreme) in the area of video games, nearly all of them are still proprietary and probably will be for a long time. Software such as web browsers or office suites sits somewhere in between, both kinds exist there.
  
  Biggest and most popular projects are attractive to companies as well as individuals for the same reasons. However, the original point was that companies are not needed for open source to exist or for innovation to happen.
- I disagree somewhat.
  A lot of high tech development comes with a greed motive, e.g. IPO, or getting bought out by a large company seeking to enter the space, e.g. Google buying Android, or Facebook buying Instagram and Oculus.
  And conversely, a lot of open source software are copies of commercially successful products, albeit they only become widely adopted after the originals have entered the enshittified phase of their life.
  Is there a Lemmy without Reddit? Is there a Mastodon without Twitter? Is there LibreOffice without Microsoft Office and decades of commercial word processors and spreadsheets before that? Or OpenOffice becoming enshittified for that matter? Is there qBittorrent without uTorrent enshittified? Is there postgreSQL without IBM's DB2?
  The exception that I can see is social media and networked services that require active network and server resources, like Facebook YouTube, or even Dropbox and Evernote.
  Okay, The WELL is still around and is arguably the granddaddy of all online services, and has avoided enshittification, but it isn't really open source.
  
  The idea that these things wouldn't exist without commercial analogs is silly. You do realize that things like BBS boards and IRC existed long before commercial social media platforms right? In fact, we might've seen things like social media evolve in completely different directions if not for commercial platforms setting standards based on attracting clicks, and monetizing users.
- Linux and open source in general completely blow apart capitalist arguments that profit motive
  Wrong! Linux and open source only shows that the profit motive is not the only motive. One should broaden the definition of profit to encompass value in all its forms. ie A person can gain value from the satisfaction of DIY as it can be self-empowering. One can gain emotional value from sharing. It also invokes the law of reciprocation - value exchange but without a $ sign. The Open source ecosystem is also heavily funded by business who relies on open source components. It is a capital investment.
  
  If the profit motive is not the only motive that drives innovation, as you just agreed, then it isn’t necessary, logically. And not sure why you would then go on to expand the definition of profit into meaninglessness after agreeing there are other motives.
  
  The profit motive as used in capitalist sense strictly refers to financial gain. My whole point was that people do open source development for broader reasons than just base financial gain.
  And while companies do some funding, the ecosystem can exist without them perfectly fine.
- This is so wrong. It's not volunteers writing this code it is people employed by companies who are paid to write this code. You do know people have to eat.
  
  Open source has existed long before companies started getting involved with it. Meanwhile, people having to eat has nothing to do with the argument being made which is that capitalism and profit motive are not required for creativity and technological progress.
  
  Wait. So where are my FOSS-bucks?

I was feeling the last part had some more story behind it so I went ahead and found this:

Seems like I'm a full-blown woke communist too
- Doesn't read like he's an actual communist, more insulting people (rightly so) that would call liberals communists.
  
  Nvm
- er... did torvalds just say trans rights? based alert
  
  I think he said trans rights in the wording that >90% of people would agree with.
- It's strange to me that any of the things he said is controversial.
  
  I don't think it's that controversial unless you're hardcore conservative. Realistically he just laid out the view of most of the Libertarian party. Nothing he said denotes woke or communist except for the part or him claiming to be one. I'd like to see the full context, because that woke communist comment probably wasn't directed at Linus’ views
- I'm definitely woke af. And proud of it.
  I have come to think that when profits are at odds with health, happiness, the good of society and humanity, then either a non profit foundation needs to be running it or it needs to be in the hands of the government—but a much less corrupt one. And I believe oligopolies need to be broken up and anti trust laws greatly expanded and enforced. Then we can deal with the oligopoly / plutocracy. We set a maximum wage (including all earnings) and tax 100% above that. Penalties for regulatory breaches include jail time. For corporations. With corporations reigned in, oligopolies and oligarchies crumbled, we can prevent regulatory capture and corruption. Campaign finance is abolished and it is paid for out of public funds. We abolish first past the post voting in favor of scientifically determined better alternatives to ensure voters actually have a variety of choices.
  Idk wtf that makes me except maybe a ranting lunatic lol
  
  In my mind, "woke" has two meanings that apply to this context:
  positive: aware of the hardships different groups of people might face
  negative: overboard political correctness, cancel culture
  It's entirely possible to be pro-woke and anti-woke at the same time because of this.
  
  As a full fledged Ancapper, I respect your opinion
- Common sense on the internet in this economy 😮
- Just when I thought I couldn't admire him more...
- Where do I sign up for my Atheist card?
- In German we call it "Links Grün vesifft"
  
  Aber die Grüneeeeeeeeennnnnn!!!!!
- I personally think communism especially Marxism sounds really good on paper. The problem is that just about every time it has been attempted things didn't really seem to work like they are supposed to.
  Its like every state that attempts communism just ends up being a perpetual Vanguard state, and it ends up being authoritarian and terrible.
  I really think there are several good ideas in Marx theories, but the actual implementation of those theories needs some work to figure out how they should be incorporated without being corrupted and overtaken by tyrants.
  
  Capitalism didn't appear over night. It took several attempts and iterations to get it anywhere near what it is today. Most modern theories on the implementation of Marxism focus less on centralized government authority and more on democracy in the work place, and eliminating 3rd party shareholders' control. Much of the struggle with implementation of this, is that the existing financial structures aren't set up to handle this type of thing well.
  
  I personally think communism especially Marxism sounds really good on paper. The problem is that just about every time it has been attempted things didn’t really seem to work like they are supposed to.
  Boy, that's the understatement of the century. Not only did it not work, it often results in mass murder and the ushering in of a totalitarian regime.
  
  That's why no country has achieved communism they are all authoritarian!
  
  You're right. Communism is like the greatest social form a society can possibly achieve. The Problem is, that humans are dumb and will always try to get the best out of it for themselves so the concept of communism is ruined by those people. It maybe is practicable in small "society's" (your family as example) but fails in big societies like states.

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
- 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).
  
  Yes of course, who doesn't remember how woke Lenin created a woke revolution based on woke teachings of woke Marx and even woker Engels.
- unfortunately I think this is just him saying he's a "woke communist" if being a woke communist is atheism, women's rights, and gun control. I don't think he's a marxist of any stripe it seems. However, I am willing to be corrected here. I've only seen this post regarding to him
- Guy's Finnish. The chances of him being actually communist are pretty much zero.
  
  This might be a dumb question: what do you mean? I know very little about Finland, so I'm just genuinely curious. Are the Finns in particular well-known for being anti-communist or is it more like a geopolitical thing since they share a border with Russia?
  
  His father was into the communist party

The Linux to trans anarchocommunist catgirl pipeline is very real. The moment you move to Arch it's already over.
- I'm feeling called out
- I just installed pop!_os am I safe?
  
  that's how I started. nobody's safe.
  
  Sorry, I don't speak nyah
  
  Slippery slope my friend!
- Oh and don't forget the autistic-to-linuxer pipeline
- I think I could have backed off after moving to Arch. The point of no return was Rust
- It didn't happen to me despite using Linux for 8 years. I guess I am a Windows user in disguise.
- As someone who recently fell in love with EndeavorOS I don't wanna fall down the cat girl pipeline....
  
  It's to late brother. It's to late.
- :3 ^.
- Well, I'm probably fucked then. I even have Arch on my gaming PC with KDE and Arch on my school laptop with GNOME(Gnome for Laptops is insanely cool)
- I skipped straight to Gentoo.
  Catgirls hate this simple trick!

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
- Id recommend you reading "socialism: utopian and scientific" by Engels. Because to me you sound exactly like the utopian socialist of the past.
- What economic model do you believe in?
  
  I can't really say I believe in a specific model, but to my knowledge, and for the current version of our world, welfare states seem to be doing the least worse currently. But really, I think our world is kinda too fucked up right now to be able to have any good social-economic system (in terms of maximum equality and minimum suffering, I guess.)
  Ideally, I'd prefer no state, only local communities managing themselves (something like city states, maybe?) and their relations to other communities... but I know it's just a dream, at least for the foreseeable future, considering the current realities and the ass-people in power. Because that would need many really peaceful, non-greedy and non-selfish people, which... well, never mind.
  P.s. Sorry for the pessimism, and I might be wrong of course, which I really hope I am.
- Sounds a lot like me. That's not communism, that's just being a decent person. One that respects others and just wants everyone to live a good life without being the target of hate and harassment.
  
  That's overlapping with communism.

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.
- "full-blown woke communist" is US-speak for "Scandinavian socialist"
  
  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.
  
  Nah literally anyone who advocates for basic human rights is a "full blown woke communist".
  
  Scandinavian corporatist-social-democrat*
  
  Did you know the Scandanavian countries have more economic freedom than the USA! Its their saving grace. They also have many private roads. The early 20th c saw capitalist Nordic countries become very wealthy and store up sovereign funds. These funds were than blown dry in the later half of the century as they became more socialist. They have now abandoned many socialist policies and again adopted freedom. They do however still have high taxation.
- https://news.itsfoss.com/linus-torvalds-woke-communists/
  "I am one of those woke communists"
  
  unfortunately I think this is just him saying he's a "woke communist" if being a woke communist is atheism, women's rights, and gun control. I don't think he's a marxist of any stripe it seems. However, I am willing to be corrected here. I've only seen this post regarding to him.
  But Linux is
- His dad was a straight up member of the Finnish Communist Party. He's still alive, and is even a member of the European Parliament, but seems more liberal/centrist these days.
  Linus himself seems to be pretty mum on politics.
- To me it always seemed like Linus Torvalds is mostly a pragmatist.
  Richard M Stallman on the other hand...
- I think the dates are more relevant than the software. COVID pandemic was probably more impactful here than Linux.
- He made a comment sarcastically and replied to an accusation labeling himself as such

welcome comrade!

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.
- 🫡

sudo apt-get install anarchism
https://packages.debian.org/stable/doc/anarchism
- I now love Debian more than I previously thought possible.
  brb installing Debian on all my hardware.
  edit: there's a fortune-anarchism too, amazing.
- AUR package: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/anarchism
  (the pkgbuild is literally just extracting the deb and archiving it again to an arch package lol)

...I just didn't want windows advertising to me.
- But that is sort of why it's the first step. You were using Windows and were bothered with ads. So you may have looked into an alternative you heard about called Linux. You are new to Linux and maybe ask some questions on forums and interact with people from all over the world that are taking time out of their day to help you, which gives you a sense of community. Then you learn that Linux is licensed as Open Source Software, and that people are working together to create something for the benefit of people, not for profits. Then you start to wonder, what else in my life that bothers me is a result of profit motivation?
- You mean the picture is a windows ad ? [edit] typo

Fine, 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.
- Yeah, I hear you, defending America isn't high on my list either.
- Being a Marxist is when you uncritically support the wealthiest countries with the long history of imperialism and colonialism and constantly regurgitate narratives of hate towards any nation that isn’t a US vassal.
- Whenever I hear the term "concentration camp", I always remember The Haircut.
  
  Is that the Boy Boy vid? Hell yeah. They have a patreon exclusive where they watched Yeonmi Park interviews and she makes the most batshit claims about how post-apocalyptic DPRK is. They do a good job at cutting through the bs fearmongering without dickriding any specific regimes (DPRK or otherwise)
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  The Haircut
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
  
  Sounds cool, gonna save it for a later watch.

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.
- People may have read this and got too excited. He just believes in socially left policy. He's probably not a communist.
- I don't know about his political views, but I think Linus deserves every last penny he got from Red Hat.
- I'm no communist, but your argument is flawed.
  Linus is not representative of the Linux community and I think the famous Stallman rant regarding GNU/Linux is actually relevant here.
  The free software movement is certainly pretty left leaning, though I wouldn't call them communist.
  
  now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)
  OP's words.
- Tell me you haven't read the Communist Manifesto without telling me you haven't read the Communist Manifesto.
- There's a gaping and dangerous misunderstanding in there. Having money or being successful under capitalism doesn't mean you don't see its flaws. The idea that rich people can't be communists is like saying that only gay people can support gay rights.
  Believing that the world would be a better place if we pooled our resources has nothing to do with whether you created an operating system that all of global computing relies on.
- I don't even think the meme is about communism as much as it is just venting about how corps turned free-software into the panopticon it is today.
  But Idc if Torvalds is a Marxist bc I'm not either, but marx wrote about how the proletariat should own stocks, so that isn't even disqualifying tho.
  And tbh I think most "marxists" just adopt that term because our political discourse is so corrupted that anyone who thinks that we shouldn't curb-stomp an Amazon employee for wanting a bathroom break is treated like they're Mao anyway.
  
  I had to look up the panopticon reference, so I thought to share with others: 'A proposed prison of supervision, so arranged that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times without being seen by them: proposed by Jeremy Bentam.'

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

On Lemmy? Shock
- Seriously. I just can't escape. I think it's nice to have people who support xism while also having people that support yism and zism, as it creates a healthy environment where we can discuss things throughly; since each member will see, recognize, and interpret what they see differently and possibly contribute more.
  Vast majority of Lemmy users are in the same demographic which barely provides differing opinions so there's basically nothing to discuss (apart from things do not sit well with said demographic).
  I really do hope this platform somehow attracts users from every ideology much like Tildes.

ITT: people who have no idea what communism is

I feel called out.
I'm not quite there yet but im definitly at the second to last block
- If you'd like to discuss the subject, there are many comms on a handful of instances where people would be happy to!

Literally same, even the years match up lol
- Me too

Shit this is too accurate

Fuck communist statist, foss is pure anarchism.
- Anarchism does not necessarily exclude Communism! :)
  Good Explanations: https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/index.html for those interested
  
  If only communism could function under voluntarism.
- FLOSS is Voluntaryism - it only requires voluntary participation.
- Disagree. If FOSS were an anarchism what would be the point of FOSS lincences of which some are very long legal documents? Also corporations would just take your code, say its theirs and tell you to go fuck yourself.
  
  Foss licenses are copyleft, they bar individuals from enclosing the commons built by the collective for profit. Anarchism isn’t just letting people do whatever they want. Anarchism means against hierarchy. Having rules that prevent unjustified hierarchies from forming is entirely with in the bounds of anarchism. Including rules that prevent using copyright as a coercive hierarchy.
  
  Tell me you don't understand anarchism without telling me you don't understand anarchism.
  
  Communism is when government does something. Anarchism is when you do fuck all to protect yourself.
- How so?
  
  It seeks to undermind the corrupt copywrite systems and promotes decenteralizrd collaberation and cooperation.
- FOSS is Ricks group from The Walking Dead
- Eh, depends on the project

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).
- democratized private ownership and made it serve our community.
  Isn't that what communism is? In an ELI5 level?
  
  I am not sure if you meant to reply to the other person's comment or refer to them in mine, but I think this video does a pretty good job at explaining socialism/communism to people wanting to understand it: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=fpKsygbNLT4
  I'll try to give my own explanations later.

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.
- in every other country where communism is/was
  There is not a single country that has achieved communism.
  
  Sorry then, I should have written In every other country ruled by communists saying they are building communism, banning every other political party then the communist one, killing people in the name of communism. I see their unability to achieve communism even when they've had full control over country for decades as a proof of that it's not really possible.
  
  Then what is it? A teapot in the sky?
  If it's a viable plan which can be realized, then how to achieve it, without killing people and creating a dictatorship? Is it possible?
  I might be wrong, but it seems to me that any effort to establish communism will eventually fail with a lot paid in vain, and many lives lost, as has happened so far.
  If that viable plan needs time to be accepted more widely, then maybe we should simply wait and try to be decent people in the meantime, instead of trying now to establish a "temporary" dictatorship actively as a way of "transition". And if the plan can be acted upon right now, then again the question is how (without resorting to violence and tyranny, of course). That question remains open to me. And it's a big one.
- My understanding is that these days people treat it more like an ideal to strive toward under current democratic systems. For instance, how would you feel about UBI being introduced under your current system of governance?
  
  Red Hat UBI? It's awesome
  *JK, but Red Hat UBI really Awesome!
- Looks like you have a lot to learn
  
  Thanks for your valuable input, you opened my eyes.
- Communism = fascism. We have plenty of historical data to support that.
  
  No. They are not equal and neither same. If you understand Italian I suggest you to search for Prof. Barbero videos on the topic. They are quite better than anything I'll be able to convey.
  Fascism:
  It's an authoritarian dictatorship happened between 1914 and 1945 in Italy. The fascist regime and ideology was strictly based on Mussolini's figure, people marched in straight lines down the streets, everyone wearing the same uniforms and Italy was a great imperialist nation (lol jk it wasn't but they quite believed it). Fascism and the fascist party stopped existing after partisans overthrew the regime. Fascism is a 20 years long dictatorship. After that there were some regimes around the world that were inspired by Mussolini such as the current ruling party Italy Fratelli d'Italia, Marine le Pen's party in France, those shitty AFD in Germany, orban's Regime, franco in Spain etc etc. They are called neofascists, because Fascism was a 20 years long regime happened in Italy between 1914 and 1945.
  Communism:
  Communism is a model of governace that's never been achieved in human history, as someone above said it's about classless, stateless, governance models. It's been around for like 200 years (the Communist Party Manifesto is from 1848), and in every country of the world there is/ has been a Communist Party and as we know they were always persecuted for being communist, stopped from going to the government and stopped from bulding a classless society when they managed to get to govern. Just see what the USA did in the last 50/60 years in every country that risked a communist government: Chile and latin America in general, Italy and so on an so forth.
  Fascism =/= communism, and if you say the contrary you just don't know how they work.
  
  I live in the central europe and I have plenty of historical data about every country that was part of the Soviet Union being authoritarian at the same time. You probably couldn't imagine what was happening here. I don't have so much knowledge about the rest of the world, but I think I heard about some genocide and concentration camps in china recently...

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.
- Marxists don't argue for a deonotological disallowing of markets, but believe that those who own the markets should not thereby own the rest of society. I'm sure even you would agree that it would be better is everyone had the comfortable position that you do -- and indeed we should move in that direction, even though we cannot simply decide that everyone will be wealthy tomorrow -- but we all must work with the conditions we find ourselves in, including to transform those conditions over time.
- What's your website?
  
  https://beej.us/guide/

Wow. Im pretty centerist on capitalism and I have been using linux since about 2000 or so.
- https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/resize/936f0e352f49bb1299376443ae9ecd6903cb6790/2015/01/26/bf82ae8b-446c-472b-8fd9-037661d25a68/microsoft-open-source-communist.jpg?auto=webp&width=768
  (/s in case it wasn't clear)
  
  I still find it funny that Steve Ballmer called Linux communism lmao

In my view Torvalds is more of a pragmatic stoicist.

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?
- the marxism understander has logged on
  
  Yeah I play civ 5
- Yeah guys, can we NOT drag politics into the Free Software movement? Everyone knows that IP law and the whole struggle against proprietary software and the giant corporations that push it is non-political.
- Ikr it's really more like anarcho-syndicalism
  
  Lost of syndicalists see themselves as communists. Including myself. I've been on the board, on the administration team and the negotiatiok team for my syndicalist union. All communism isn't leninism.
- What do you mean by foss being orderless? Wouldn't this concept be more associated with the development structure of each project?
  
  The power of spontaneous order! ipencil ipencil
- being against big corps is both a grassroots FOSS thing and an anticap thing. Also Socialism (step between capitalism and communism) requires "some sort of order" while communism needs as little or as much as FOSS does
- I agree, FOSS not only appeals to communists but also to the most extreme libertarians.
  Everyone acting in their own selfish interests, using the code they need and writing code to scratch their itch. Forking when they want.
  The idea of a fork (I'm not happy, I'm going to do my own thing) is absolutely not a communist concept. Communism is usually centralized planification.
  
  Is the core tenet of FOSS not about depriving any entity monopoly over the means of software production? That's basically the definition of socialism, as opposed to a fundamental of libertarianism - the incontrovertible holiness of private property.
- It is what Free Market economist Hayek called 'Spontaneous Order'. You can either have free spontaneous order as evidenced in a libre market and voluntary interaction OR controlled chaos as evidenced in governments with their IP, as well as socialist aspiring Communists societies.
- Many will scream 'but FLOSS is political'. In fact the opposite is true! FLOSS is a reaction against the political imposition called Intellectual Property. It is ANTI-political!
  
  Actions done in relation to politics are political. That's how it works. If someone is against the motivation of an economic system or a state, that is politically driven.
  Just as you are against socialism is political, being against proprietary software is as well.
  Reaction to the status quo, both against or for, is inherently political.
  
  true, just like anti-fascist partisans during world war 2 were ANTI-POLITICAL, it was just a reaction against the POLITICAL IMPOSITION called fascism /s

Eric Raymond, Communism and Free Software Eric Raymond, Communism and Free Software
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://youtu.be/69ZyX5sN2NA?si=Zc_eZsFid48qS-Um&t=39
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Yes, I agree, I am at stage 3 and stage 4 looks more enticing every single damn day.

I honestly don't even know what a Marxist is.
- Neither do the anti-marxists.
- Dont worry about it, neither do the people who accuse you of it.
- Karl Marx was a philosopher and economist. He wanted to understand class relations and social conflict, so he developed theories to explain why things are the way they are. A Marxist uses Marx's theories to understand why the world is the way it is.
  Marx had a lot of theories, such as historical materialism - that all history was primarily motivated by socio-economic forces, not supernatural forces or grand conspiracy. Marx wrote that the dominate socio-economic system running the world in his time was capitalism/imperialism which fueled capital accumulation through exploitation and alienation, and used technology to further this process with imperialist wars for resources etc... He also focused on class struggle between those with the most resources, and those with the fewest resources - the bourgeoisie (capitalists) vs. the proletariat (workers/peasants).
  Marx went further than trying to explain why the world is the way it is, he also theorized on how humanity could replace the dominate socio-economic system, and what a non-exploitative non-alienating socio-economic system might look like. "Marxist" refers to anyone who believes Marx's theories are valid and uses them to understand the way things are.
- Marxism is the classical version of communism developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As opposed to later ideologies such as Marxism-Leninism and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
  
  Marxism isn't some magical dogma, it's a set of tools for analyzing the world and a vision of a better future that came from the use of these tools and the analysis they gave. Marxism-Leninism and MLM are both to an extent a use of these tools to further analyzing the world.
  Without Lenin we wouldn't have a good analysis of Imperialism and methods for theory application to the real world. Ala vanguard party and all that.
  
  No, marxism is a lense through which to analyze capitalism. It isnt communist by itself, although marx was a communist.
  
  It is not "the classical version of communism", that would be the Utopian or anarchist ideas and projects that preceded it. Marxism is a class of ideology that has historically and still does have the greatest weight in geopolitical importance, starting with "classical Marxism", a now-dead ideology, and its many successors, like you list.
- you can read about that here if you've got a few minutes to spare
- I encourage you to go over to c/askchapo on hexbear.net if you are curious.
- The people who tried to explain it to you, cant even it explain it themselves lol
  
  Yeah, I'm more confused than I was before.

Welcome comrade
- 🫡

So many kiddos arguing ridiculous politics here.

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.
- Are things still sold for a profit in this hypothetical world?
- democratized private ownership and made it serve our community.
  Isn't that what communism is? In an ELI5 level?
- You don't know what communism is.
  
  In pointing out one's deficiencies, you should help them fill in those gaps. Otherwise, you're just being an asshole.
  Explain what communism is. Comprehensive education in communism is not part of many places' standard curriculum
  
  I know, it's cringe af.

it be a slippery slope

Me too frfr

So Steve Ballmer was right all along
- Developers, developers?
- Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches
  ~ Steve "Developers Developers Developers" Balmer

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.

This meme shows completely my journey. I became a FOSS advocate in 2020 after realized that all sites that I visited wanted my "cookies". I started to questioning myself about and after some research I became a disciple of Richard Stallman and a Marxist-Leninist.

But is socialism really the same as communism?
- Socialism is the name for the economy system where the working class rule the means of production.
- Socialism isn't communism-lite. It's more of an umbrella anti-capitalist term.

I think there is something fundamental about the pull of investigating, understanding, and reading that leads to so much crossover between the two.

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.
- This is what happens when everything you know is based on vibes instead of actually reading any theory or history from primary source historians instead of third.
  
  Not really sure what you're trying to say here.
- ** record of authoritarians that called themself communist.
  
  nOt rEaL cOmMunIsM
  
  You're not more Communist than Lenin. Read his letters and works (they've been translated to English) and tell me that's not a man who truly believes in the things Marx said.
- you don't have to defend the history of communism-aspiring countries to be in favor of communism ;)
  
  You don't have to, but you should. Lenin and Mao practically worshiped Marx and they both attempted to implement his system faithfully to the spec he advocated for. And I know that viewpoint is somewhat controversial in non-Leninist/Maoist circles but I think it's true.
  What's more I think the historical records of economic collectivism outside of Socialism and political Authoritarianism outside of Socialism are numerous and expensive enough to justify an opposition to Communism as a system.
  I think the main realization that made me nominally support Capitalism is it's performance in a "degraded" state. You can have the absolute worst scenarios (think Pinoche Chile) and Capitalism provides constant incentive to improve things and doesn't seize up in the meantime. It continues to function even in the face of severe inefficiencies.
- You can support some of the ideas while disapproving the leaders whose greed made it fail... which is socialism in a way.
  
  The ideas are why it failed. Thats the core problem. Marx believed he could build in essence a church of Communism that would be incorruptible zealots who would lead society to Communism. A dictatorship of the proletariat led by an enlightened few who could teach and reeducate the masses to live in productive harmony with one another. And that, for many reasons, never works.

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)
- libertarian socialist
  idk about you comrade but I don't read from thelibertariansocialistlibrary.org
  https://theanarchistlibrary.org/
  
  I considered myself libsoc but not anarchist for a long time. Still kinda do. I believe in the ideal of a classless, oppressionless, non-hierarchical society, but I'm not out there living that ideal and doing praxis.
  If all it takes to belong to any political movement is simply to claim you belong regardless of what your actions say, I don't care for nor want your meaningless, substanceless labels. On the other hand, if it takes participation, then spending my time arguing online about whose ~~fantasy football team~~ political philosophy is better sure ain't it either.
  Either way, I'm probably just another lib with lofty aspirations. My best hope is that someone reads this, goes "you know what? That jaded shitlib has a motherfucking point!" And then logs out to go be an anarchist instead of just throwing the term around.
  
  That first link doesn't work but the second link comes up as a result when I searched for "the librarian socialists library".
- So communism

Follow the white rabbit: https://lemmy.world/post/5739196
- Read lenin, not yannis.
  
  Read lenin
  Guess we're just mask off Tankies on Lemmy huh?

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.

For me it was more of a: went from centrist to we need better regulations but we must ensure competition.
- You'll get there

Just began using Linux, was already Marxist

sorted by controversial and found this post. why? this is amazing

Am I doing it wrong because I've use Ubuntu (12 years) and Kali Linux (8 years) and... I'm still not a marxist?

I used linux for about the same time and i still think communsim is for genocide deniers

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