Well, there is also a more right leaning take. You take care of your self and scratch your own itch, and you should not be a liability to the society, but make your self useful and contribute back. And I think this is kind of the reason FLOSS works well, it can be aligned with many philosophies.
You didn’t write the kernel, write the libraries, or write the user space applications, did you? No, Linux is the product of a collaborative group of strangers working towards the same goal, a goal that largely doesn’t include any considerations for profit. You haven’t pulled yourself up by your boot straps to make Linux. Hell, even Linus didn’t do that. It’s the product of thousands of people working on it over decades. It’s not capitalist, it’s not individualistic, Linux is communal.
Eric S Raymond (ESR) is the originator of the philosophy you’re espousing. He’s a Right-Libertarian who has made a lot of contributions to and arguments about FOSS, but in this case i think he’s pretty much wrong. He was a big proponent of the BSD license and opponent of the GPL because, in his view, the GPL interfered with economic activity while BSD was more compatible with it.
ESR’s belief was that open source software was not threatened by capitalism and that it would thrive even if large companies used it, while the other side of the argument was that it would languish if all of the large users were corporations who did not (voluntarily) contribute back. In contrast, with GPL (and similar mandatory open licenses): the corporations would be required to contribute back and thus whether the usage was corporate or not the project would benefit and grow either way.
That was a while ago, though. I think we can see, now, that while the BSDs are great (and have many of their own technological advantages over Linux based OSes) and they are being used by corporations, that has not resulted in the kind of explosive growth we’ve seen with GPL software. Gross tech bros love to use both BSD-style and GPL-style code, but with GPL they’re required to contribute back. That attracts developers, too, who don’t want to see their work end up as the foundation of some new Apple product with nothing else to show for it.
So we now can pretty much call it, i think, barring new developments: the Communist (and Left-Libertarian and Anarchist) approach “won” and the Right-Libertarian approach didn’t actually pan out. GPLed software is running servers and all kinds of things even though, technically speaking, BSD was probably a better choice up until recently (until modern containerization, probably) and still has a lot going for it. The Right-Libertarian philosophy on this is a dead end.
That phrase that you said has absolutely nothing to do with the Linux/Libre philosophy.
You take care of your self and scratch your own itch
While I understand that you meant to make an analogy with people creating the projects they want to use, the vast majority of people don’t create their projects, and instead contribute to others, and they contribute with existing issues not necessarily things that they want or need. Alternatively you can see that a lot of issues are fixed by people who are not affected by it, it’s very common for issues to ask people to test specific changes to see if they solved the issue they were facing.
and you should not be a liability to the society
The vast majority of people just use the software that the community maintains, and when they need a feature they open a PR and let the community implement it. So the vast majority of people are a liability to the community, even if you contribute to one project actively you use several others that you’ve never contributed to.
but make your self useful and contribute back.
This has nothing to do with right-wing philosophy, in fact most right wing people are against any form of contribution,
And I think this is kind of the reason FLOSS works well, it can be aligned with many philosophies.
You might not like it, but FLOSS is extremely aligned with left wing ideology, where people contribute to the community because they want to and the community provides back without asking anything in return.
Yes it is, but not in the way you hope. I live in a socialist country, but I’m still stunned about the level of the communist delusions people seems to have here.
Anyways it’s just good to know that FOSS is built upon anarchist principles (of course, this doesn’t mean every FOSS project is anarchist) and is a great example of free association in practice. It helps demystify anarchism and communism.
Also what “delusions” are you talking about? Marxist-leninist ones?
The desillusions people seems to have here is the same kind you have for religious people and moral, where the religious people claim that religion is what provides moral, and hence non-religious people cannot know right from wrong. It seems that in the same way, people in this discussion have defined that communism is the mechanism for being generous and being willing to contribute to society. Hence, all non-communist societies cannot exists, since nobody will build it. Basically, it is a very brainwashed take on communism, not based on anything existing but on some fantasy, especially since all practical attempts at communism seems to requires to strip people of all their freedoms.
Well, there is also a more right leaning take. You take care of your self and scratch your own itch, and you should not be a liability to the society, but make your self useful and contribute back. And I think this is kind of the reason FLOSS works well, it can be aligned with many philosophies.
You didn’t write the kernel, write the libraries, or write the user space applications, did you? No, Linux is the product of a collaborative group of strangers working towards the same goal, a goal that largely doesn’t include any considerations for profit. You haven’t pulled yourself up by your boot straps to make Linux. Hell, even Linus didn’t do that. It’s the product of thousands of people working on it over decades. It’s not capitalist, it’s not individualistic, Linux is communal.
Eric S Raymond (ESR) is the originator of the philosophy you’re espousing. He’s a Right-Libertarian who has made a lot of contributions to and arguments about FOSS, but in this case i think he’s pretty much wrong. He was a big proponent of the BSD license and opponent of the GPL because, in his view, the GPL interfered with economic activity while BSD was more compatible with it.
ESR’s belief was that open source software was not threatened by capitalism and that it would thrive even if large companies used it, while the other side of the argument was that it would languish if all of the large users were corporations who did not (voluntarily) contribute back. In contrast, with GPL (and similar mandatory open licenses): the corporations would be required to contribute back and thus whether the usage was corporate or not the project would benefit and grow either way.
That was a while ago, though. I think we can see, now, that while the BSDs are great (and have many of their own technological advantages over Linux based OSes) and they are being used by corporations, that has not resulted in the kind of explosive growth we’ve seen with GPL software. Gross tech bros love to use both BSD-style and GPL-style code, but with GPL they’re required to contribute back. That attracts developers, too, who don’t want to see their work end up as the foundation of some new Apple product with nothing else to show for it.
So we now can pretty much call it, i think, barring new developments: the Communist (and Left-Libertarian and Anarchist) approach “won” and the Right-Libertarian approach didn’t actually pan out. GPLed software is running servers and all kinds of things even though, technically speaking, BSD was probably a better choice up until recently (until modern containerization, probably) and still has a lot going for it. The Right-Libertarian philosophy on this is a dead end.
That phrase that you said has absolutely nothing to do with the Linux/Libre philosophy.
While I understand that you meant to make an analogy with people creating the projects they want to use, the vast majority of people don’t create their projects, and instead contribute to others, and they contribute with existing issues not necessarily things that they want or need. Alternatively you can see that a lot of issues are fixed by people who are not affected by it, it’s very common for issues to ask people to test specific changes to see if they solved the issue they were facing.
The vast majority of people just use the software that the community maintains, and when they need a feature they open a PR and let the community implement it. So the vast majority of people are a liability to the community, even if you contribute to one project actively you use several others that you’ve never contributed to.
This has nothing to do with right-wing philosophy, in fact most right wing people are against any form of contribution,
You might not like it, but FLOSS is extremely aligned with left wing ideology, where people contribute to the community because they want to and the community provides back without asking anything in return.
So, what you say is that any free society is by definition communism, since society is built on people contributing by free will? Not sure I follow.
I hope this is a lightbulb moment for you
Yes it is, but not in the way you hope. I live in a socialist country, but I’m still stunned about the level of the communist delusions people seems to have here.
Social democracy isn’t really socialist…
Anyways it’s just good to know that FOSS is built upon anarchist principles (of course, this doesn’t mean every FOSS project is anarchist) and is a great example of free association in practice. It helps demystify anarchism and communism.
Also what “delusions” are you talking about? Marxist-leninist ones?
The desillusions people seems to have here is the same kind you have for religious people and moral, where the religious people claim that religion is what provides moral, and hence non-religious people cannot know right from wrong. It seems that in the same way, people in this discussion have defined that communism is the mechanism for being generous and being willing to contribute to society. Hence, all non-communist societies cannot exists, since nobody will build it. Basically, it is a very brainwashed take on communism, not based on anything existing but on some fantasy, especially since all practical attempts at communism seems to requires to strip people of all their freedoms.