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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Free and Open Source Software
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This is a conversation that needs to be happening, and not just around whether you are okay with the government using your work to kill people.
Are you also okay with giant corporations that have enough money to develop their own tools use your volunteer labor to profit wildly and harm the public? (Also, private companies make tools to kill people as well. Just look at Palmer Luckey's Anduril, which produces military-grade drones and such. Or hell, any company that makes Tasers.)
Because the story of Free Open Source Software is also the story of the biggest accidental transfer of wealth from the working class to the capital class in world history.
Amazon Web Services wouldn't exist without Linux. Sure, they run their own flavor of Linux, but they've put in a bunch of their own proprietary bullshit and AWS is a fucking juggernaut. A big reason they're able to do this is because they use off-the-shelf Linux as a starting base and work from there. It cuts out a massive amount of labor to just lean on the labor of volunteers.
Now, not all companies are like this, I'll admit. Valve pays people to improve Steam in Linux and has wildly benefited the WINe team.
However, the vast majority of private companies lean on the labor of FOSS volunteers to make money without investing the same labor themselves.
It's honestly kind of a fucking travesty.
EDIT: Also, it's a bit ironic that RMS always claimed that his plans with GNU/Linux was to free people from proprietary gardens, yet FOSS has actually been one of the biggest creators of such gardens. I always had a soft spot for RMS, but he's wrong as much as he is right.
Linux runs the world at this point. Bad people and organization use it as well as good people and organization use it. I personally don't think we can have it both ways without severely limiting the license that I think ultimately hurts the good people and organization more than it would hurt the bad.
Maybe I am wrong about this but if for profit companies aren't allowed to use Linux I think Linux is basically dead. Or becomes so small no one will care about it.
Yes many for profit companies use the code without giving back. However it is my understanding the most big companies do give something back. I think Google is one of the top followed by Microsoft and I think Amazon has realized it is more work to not give back then to give back and has become like the 5th or 6th.
https://www.infoworld.com/article/3694090/amazon-s-quiet-open-source-revolution.html
Sure I would agree they are probably giving the bare minimum back, but at the very least they are giving something back. Even if they give nothing back i think the more use of Linux the better the world is.
If Linux didn't exist or wasn't available for Amazon they would either develop their own solution or just buy it from Microsoft, Apple, IBM etc... Now we have a more lockdown eco system and less people are incentivized to pick Linux as their platform of choice to develop software. Instead of using Apache or Nginx the world would be using Microsoft IIS or something similar.
Personally I am very guilty of taking advantage of open source. I have use open source projects all of my life and I can say I haven't given nearly enough back that i have received. Sure I am not a for profit company so you could argue it is different. But even still I should give back more.