617
What is your favorite open source software?
(lemmy.ml)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
617 points (99.4% liked)
Asklemmy
43944 readers
850 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Linux.
How could it be anything else?
How about GNU/Linux?
Richard Stallman spotted. :-)
Please don't humour stallman any more than necessary.
Stallman is the reason open source software (as we know it today) even exists.
All hail Stallman
Sure. Okay. No argument.
Stallman is also his own worst enemy. Feet-picking aside, coat-tailing Linux with this whiny "but ack-shually, gnu is a big part of it so we want equal billing" is just weak and arrogant and has been for decades.
.. and if stallman can't see that without Linux he'd be just a hippie with other issues, he begs for the same trivialization of his own role.
Call it Torvalds/tridgell/baumel/Bourne/Ritchie/Linux before GNU/Linux or gtfo. And if we call it gnu/Linux, we should say chisel/David or Mussolini/UN because, like GNU, they were in the right place at the right time to have a completely fungible sidecar role in what actually happened to catalyze actual work.
Stallman made emacs. Cool. I use it daily. GNU is great but not vital. Without Edison, we'd have a Marconi somewhere.
I'd argue that Stallman's principal contribution to the world of technology was the GNU GPL and copyleft in general. Without that, neither Linux the kernel nor "Linux" the operating system would have taken off.