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submitted 1 year ago by dingus@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[-] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 134 points 1 year ago

A lot of open source software is written by people working for corporations. Red Hat may have started out as a plucky co-op but it's now part of IBM. MySQL is written primarily by Oracle. The fact that the source is open doesn't mean it's all volunteer work.

That doesn't mean it wasn't a massive transfer of wealth, just that for a lot of it people were paid a fraction of the wealth they created rather than none at all.

Sidenote: Here's a good article about how software developers can wage class warfare. Some tips are: Don't help other people learn things, never write documentation, and make your code as opaque as possible so your boss doesn't get anything from you for free.

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Valve probably stands at the company who has "given back" the most in recent history (making Desktop Linux viable for the first time ever, mostly through gaming), but even Valve has corporate America skeletons in their closet. (Like the only reason they have a decent refund option now is because Australia basically forced them, and they had to change their flash sales for European laws.)

[-] negativenull@lemm.ee 28 points 1 year ago

Valve's bigger, and unforgivable crime, is their failure to release Half Life 3.

[-] andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun 8 points 1 year ago

The real Half Life 3 is the friends and software we made along the way.

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[-] dauerstaender@feddit.de 14 points 1 year ago

Valve still is a corporation, decently good at open source, but still a corporation that develops and distributes a lot of closed source software. Like the github ceo once wrote: open source the engine not the car, that’s what drives open source development for them. When many use their software and contribute patches and more importantly report bugs, everyone wins.

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't hate Valve, but let's be real, they're not adding to Linux out of the goodness of their hearts: They're doing it to protect their profits because they see that Windows is quickly becoming more closed and has its own Xbox gaming storefront. It isn't about belief in Linux as a product, it isn't about improving it for everyone, it's about improving it enough for gamers so that Steam won't be eventually locked out of the digital games sales market by Microsoft. They're basically just buying their way out of the vendor-lock-in of putting their store on someone else's proprietary operating system.

I don't think Linux desktop usage jumping from 1% to nearly 3% equals "everybody wins." Sounds like to me a lot of fuckin people are still losing. Like 97% of them at least.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 14 points 1 year ago

I don't see the problem there. If someone is doing a good thing because it is profitable for them to do that good thing that's fine.

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[-] socsa@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago

The utter irony of this being a monetized medium.com article

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[-] Empricorn@feddit.nl 76 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"Bricks are used in most corporate structures... Brick-layers are boot-licking capitalist class-betrayers!"

What a stupid take...

[-] lewis@lem.social 9 points 1 year ago

Yeah agreed, you can use that logic with just about anything

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[-] JoeCoT@kbin.social 69 points 1 year ago

On the other side, Free and Open Source Software leveled the playing field for software development by quite a lot. Before FOSS you had proprietary databases, proprietary OSes, proprietary web servers, etc, at every level of the chain. Without FOSS Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office would rule the roost. Without FOSS smart phones might've taken years longer, and have far less choices. Without FOSS the web would be drastically different. Without FOSS development would be harder to break into, and anything you tried to produce would involve 15 different licensing fees.

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[-] eldain@feddit.nl 68 points 1 year ago

Here is a list of the volunteers of Linux 6.1: https://lwn.net/Articles/915435/

Huawai is the biggest contributor, followed by intel, google, amd... Most volunteers are all on a payroll. Companies working together on an industry standard is still noble, though.

[-] doctorcrimson@lemmy.today 16 points 1 year ago

Everytime I go to post a minor correction comment, somebody else like you made a much better version of the same comment. This place is way better than Reddit.

[-] eldain@feddit.nl 9 points 1 year ago

Thanks, this place is full of dreamers and sometimes it feels violent to bring realism and nuance into their wonderous worldview. I'm happy my comment got upvotes, the first readers can downvote you to drown at the bottom of a comment thread. Good to have multiple voices like ours here.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 59 points 1 year ago

So, don't mistake this as me telling you you're totally wrong, because you definitely do have a point and it gets under my skin too (that's why I believe licenses like AGPL and, dare I say, SSPL should be used), but many of these companies actively contribute back to the open source software they're using.

[-] vivadanang@lemm.ee 21 points 1 year ago

and are hardly the only companies using FOSS; everyone from non profits to miliary systems use it. this meme doesn't really work when you take the whole picture into account.

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[-] grue@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

SSPL

TIL what that is.

... and [whistles], that's a doozy!

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License:

[the SSPL] primarily replaces [the AGPL v3's] section 13 "Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License." with a new section that requires that anyone who offers the functionality of SSPL-licensed software to third-parties as a service must release the entirety of their source code, including all software, APIs, and other software that would be required for a user to run an instance of the service themselves, under the SSPL. In contrast, the AGPL v3's section 13 covers only the program itself (the copyrightable work licensed under AGPL v3).

I get what they're going for and I sympathize with the goal, but I'm not sure there's any software in the world that could comply with that license because it would have to release an entire container or disc image with nothing but SSPL software from the kernel on up. Does a SSPL-licensed kernel or httpd even exist?

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[-] ceuk@feddit.uk 57 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sorry but this is such a bad take.

Linux is free to install, free to use and most importantly free to learn

What is the alternative? How many people who are now in great jobs would have been unable to teach themselves the skills they need if IIS or another proprietary technology had won the server market instead.

Something had to fill the space, would you rather it was a technology that created barriers for people with the fewest advantages in life?

(Also as others have said, a lot of OSS development is funded by companies. Linux in particular being a great example)

[-] AnanasMarko@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

That may be true, but there is (usually) also an upside. Any fixes and modifications must be shared back. Thank you copyleft licenses. Thank you GPL.

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[-] Granixo@feddit.cl 29 points 1 year ago

That's not an opinion, that's a fact.

[-] bouh@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

I'd rather see it as having Internet, the backbone of a technology we profit a lot from, runs on free softwares.

That companies use it to make profit is the same as those using anything to make profit.

Companies are also using paper and pencils, desks and seats and all sort of things.

[-] bookmeat@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago

It was never unintentional. It benefits is all to have them use it, too.

[-] culpritus@hexbear.net 19 points 1 year ago

Here's an article all about how 'open source' coopted and recuperated 'free software' movement to the benefit of corps.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230703044529/https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme-hustler

The enduring emptiness of our technology debates has one main cause, and his name is Tim O’Reilly. The founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, a seemingly omnipotent publisher of technology books and a tireless organizer of trendy conferences, O’Reilly is one of the most influential thinkers in Silicon Valley. Entire fields of thought—from computing to management theory to public administration—have already surrendered to his buzzwordophilia, but O’Reilly keeps pressing on. Over the past fifteen years, he has given us such gems of analytical precision as “open source,” “Web 2.0,” “government as a platform,” and “architecture of participation.” O’Reilly doesn’t coin all of his favorite expressions, but he promotes them with religious zeal and enviable perseverance. While Washington prides itself on Frank Luntz, the Republican strategist who rebranded “global warming” as “climate change” and turned “estate tax” into “death tax,” Silicon Valley has found its own Frank Luntz in Tim O’Reilly.

[-] socsa@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 year ago

On the other hand, I'd wager that any given person who uses Linux daily at work is far more likely to own a stake in their company than the average worker.

My Linux laptop is also literally my means of production, which I own. Karl Marx never predicted this.

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

He also didn't predict a class of people born with no labor to sell because so much of it has been automated away. How are they supposed to use their labor as a bargaining chip if they can't find labor to do to begin with?

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[-] mvirts@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

We've got them right where we want them, they are nothing without us. Oh wait they have never been anything without us

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[-] alvvayson@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Tell me how the math works out on this one.

Because last I checked, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and Google still are the biggest companies and their wealth rests primarily on closed source software.

I would think for the "largest" transfer of wealth, we would be able to pinpoint some poor exploited geeks coding software juxtaposed against some rich fat cats making money off of it.

But Linus Torvalds doesn't seem poor and IBM/Red Hat, while rich, is much smaller than Microsoft.

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 year ago

I agree with this take, but Google does stand pretty tall on Open Source. Android is technically the most widely used Linux variant in use.

[-] alvvayson@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Sure, they all use open source to varying degrees.

But most of Android is actually contributed by engineers who are being paid by Google.

We could argue that $300K in San Francisco is still exploitation, but there are worse forms of exploitation in any case.

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[-] terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 year ago

A lot of the clients I do work for in the MSP I work in, this is half truth. Yes, a sizeable portion of servers are running a Linux based hypervisor, to serve windows VM's.

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[-] menemen@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They are also who mostly finances the development of very many Foss products. So still better than closed source, as small companies and the general public can also use those products.

[-] comfortable_doug@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago

This is why I don't agree with the GPL. It's perfect in every way, except for the allowance to utilize the licensed work or derivatives thereof for monetary gain. Fuck that shit. You got it for free, you give it away for free.

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago
[-] drspod@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

It only takes one paying customer to take the published FOSS code from the commercial software and re-distribute it for everyone to benefit from the commercial modifications made to it. That's the point, a commercial use of the software can not make the source proprietary.

This is what Redhat recently found out when they tried to hide their RHEL source behind a paywall. Attempting to tie the hands of their customers with an additional license agreement forbidding distribution of the source is a violation of the GPL.

[-] comfortable_doug@hexbear.net 7 points 1 year ago

Doesn't matter. You got it free, you give it away for free. You're clearly missing the whole point of the OP.

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[-] lowered_lifted@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago

Isn't that why FOSS survives as a model and is encouraged so much, though, so there is something to enclose and charge bullshit fees for once you fork it?

[-] ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

Not all licenses allow charging for forks. You can charge for your services always. And you can charge for code that is all your own. But, only certain licenses allow you to actually fork and charge for it without sharing those contributions. And many might not even really consider those licenses to really be FOSS.

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Those of us who work in tech need to have a serious reckoning about our contributions to this sort of dynamic and the sort of social environment it incentivizes us to gravitate towards, maintain, and create.

There also needs to be some discussion of class in tech and how the bull pen tech support grunts are going to have very different incentives from the senior technician making 7 figures on top of mad stock options.

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago

Nobody listened to Negativland enough when it mattered. They helped develop Creative Commons licenses and were pretty much the spearhead for the "no attribution but you can't use it for commercial purposes" license. I'm not sure if that one even exists anymore, but it seems like Creative Commons is also pretty dead-in-the-water these days. They understood the need to define ownership and be able to say "No, corporations can't just use it freely."

[-] Car@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago

Don't worry, it's like like anybody uses 10+ year old OS versions which have been EOL'd for over 5 years. Definitely not a concern since Linux is FOSS and you don't need costly contracts to keep up to date with the most basic of security updates.

https://www.shodan.io/search?query=linux+2.6.32-696.el6.x86_64

[-] beteljuice@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

Software is like a flame. Sharing it by lighting another fire doesn't take away from the original flame.

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[-] MindSkipperBro12@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Capitalism is when money.

[-] ImmortanStalin@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 1 year ago

There are so many contradictions here I don't even know where to start. Is this one of those debate bait memes?

[-] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Goes both ways. They can use my shit freely, and I can use theirs.

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this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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