Asklemmy

43965 readers

1679 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

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

127

Who in history (either present or in the past) do you think has had the biggest positive impact on humanity? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by Aurelius@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

253 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] ReakDuck@lemmy.ml 22 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman

[–] ZeroHora@lemmy.ml 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I'll have to argue that Santos Dumont and others inventors did Open Source in the XIX.

[–] ReakDuck@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

But compared to one of those. Who did the biggest impact?

I dont know them and maybe they made a much greater impact.

[–] arthur@lemmy.zip 1 points 8 months ago

Santos-Dumont was a pioneer of aviation, would say that that's a big deal.

[–] Gabu@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago

Dumont was a prolific Brazilian-French inventor. Among his most famous achievements are several lighter-than-air flights and flying machines (blimps), as well as a potential claim as the inventor of the first airplane.

[+] Inui@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 6 points 8 months ago

Yes. That Stallman is arguably one of the top few people why we have the internet as it is, at all today.

Most other people could be "replaced". If it wasn't X, it would be Y. But only Stallman pushed the copyleft license onto Linux. Only Stallman's organization popularized it.

So yes, that sexist, neurodivergent, bigoted Stallman, is one of the most positively influential people of our time.

[–] Gabu@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

A person needn't be good in order to do good things, just as a good person doesn't necessarily impact the world positively simply by existing.