this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Honestly, without concrete examples of why this is a problem, I just wish people wouldn't do this. Open source projects aren't democracies. They are do-ocracies. People get "positions" by getting off their arse and contributing. Nix OS surviving doesn't depend on how many users it has. It depends on how many developers it has.
If critisism is coming from the developer base, fair enough. If it's coming from the user base then all they are going to do is stop the developers wanting to do what they do, and then the project is dead.
I know there was the poor choice of sponsor for one of the live events recently, but I suspect this has opened the flood gates for people to pointlessly criticise from any direction.
I have a lot of issues with the letter, but it’s hard to deny that certain demographics get better opportunities to have the free time & will to contribute. Does that mean you force other demographics in or not? I’m still on the fence as it the upsides have some drawbacks, but discussions should be had--especially by those other demographics & folks better educated on the topic than myself.
It was a defense contractor I believe. I’m not pro-autonomous drones or anything, but it seems odd to hone in on a single sector. Defense makes obvious tools for killing in the form of weapons, but we wouldn’t have GPS or the internet, etc. without research from the sector either (also see dual-use technology). It’s easy to criticize the military industrial complex, but we have just as many non-military corporations & industries absolutely putting their profits above folks & the environment which is just as destructive--just not as immediate/obvious. If you start kicking out all unethical sponsors, you’re gonna end up with no sponsors under our current capitalist system that doesn’t put any value into or reward being ‘ethical’ or even giving the correct value for labor.
Considering the Internet, GPS and weather satellites, three widely utilised and ubiquitous global services rose out of DARPA, whilst I'm not American, taking issue with investment in a Linux distro is closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.
Wait until these people figure out where computers came from.
From reading the letter it seemed that they were more concerned with the lead developer's conflict of interest with said defense company as their company, Determinant Systems, may or may not work with them. They can't say due to an NDA which implies that they do work with them.
I think it is a bit of column A & a bit of column B in the case of defense as we’ve seen other cases of sections of the Nix community vehemently protest certain folks by employer for some political reason or other. But I was more riffing off the parent comment + developer communites in general than the letter specifically as well see this sort of callouts. For instance adjacently, at first blush I could get down with Hippocratic License but you can see how some of these things a really too muddy to be able to exclude entire industries over. It’s tough to handle the introduction of politics into a community, yet often you almost have to at a certain community scale.
I'm not terribly concerned over the ethics of the defense contractor, what I took away from the article is that Eelco develops some competing products for nix which are proprietary and leads the nix project. Massive conflict of interest he refused to address. Furthermore, his behaviour in the community isn't very good - you could argue "But that doesn't matter, what matters is that he writes good code", however you would miss the point. Such behaviour has the potential to alienate current and future contributors - what open source projects need to keep going.