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This Luke Smith video came across my feed Linux, Bitcoin: When Tech Projects Become "Too Popular..." Don't forget the goal.. It's interesting to hear his perspective about Linux, FOSS, Free Software being the end goal, and that we are loosing sight of the goal. This sentiment really aligns with the early FOSS movement from Stallman, but was this ever the goal?
Taken over by apathetic interests #
Luke talks about these projects getting taken over by people with no passion for the original goal of freedom and privacy. They want the projects to grow, get bigger, and become mainstream. This feels exactly the opposite of anything Luke would want, so my bias alarm goes off here. Honestly I do see some of the grossness of projects like this that were grassroots, for freedom and privacy get taken over for money grabs. I'm completely out on bitcoin so I cannot make any comment there, but I Truly believe that the Linux kernel is not a money grab as Luke makes the new face of bitcoin sound.
Corporate backing is OK #
I'm going to take a counter point here from Luke, that it's OK for Companies to be made, and money to be made on FOSS. While the Nats relicense has caused a Kerfuffle, I appreciate their side of the relicense, as a they discussed on The Changelog: NATS and the CNCF kerfuffle | Derek Collison shares NATS/Synadia story. They had a struggle to make money as a small project in the Linux Foundation. Large companies would not pay for their service as they have already paid into the foundation. They chose to relicense new versions of the server so such that it would become FOSS after 2 years. This gives them time to pay for their development.
Rug pulls, price gouging, and other bad behaviors aside Funding is overall good for the FOSS community. It is a good thing that Torvalds is able to make a living from the work he has done on the kernel.
FOSS hardware #
Luke mentions FOSS hardware in the video. I think this is great and really plays to the longevity of a product and limiting e-waste. I think the main goal here is not necessarily openness, but repairability. At least for me. I could not care to build out ram or hard drives from scratch, but what I do care is that I can repair my hardware. I don't want my investments into hardware to go to waste and be thrown away because of a component failure. I get that we are largely there on the mobile side, and that really sucks.
Choice #
I really feel like the goal of Linux is choice, its not locked into FOSS. FOSS is a great option, and is really only there for Linux, and not at all an option for Windows or MacOS. I'd argue that at the beginning of the Linux project there was no choice your only real option was closed source all the way around. These days not only do we have the freedom to choose an OS, but we can choose how we want our Linux. If you want to deploy Linux at a large company, and you are willing to pay for support from someone like Red Hat or Canonical that's an option, but its not the only option.
macOS Power User Asks DistroTube: Which Linux Never Breaks?
In this interview DT talks about getting new hardware sent to him, and they ask do you want us to put Linux on it? His answer, No, it doesn't matter, I wont use it anyways. You see DT is not here purely for the Linux, he is here for the choice. His choice is to pick every last config option, and tailor every installed executable to fit his needs. His preferences happen to be in the full Free as in Freedom realm.
Infinite Linux #
Linux has infinite options of configuration, hundreds of distros, hundreds of desktop environments. You can Choose a Floating window manager, Tiling window manager, or go full TTY with no graphical environment. With MacOS and Windows you get it the way they decide you get it with a level of configuration that pales in comparison to what you get on Linux.
Immutable Linux #
A very recent and modern example of this is immutable or cloud native distros,
the idea is that they are more like an appliance, giving you less freedom and
control than you typically would have on a normal bare metal install of linux,
bootc is just really taking off this year. I'm currently running one of
these distro's called bazzite and I am really loving it. I have a couple of
desktop applications that I install from the discover store as flatpaks, but
mosty I live in a fully custom distrobox that I put every ounce of ricing and
configuration that I want into. For me it has been ultra reliable, rather than
rolling my own thing that is a combination of packages unique to me, I have
something that is rock hard in the community and I run versioned images of my
devtainer that make it easy for me to roll back on if something were to break.
For me this is feedom, I get to fully control the environment I really care about, my terminal. I get a window manager with 9 workspaces that I can hotkey to, and I never miss a game night with my kids due to some weird graphics issue.
Freedom #
In the end Linux was born of this freedom, and is an important part. While its great that there are players here that are able to make money, be good citizens and give back, there are bad players. Even if all the players are good not everyone is going to agree and money will only spoil their hurt feelings even more. If Linux looses this freedom of choice and becomes something that you only get littered with Closed source software, or on paid platforms, or imposes any level of restrictions on to you its lost, and we need a new revolution to rise in its ashes.
Fin #
I'm trying to write more free flowing articles philosophical in nature. There are probably grammatical and spelling misttakes. There are probably things I will re-read in 6 months and not agree with, but these are my free flowing thoughts right now. I think we are missing really good opinion pieces on the internet these days. Too much AI generated, "Hello World", shoulda read the docs BS. I subscribe to a lot of other good folks that give their real opinions you can find them on my blogroll.