There isn’t, the message itself is satire. The audience is precisely who the message is for, it’s making fun of Microsoft comparing FOSS to Communism, parodying red scare propaganda.
I’m pretty sure if I dug into my backup-of a backup-of a backup-of a backup to get to my old files from the 00s I’d find this there. I might have even ironically had this picture on my Zune.
I think it was created to make fun of the RIAA’s campaign back then, I don’t think they actually did it. Kind of like the “NAPSTER BAD” Metallica flash animation.
With Microsoft, any love shown could well be the Embrace part of the strategy that will lead to Extend and then Extinguish just as soon as they can figure those parts out. They might already have a plan.
The fact they've been able to turn things to their advantage so far does not mean they don't have such a plan. Or won't ever have one.
Socialism means a central bureau decides what is needed and worked on
Meanwhile Capitalism is a System of decentralization
Foss Software isn’t being centrally ordered because someone higher up decides it is needed. First the need arises and then the “Market” (The Developers out there) create a Solution to fullfill this need.
This Market, this pool of Developers is decentralized in smaller Groups. And that’s good that way. I don’t want someone to decide which Software gets developed. Not some CEO and definitely not some Bureaucrat.
I mean, the F in FOSS allows decentralized usage and a lot of People in the FOSS-Community prefer decentralized Solutions
Socialism means workers collectively own the means of production, and it isn’t synonymous with central planning. Concepts like ParEcon, Worker Councils, Mutual Aid, and so forth reinforce this decentralized structure.
Capitalism is similarly not a system of decentralization but of many centralized islands. Each individual capitalist entity is very centralized in structure, more so than a system of Socialist entities, such as Syndicalism or Market Socialism.
FOSS itself rejects the profit motive and markets, and therefore is the antithesis of capitalism. Capitalism relies on private ownership, the profit motive, and IP protections, all of which FOSS abolishes.
Truthfully, the fact that you don’t want some CEO or bureaucrat deciding what gets produced unilaterally is precisely why your views are actually that of a leftist. You desire more democratization of production, a Socialist ideal to the core!
The fact that FOSS is based on non-profit decentralization is the very reason FOSS communities are dominated by leftists.
Socialism means workers collectively own the means of production, and it isn’t synonymous with central planning.
This can only be true if you stop thinking at the end of the sentence, without reading into any of the implications, or any circumstantial cause and effect.
If the workers collectively own everything, then that means that every worker has just as much right as anyone else to make decisions on how the process plays out. This means that the group has to come up with a way to make decisions. Since the group has to make a decision, and everybody has a right to make decisions, the group is effectively making decisions on behalf of those in the group.
If the workers collectively own everything, then that means they have to work together and organize to get things done. This means that the group has to come up with a way to organize. This means that the group will be deciding on behalf of those in the group what work is done by who.
If the workers collectively own everything, that means the workers have to decide what rules or laws to follow, and how to enforce them. So now the group has to decide by what convention it’ll hold its members accountable. If it wants to hold members accountable, it implicitly has the power to do so.
A group with decision making power that enforces law among its members is a central authority.
A central authority with power over the market and all decision making is central planning.
Your description of capitalism legitimately sounds like mental gymnastics. You can call anything centralized if you reduce the context to only itself. That is dishonest, the context here is the market. If a market is centrally planned, then all aspects of the market need to be centrally planned by the same unit. That’s what central planning means. A disunited group of private entities all planning things for themselves is absolutely not an example of central planning.
If Workers democratically and decentrally decide things, it’s central planning, and not only is it central planning, it’s more centralized than if they had no say whatsoever a la Capitalism?
I’m sorry, I don’t subscribe to mental gymnastics like that. I prefer decentralization and democratization over letting the few control everything unopposed except by each other.
I didn’t say the workers decided things, I said they had a right to, and then alluded to the diplomatic issues that creates… In fact, I heavily implied they can’t realistically make decisions when I said the group decides things on their behalf.
Central Planned Economy: an economy where decisions on what to produce, how to produce and for whom are taken by the government in a centrally managed bureaucracy.
In socialism, the market is controlled by the state. This fits the definition of central planning perfectly.
In capitalism, the market is not controlled by a centralized bureaucracy.
You followed an arbitrary logical chain to depict one form of Socialism, yes.
In Capitalism, the market is controlled by Capitalists, who represent a minor fraction of the population. In Socialism, the economy is controlled by everyone.
Joking aside, politics are everywhere, and Lemmy is always going to be more political than reddit, as choosing Lemmy over Reddit is almost purely a choice based on political values.
Do you consider drastically improving upon previous conditions to be a miserable failure? Ignoring that Communism has never existed, and only specific forms of Marxism-Leninism have existed, and ignoring that MLism is only a fraction of all of Communist ideology, even MLism drastically improved upon previous conditions.
I’m not even close to a tankie, but I’m genuinely curious what you mean by what you’ve said.
Sure, and capitalism has never existed either, only specific forms of libertarian-constitutionalism 🤷♂️
Now, if you can see how silly what I just typed is, you should be able to see how silly it is to claim communism has never been tried. You say yourself that Marxist-Leninism is a communist ideology, so if it’s being attempted, then it’s valid to say a form of communism is being attempted.
Do you consider drastically improving upon previous conditions to be a miserable failure?
All of the citation needed. Don’t make the mistake of including the goals of outcome as part of the definition, that’s just cheating. Op obviously rejects the idea that it makes things better, you can’t just assume it a priori.
Socialism has existed, that’s what the USSR was. It was an ML Socialist state, but it failed to become a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society. In other words, it failed to reach Communism. Communism has been attempted, but never reached. It never reached the Communist stage, so Communism itself hasn’t been tried, only the ML form of Socialism.
The Soviet Union doubled life expectancy from the mid 30s to the mid 70s, had constant GDP growth until it liberalized and collapsed, guaranteed free Healthcare and education, and had mass housing initiatives. It had far lower wealth inequality than before or after its existence. This is all freely available information.
Am I a USSR Stan? Fuck no, the Politburo was a corrupt mess and Stalin was a thug. However, you’ve completely misconstrued my argument.
Okay I see what you mean. You agree attempted, but never achieved, I see that now. I’m sorry for misconstruing your argument, but I still take issue with your assertion that things got drastically better. That’s a big red flag to me and tends to be a sign that someone is having a big misunderstanding.
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The Soviet Union doubled life expectancy from the mid 30s to the mid 70s
While true, it is essentially a lie by omission to leave out other key details. For one thing, if you think about it, what kind of conditions would one have to be in initially to make doubling the life expectancy even possible?
The Russians were in horribly dire straits. Life expectancy fell from 37 to 32 from 1930-1935. The chief cause was forced collectivization of farming by Stalin. Privately owned farms were confiscated by the state, and were horribly mismanaged which resulted in famine. Socialist policy directly caused that famine.
Life expectancy started going up again in 1935 after they relaxed grain procurement quotas, decentralized, and opened up private plots. This is the scaling back of socialist policy, and the implementation of capitalist policy. Capitalism policy is to thank for stopping the famine.
had constant GDP growth until it liberalized and collapsed
The US has had exponential growth, rather than linear, along with many of its allies. Russia also supplies a large percentage of the world’s oil, you’d have to make fucking up an art to make your GDP go down with a supply like that.
guaranteed free Healthcare and education,
Both were an improvement considering I don’t think much was their for either before, so I’ll give ya that.
and had mass housing initiatives
These came in response to a housing crisis caused by inadequate supply of houses when the USSR nationalized it under the Central Board of Architecture. The housing initiatives did help, but the housing problem was never solved, and it was a problem created by them.
It had far lower wealth inequality than before or after its existence
Because he killed the rich people, and no one had anything. Equality is not an intrinsically good quality, especially when it means everybody is equally impoverished.
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I guess this is why I find the observation that communism has never existed pretty naive. Socialism, in its most honest representation, is really the state ownership of the means of production. The way Stalin held ownership in common, was to collectivize it under the state that all citizens are part of. If we are trying to achieve a stateless society, then holding ownership in common is an antithetical goal. Every step the USSR took away from common ownership was a step towards private ownership, and therefor a step towards capitalism.
I wasn’t referring to 30s and 70s as time periods, but the actual life expectancies. LE dropped sharply during the formation of the USSR due to civil war and WWI, and during the 30s due to famine from collectivization. After collectivization and WWII, the USSR was food secure and LE jumped sharply, combined with free Healthcare and mass housing initiatives.
Again, pre-USSR LE was far lower, and post-USSR there was another drop in LE until the last decade or so.
The US has insane growth because it managed to dodge all of the damage of WWII and export Imperialism and control over the global economy as it solidified itself as the reigning superpower. The USSR was a developing country, nowhere near as developed, and had a far more active role in WWII. Not a fair comparison, IMO.
The US has far worse housing problems even today than the USSR had. The USSR attempted to solve this problem, the US has not.
People in the USSR had far more than they had under the Tsars, and the idea that those at the top were cartoonishly wealthy is false. They didn’t have luxury goods, but they had little issues with necessities.
Holding ownership in common is the only way to have a Stateless society, Private Property Rights require a state while public property does not, as the community itself enforces this.
All in all, I am not pro-USSR. I think the process of Democratic Centralism is highly flawed and not accountable to the Workers, as the Politburo sustained itself. I also think Stalin was a horrible thug, and tragedies like the Katyn Massacre should be learned from so as to never repeat them. However, it’s also important to acknowledge that many parts of the USSR did work, and as such we should equally learn from where they did succeed.
My opinion is that decentralization is a fantastic thing, and is an excellent way to combat central control. However, this cannot be meaningfully achieved in a top-down system like Capitalism.
I wasn’t referring to 30s and 70s as time periods, but the actual life expectancies.
Oh, I must have assumed you meant otherwise because the USSR never reached that high of a life expectancy. They peaked in 1970 at 68 years old, at which point it trended down again. Russians never reached a life expectancy of 70 until 2015. You should also consider how volatile that graph has been in general, it simply isn’t good for a state to have that much influence over the life expectancy of all of its people.
That little bump in 1985-1990 correlates with the reign of Gorbachev. He implemented policy that gave more autonomy to enterprises (less state control), and allowed for foreign trade (opening the market, again less state control). This included giving way more autonomy to the collectivized farms, as well as allowing for private farms for both personal use and for sale on the market - in other words, he de-collectivized. Given that the central authority in the USSR was the state, you could also say the central authority has less control, and thus they decentralized.
Compare this the the US life expectancy of time. It’s much less volatile for one thing, it’s a very steady incline. They also actually did reach a life expectancy of 70 by 1970, they had it by 1965 in fact.
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Honestly, we totally agree on quite a bit here. We obviously both don’t advocate for Stalin himself, and we totally agree decentralization is a good thing. It’s just strange to me that in the case of the USSR you don’t see how the act of decentralization was literally being less strict on collective control and more lenient on private control - in other words, being less strict on socialist policy and being a little more lenient on private ownership.
it’s also important to acknowledge that many parts of the USSR did work
It’s also important to acknowledge which parts worked, it’s also important to acknowledge why they worked. When farmers were given private ownership, they had more freedom of choice in how to manage it, which is really important to have on farms for a myriad of reasons I can get into if you want. But in any case, they were better able to feed themselves as well as bring more product to market. Surplus on food and freedom of distribution means less hunger.
However, this cannot be meaningfully achieved in a top-down system like Capitalism.
Take farming as an example since it’s on topic. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. In 1985-1990 USSR most privately owned farms were small scale and personally managed. What’s more top down, a guy owning a plot of land and doing what he wants with it, or being assigned to work a plot by the regional agriculture authority, who answers to the ministry of agriculture, who answered to the council of ministers, who answered to the Communist Party leadership?
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Private Property Rights require a state while public property does not
Public Property: something owned by the city, town, or state.
I understand that the line is blurry on whether public means “of the state” or “of the people”. For example, the Romans saw the state to be in service of the people, so “public works” were state works for the people. They also saw the republic as a government of the people, so state projects were of the people either way you take it. This is exactly the same in our democracy, public spaces are managed by the state, on behalf of the people, but the democratic state is also a government of the people, so it’s effectively redundant in the modern context.
In any case, I don’t exactly think the distinction matters. As soon as a large group of people (the public) see the need to come together and make decisions and how to manage certain things and/or how to cooperate to get something done, a government is formed. When the Romans did this, they literally didn’t have a distinctive word for it, which is why they basically just called it the “public thing”, the group that handled public decision making. The nature of the Roman “public thing” swayed in and out of meaning of for the people, by the people, in service of the people, in command of the people, and it was never exclusive to one of those things.
Private property demonstrably does not require a state to exist, because that’s not always how property rights are handled. In this early period of Rome, the state could purchase and grant rights, but so could private citizens. If the people of Rome wanted a plot of land to themselves, the legal way to do so would be through a legitimate exchange with a private owner. Property rights are granted by whoever holds the property rights, private or public. Modern nations technically own the land they claim, which is why they grant access.
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The far more important distinction are the things that which the people don’t decide need collective cooperation. That’s what we call “private”. To be privately controlled, you can’t be under the control of the collective or the control of the state, which is precisely why “private” is the antithesis of “public”. In the context of Rome, centralization would be to make it part of the “public thing”. So, if the people and senate of Rome decided to bring the whole market under the control of the people the way they did the army and roads, they would have been both centralizing control of the market and technically socialist, as the means of production would been publicly controlled. The USSR was socialist for exactly that reason.
You’re continuing to compare a fully developed superpower that never had skin in WWII with a developing country the rest of the world tried to oppose at every step, that’s still completely disingenuous. The graph was volatile because the USSR was founded in Civil War, had a famine in the 30s during the horribly botched collectivization of agriculture, then had their bread basket invaded during WWII while they took on the majority of combat against the Nazis. After that, steady!
Decentralization is firmly a Socialist ideal, and is incompatible with Capitalism. Capitalism requires that workers have no power, otherwise it wouldn’t exist.
You then go on to completely butcher the definitions of Socialism by assuming it means state control, rather than collective control, of the means of production. State control is merely one path of Socialism.
Private Property requires a monopoly of violence to enforce, ie a state. You cannot have private property without threat of violence via a state, even your example proves this.
All in all, you’re frustratingly bad at arguing anything coherent, and it’s clear you don’t actually care about proper definitions.
had a famine in the 30s during the horribly botched collectivization of agriculture
which implies that non-collectivized agriculture was doing a good job considering the significant upswing in the 20s. After the civil war, non-collectivized farms were doing a good job.
All in all, you’re frustratingly bad at arguing anything coherent, and it’s clear you don’t actually care about proper definitions.
This response makes me think you didn’t really read my comment very closely considering I literally explain the etymology of the word “public”. Socialism is the public ownership of the means of production, and there’s good reason to consider that state ownership given the history of the word and its use over time. I don’t think I’m incoherent, I just think you don’t understand, otherwise you’d actually address my comment instead of restating your position and implying I’m stupid for not agreeing. I honest to god do recommend taking my comment a bit more seriously and rereading it. Really try to look at what I’m telling you, and if you disagree, I’d love to see you actually point out what’s wrong with my comment.
You’re never going to convince me I’m out of line here unless I can tell from your response you actually took in what I was saying, because honestly, you really didn’t have to read much of what I said to generate the response you made.
FOSS isn’t a political ideology itself, no. That’s like saying Mutual Aid or Worker Democracy aren’t political ideologies. Technically correct, but that wasn’t the point, all of those are leftist structures.
Communism is a political ideology, and I don’t think it can be globally considered fringe. Perhaps in the US, but not globally.
WHEN WILL YOU PEOPLE LEARN THAT EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL?
The libre software movement has the stated goal of making a political statement. Your decision to exclude discussion of a certain ideology in a certain forum is itself a political decision. It is turtles all the way down.
I highly doubt that. They are open-sourcing a small suite because it is economical to do so. Closed source means constantly having to re-train newcomers. Normalizing VsCode and friends will go a long ways. Same thing Google did with their IT certs.
Nah, nobody cares about their monopoly anymore. They got outmaneuvered on mobile, and they’re stuck being a desktop OS while the rest of the market moves around them.
Happens a lot with monopolies. IBM was the biggest name in mainframes, but their PC division made a standard that other companies would take and run.
Microsoft wouldn’t have put as much effort into WSL if it was just performative.
Still, everything enterprise related or video/audio revolves around them (and Macs of course). That is one of their biggest assets now, as well as the “a perscription OS” spin they’re trying to pull on Windows. Also, their subscription services, people that do all sorts of businesses use them a lot.
Even enterprise stuff has largely moved away from Microsoft. They are still dominant in some areas like the business desktop space/office 365/active directory, but ‘enterprise’ apps running on Windows Server (and associated stuff like IIS) with tight Microsoft integrations are a thing of the past.
Yeah, that’s what I meant by enterprise use, not IIS. And they’re still dominant on the audio/video production market. Basically, every aspect that is not just your everyday browsing or small office work.
They recognized that PCs were the next big thing and needed one of their own. Large companies don’t move fast, and IBM is certainly no exception, but they had to move fast now. So they took a bunch of off the shelf components that anyone else could have bought and called it their PC.
Everything except the BIOS. It regulated how the OS interacts with the hardware. Almost to the point where you could argue DOS isn’t an OS at all, but just a thin command line layer over the BIOS, plus a simple minded file system.
Anyway, some people at Compaq make a cleanroom implementation of the BIOS and release an “IBM PC compatible”. This quickly becomes the basis of everything we call a PC today. But IBM doesn’t get to profit off it in the long run. They sold off their PC division decades ago.
The show “Halt and Catch Fire” has an excellent fictional example of the reverse engineering process.
TCP/IP does not have a concept of Presentation or Session. Everything above it is just “Application”, which is more sensible. There isn’t much criticism to be had of layer 4 down, but when they got to layer 5 and 6, they were telecom people sticking their nose in software architecture. You can write networked applications with those layers if you like. I’ve seen it done, and it’s fine. There are also plenty of other ways to architect it that also work just fine.
There isn’t much criticism to be had of layer 4 down, but when they got to layer 5 and 6, they were telecom people sticking their nose in software architecture.
That is true.
But, you have to understand, back when OSI was made, the only thing which could benefit from it was telecom and banking… there were no PCs as we know them today. It’s no surprise that OSI caters mostly to telecom software and needs.
And you could always just use the model up until layer 4, it’s pretty good up until layer 4, and just do whatever you like after that… if you’re developing your own protocol for something that is.
Microsoft open-sourced all of dotnet core, which is arguably the largest and most well-maintained (with exceptions) collection of tools/platforms for developers that exsists to date. So, I don’t really agree that they’re just “making face”
They’re absolutely just “making face”. For each thing Microsoft frees, how many more are proprietary shit? Visual Studio, proprietary. Windows, proprietary. Etc.
But the dude is programming with the Communist devil so he is the one doing the communism! They need a windows toting jesus to surf in with sunglasses and a guitar or something
I like the meme but the most hilarious aspect of the saga to me is still that Oracle got out on a stage and with a straight face proclaimed that they are the bastion of openness for freeloading RHEL source code to make Oracle Linux. That shit never gets old.
I have no love for oracle, but in general the only freeloaders in FOSS development are companies that use the work of a whole ecosystem of unpaid developers and then use loopholes to restrict access.
“Lazy clones” are vital to maintaining the interoperability and openness that make RHEL (or any other corporate distro) attractive and keep them accountable for anticonsumer practices, preventing enshittification. Only when the company starts actively harming their product, or trust is lost, will clones hurt sales.
If they want a proprietary OS, they can build it themselves. The value proposition has always been in the support and service ecosystem and infrastructure provided by the corporation. Only when the company starts actively harming their product, or trust is lost, will clones hurt Red Hat’s business.
My university uses Rocky. If it didn’t exist, they would probably just use debian. Because it does exist, hundreds of students will be exposed to and learn to use enterprise linux, and will likely contribute to its corporate user base at companies that require RHEL.
If they kill clones, they are killing the on-ramp and ecosystem that makes their paid offerings so dominant. Students will learn something else, developers would deprioritize rpm, making their paid products less attractive.
I have no love for oracle, but in general the only freeloaders in FOSS development are companies that use the work of a whole ecosystem of unpaid developers
So basically all those who used CentOS and did not contribute anything even though CentOS cried for contributions for years until Red Hat eventually bought them? (=Most notably Oracle.)
Red Hat is still the biggest FOSS contributor. (I use openSUSE and SteamOS, btw, so I’m not even a RH product user.)
and then use loopholes to restrict access.
It’s really not a loophole. The GPL spells it out directly that the source code is only mandatory to be offered to those who get the binaries. A loophole is networked execution that was not even thought about when the original GPL was written and then was “closed” by the AGPL and later intended to be left open by the GPLv3.
If they kill clones, they are killing the on-ramp and ecosystem that makes their paid offerings so dominant. Students will learn something else, developers would deprioritize rpm, making their paid products less attractive.
Those actions seem to have lead to creating that new OpenELA organization, basically to what CentOS wanted for years but their cries fell on deaf ears. Simply reusing Red Hat’s source RPMs isn’t an open ecosystem. All the EL downstreams finally collaborating is.
So basically all those who used CentOS and did not contribute anything even though CentOS cried for contributions for years until Red Hat eventually bought them? (=Most notably Oracle.)
Not contributing is not necessarily freeloaders. Users have no obligation. That’s the point of open source. Only building off of open code and the closing yours off is freeloading.
Oracle and others used the source code and publish their distro’s source. Oracle not contributing is jerky, sure, but for them to be freeloaders they would have to use enterprise linux as a basis for a pay walled proprietary or restricted source OS. Correct me if I’m wrong, but their business model is using Oracle Linux in their cloud offerings.
Red Hat is still the biggest FOSS contributor. (I use openSUSE and SteamOS, btw, so I’m not even a RH product user.)
Hell, I use Fedora, so anything I contribute to is upstream of RHEL. I’m not saying RH socks. There are a lot of great people they employ and their business has been a huge positive for FOSS. But those (great) achievements were and are premised on community collaboration, and it’s more than fair to raise a stink about it.
It’s really not a loophole.
You’re right about GPL. I have nothing against paid software. I was more describing the broader enterprise linux ecosystem. That is to say, RHEL’s success is based on making it an open standard. The greater community can contribute either directly to the upstream or to the application ecosystem, with the understanding their work is applicable to the FOSS community. Closing the downstream is a loophole out of this system where they get to profit. It’s a bait and switch.
Simply reusing Red Hat’s source RPMs isn’t an open ecosystem. All the EL downstreams finally collaborating is.
“Ecosystem” wasn’t referring to the existence of clone distros but the development and adoption of enterprise linux they enable(d). The ecosystem is not only those directly contributing to enterprise linux but the developers targeting enterprise linux and the (IT/CS) user base familiarizing itself with enterprise linux. The market for a RHEL clone is not the market for RHEL enterprise solutions. As I said above, free availability of clones gets people into the ecosystem, and on the corporate end, as long as RH’s offerings aren’t enshittified, Red Hat converts these people into customers. It should be a win-win, but short-term profit maximization will hurt its trust and future growth.
Not contributing is not necessarily freeloaders. Users have no obligation. That’s the point of open source. Only building off of open code and the closing yours off is freeloading.
Describes pretty much what Oracle did for years. Now they are contributing to OpenELA, so in a weird turn of events the overall situation got better after a short period of uncertainty.
Hey, we are all freeloaders here. How many of us can say they’ve contributed to every single component of the stack we use everyday to get our cat memes? Like GRUB, the kernel, systemd/whatever you prefer, Mesa, X.Org/Wayland, your DE of choice, Firefox?
I get your point, but this definition applies to all users of FOSS software who do not actively contribute to its development. Purpose is a consideration here; I am freeloading if I use netflix’s service through loopholes or piracy when it is intended for paid customers, but am I freeloading if I, a non developer and a student not in a position to donate, use libreoffice? By this definition, I clearly am a freeloader. But it is clearly intended for use by the general public.
For RHEL, there is more ambiguity, because although they sell it at cost, it is still based in an open source ecosystem. I understand how using rhel binaries without becoming a paying customer could be seen as freeloading, but the crucial difference is the intent of an open ecosystem and standard. RHEL establishes itself as a standard, and that means it’s work will be used, not just contributed to. By closing it off, they are cutting off that standard.
Compare this to standards like USB or audio codecs. A powerful company or consortium may create an open standard and use it in their paid offerings, but others using it aren’t freeloaders, even if they compete with said offerings. They’re intended (or expected) users.
Sorry if I’m not making much sense. I’m only commenting because I find this interesting, not angry keyboard warring.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but their business model is using Oracle Linux in their cloud offerings.
Oracle Linux was created to undermine Red Hat profits to prevent Red Hat from competing with Oracle on acquisitions. They also sell their other products, including proprietary ones like Oracle DB, running on top of Oracle Linux.
But those (great) achievements were and are premised on community collaboration, and it’s more than fair to raise a stink about it.
If you value community collaboration, you should be pissed at the RHEL clones. They contribute extremely little, literally just enough to say that they contribute a non-zero amount. That’s the stink you should be raising. The spirit of open source is collaboration. Taking the RHEL source code and just rebuilding without meaningfully contributing may be allowed by open source licenses, but it damn sure isn’t in the spirit of open source.
That is to say, RHEL’s success is based on making it an open standard.
RHEL’s success is based on using open source as a development model, not a business model. It has nothing to do with other distros claiming that RHEL is the standard they have to follow, instead of actually doing the work to be good distros in their own right.
Closing the downstream is a loophole out of this system where they get to profit.
Everyone can build off (and profit off of) the upstreams, including RHEL’s immediate upstream CentOS. Red Hat has no obligation to allow people to duplicate their product exactly. Having a mature understanding of the separation of products and projects is a big factor in Red Hat’s success.
I have no love for oracle, but in general the only freeloaders in FOSS development are companies that use the work of a whole ecosystem of unpaid developers and then use loopholes to restrict access.
It’s ludicrous to suggest that Red Hat, who funds more open source work than any other company, is “freeloading” just because you don’t like their subscription terms. There are a lot of words to describe how you feel about those terms, but “freeloading” just ain’t it.
“Lazy clones” are vital to maintaining the interoperability and openness that make RHEL (or any other corporate distro) attractive and keep them accountable for anticonsumer practices, preventing enshittification.
RHEL clones are not vital to RHEL interoperability or openness. They’re not even relevant to these things. They may like to tell people they are, but it’s bullshit. RHEL’s interoperability comes from Red Hat’s upstream first policy. Improvement made by Red Hat get pushed upstream, both to software projects (e.g. linux, gcc, httpd, etc.) and to distro projects (e.g. Fedora and CentOS). RHEL’s openness is based on the fact that it is open source. RHEL clones could all disappear tomorrow and it won’t affect these aspects of RHEL.
The value proposition has always been in the support and service ecosystem and infrastructure provided by the corporation.
Red Hat’s value proposition isn’t helpdesk style “support me when something breaks” support like you’re suggesting here. It’s not something that only exists during incidents. It’s an ongoing relationship with the vendor that builds the platform that you’re building your business on. It’s being able to request and influence priority of features and bug fixes.
If they kill clones, they are killing the on-ramp and ecosystem that makes their paid offerings so dominant. Students will learn something else, developers would deprioritize rpm, making their paid products less attractive.
Clones going away wouldn’t hurt the free on-ramp to RHEL because the free developer subscription exists now. It’s a better on-ramp than a clone ever could be because it’s actual RHEL, and includes additional products. People like students that don’t need the exact product, just something close enough, can still use and learn on CentOS or Fedora. Developers aren’t going to de-prioritize RPM any worse than they already do.
Ah, the late 1900s when you could still pretend that Apple was the choice of the counterculture for no credible reason except for Apple marketing. Slacktivism, my dude. Worthless.
This meme is truly ancient. I bet those little iMacs go for a pretty penny on eBay now after everyone tossed them in the garbage circa 2003.
spoilerKDE making random features only available on wayland for no reason like trackpad gestures because memes GNOME being GNOME which is being useless anyway And literally everyone else is still using X11 by default, unless you count the 20 random github compositors that no one uses. I would switch to wayland if it had any actual immediate benefit, especially in performance, but as far as I have tested it doesn’t. Will probably join it in 2030 when the xfce devs wake up from their eternal slumber and make an update for it
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