Can't wait for Lemmy to jack themselves off to this while not analyzing all the eugenics, sexism, racism, and various other horrible bullshit on here every day that goes completely unconfronted
Ya'll ain't even white knights. You ain't even keyboard warriors. You don't even address the trash in your own yard. None of you shitballs is a feminist, communist, woke, or left in any regard.
I'd argue they are anarchist socialist, at least in terms of intellectual property as they are collaborative and free to access and use. With permissive licenses being more anarchist capitalist as you can capture and make a project uncollaborative.
It's not gatekeeping, none of the opinions shared here by Linus are categorically leftist. The person retweeting him is erroneously putting him into a box, or knows more about his full ideology than he's shared in the tweet.
It's not gatekeeping to point out that 'leftist' historically doesn't mean 'left of center'. It's used as a reductive - but that's the nature of trying to reduce political ideologies to a single term - label for ideologies that are anti-capitalist. Nothing Linus said in this post points to him being anti-capitalist, he only commented on social issues.
He might still be a leftist, I'll give you that, but this post doesn't really show that.
Because the direction "left" doesn't actually have any inherent relationship to political ideologies, but people strive for some kind of ideological purity, especially to draw a contrast with a fundamentally unjust society?
If you believe in equality, you're woke. You're also a socialist. Because since fascism is a sincere belief in inequality based on identity, while neoliberalism (democrats) is a sincere belief in inequality based on class / wealth.
So yeah, this belief in equality or basic human decency needs to be destroyed in order to maximize profit. Invest in this propaganda, great ROI guaranteed!
neoliberalism (democrats) is a sincere belief in inequality based on class / wealth
This is actually a misconception! Liberalism (or neoliberalism, as the pejorative goes) is about allowing individuals the ability to dictate their own life on their own terms. Liberals want most of the same things you do, probably: clean air, a reduction in carbon emissions, everybody has a roof over their heads. guaranteed access to healthcare, and dense, walkable cities. The difference is the means by which liberals want to achieve these things. Liberals believe that the government should play as small a roll as necessary to guarantee these things, usually through economic incentives and staying out of the way of the free flow of commerce. Liberals do employ government action when necessary (i.e, making it illegal to dump toxic waste in to rivers).
Liberals also believe that the government should strongly guarantee legal equality and should generally do what it can to provide equal opportunities to everyone. Liberals think it should be illegal to discriminate against someone based on sex, race, sexual orientation, and other factors of one's birth.
The point of liberalism is to lower the horizons of government. In the 16th century Europeans were quite busy slaughtering each other over what the official religion of their kingdom should be. Liberalism emerged as way to manage sectarian conflict from spilling over into actual violence by disestablishing state churches, or at least significantly reducing the political power of clergy. Liberals apply this principle to other aspects of governance
Recommend reading the book The Quiet Coup by Mehrsa Baradaran. Neoliberalism isn't benign, could be considered akin to modern centrism, and above all else works to protect capitalism and the status quo in predictable ways that allow for exploitation. Which is exactly why corporate monarchy is now taking over our country in place of capitalism.
I agree that many who vote for liberals believe those things, but those are not the goal of liberal parties. The historical meaning of liberalism was the same as what is called neoliberalism today. Calling it a derogatory term is just pretending to be a victim. There IS such an ideology as "belief in inequality based on wealth" and that includes the right to survive through access to healthcare. That is reality.
You argue as if good arguments win, and ideology matters - it doesn't work that way. Ideology is merely a tool. There is only power, or money that you can exchange for power. And those who desire nothing except power have a competitive advantage to gain more power and shape the world over people who want other things. There is a selection process that has been going for decades that precludes normal people like us two.
Politicians in the US might write some other virtues on their flags, or they might even delude themselves to believe them - that is actually best. But when the chips are down, only those who pursue power gain more power. I believe this could be scientifically proven with game theory and a simulation.
What you are doing is kind of denying that economic power (or capital, or billionaires) have an overwhelming influence on politics and policies. If you say that the conservatives or democrats or whoever does this or that for ideological reasons, you deny political reality and obscure paths to improve things. We need transparency and better tools and countermeasures to these mechanisms.
Politicians are chosen by capitalists among thousands of candidates, and only the fringe that happen to fit into their plans are funded. Those who want power above anything else and who have neoliberal tendencies. The useful idiots to capitalists.
So no, neoliberalism is not a derogatory term that should be avoided. It's reality. Or how else do you explain Elon Musk running DOGE?
Liberals are pro-capitalism, which is the ultimate mechanism for inequality.
"Neoliberalism" isn't a pejorative, it's a political philosophy that has dominated the Western world for about 50 years, though it has roots much further back. It is a philosophy embraced by both Republicans and Democrats. It's about privatization of services, lowering taxes, and deregulating corporations. It's why we have for profit healthcare in the US, for example.
He is, when it comes down to it, pretty wealthy. But we are talking about the guy who created the kernel that now runs nearly every Internet service, all Android phones, most streaming devices, and a lot of various embedded devices. Anyone else with that much impact would be a billionaire many times over.
But he's got a comfortable amount and has not exercised unreasonable ambition. A man who did someone very valuable and was well rewarded and sees no point in being any better off than he is.
I've started replying "ok, dozer" to anyone who complains about "wholeness" to me. The ennui I have with the regressives is just beyond description anymore.
I like dozer because it not only suggests they're asleep, but it also suggests bulldozer, which is what the people they voted for are doing to the country and world.
There are many good reasons to use and learn Linux. Political ideology of its creators is very much not one of them.
They're largely professional people: their politics almost never influence what they're building in a practical way.
The (generally) accepting and tolerant culture within which it was produced is part of what made it possible for it to be what it is, but you won't really see that in the software itself.
honestly, do it. if your laptop gets old, no matter windows or mac, it will be dropped by windows/apple. Linux will make it last a lot longer and run it a lot smoother. Do the switch. And you can actually have your computer the way you want it, not how apple or windows want it to be.
Here in the Netherlands they accuse people of being a 'deugmens' which literally translates as being a 'virtuehuman', a human with virtues. Except for possible pretentiousness, having virtues is hardly a bad thing, quite the opposite. Being politically correct has negative connotations, but most of the time it's very easy to explain why something is politically incorrect, because the incorrect route has often proven in the past to be disastrous. People used to talk about 'political correctness gone mad' but now very often any political correctness is deemed bad. Woke is considered by some to be one of the worst insults you can get, but waking up and seeing that there is terrible inequity in this world, seeing that we are very whatever-centric in our thoughts/actions and questioning all that, is hardly a bad thing. Now the question is, do we need to reappropriate these words, reclaim and reframe them, or should we ignore them and move beyond them because people have been so deeply conditioned with 'woke=bad' no questions asked.
I've always had a suspicion that so many simple things that trigger the right, like wearing a mask during a pandemic, do so because they are simple nice things you can do and every time they see someone doing it, they inherently know they are bad - and so they want to force others to stop being nice so they don't have to face that reality anymore.
The pandemic is a lie/is exaggerated -> there is no reason to wear a mask -> why is the gouvernment trying to make people wear masks, they must be hiding something
Conservatives have been taught to follow the leaders in their environment, without questions (see religion)
It gives their leaders a lot of power and thus, there is a lot of incentives to become a leader through whatever means possible. It gives leaders power and influence.
So comes along an issue and a non-conservative authority tells people they should do X. Conservatives leaders want more power and they hinge on that thing to gain more visibility and thus more power.
The other conservatives see that their leader is against, and so they take their leaders stance without question and hate that thing too.
Conservatives leader will say whatever they can without really really caring if that is true or not (remind you of someone?)
It is a lot easier to rile up people with negative emotions and tribalism, so the conservative leaders use hate and fear to further their strength and influence.
In Germany the derogatory term used is "Gutmensch", good human.
It's the narrative the right has created, and you can see it in those terms. The narrative is of course that people on the left pretend to be full of virtue and good but in reality are dreamers full of idoologies that can't survive in the real world. That and not beeing able to practice what one preaches (like still using airplanes while advocating for a more sustainable lifestyle) are part of what they have constructed "woke people" to mean for them, as far as I understand it at least.
Maybe I'm drawing a connection that isn't there, but I equate this with the behaviour in some circles of being suspicious of people who don't partake in drugs, drinking, corruption, debauchery, etc. It's kind of like you can't trust people unless they have some vice, or at least an "edge" to them.
But maybe this behaviour is not related to this "deugmens" or "gutmensch" labeling.
I suspect a lot of derogatory terms across many cultures/languages are generally rooted in sarcasm. Pointing out the irony/oxymoron in the term just makes them feel/act even more self-righteous.
Gutmensch in German usually refers to people who try to appear good and make decisions they feel are good without questioning if the side effects are harmful. Also they expect others to do the same without regard for their ability to do so (e.g. I manage to avoid plastic bags, so you must too. Which is at least somewhat reasonable. But I manage to live without a car so you must too is difficult for some part of the rural population.)
We need cars because the railways were deemed not profitable. We need cars because investment in busses is often very limited (depending on where you live). We need cars because village markets are dying and we then have to go to the supermarket the town over.
We need cars because of the capitalist atomisation of society.
And even then, the vast majority of our trips are very short (< 40' round trip'). The car we need the most is a very small, kinda lowtech electric one. But those don't exist as much...
In our 750 people village, I think we'd need about 1 car for every 3 to 5 families and 3 trucks.
TL;DR: Rural people need cars. But we don't need big ones for most of our usage. We need better public transportation. Personal car ownership is dumb and wasteful.
Hear me out, people who belong to this stupid label "the right" can also hold those values. Shocking, isn't it? I'll even out myself as one of those morally apprehensive people of this homogeneous group, which is the exact opposite to the homogeneous group "the left" (because you're either or, of course), ""the* right". But I still hold the same values as Linus mentions.
When you boil it down, being right wing means you value property rights over human rights, and left wing is vice versa. Right wing is maintaining wealth and power, and don't let anyone else get in the way of it.
Of course there's a spectrum. In the US, the spectrum only applies to the populace, though, as the politicians themselves are behaving so polarized that there only exists "the right" (far-right culture warriors) and "the left" (center-right with lip service to the left).
Just how fucking dense do you have to be in order to be surprised that a man who created one of the most popular operating systems on Earth, and then gave it away for free, might be a leftist?
For example, conservatives think pro- choicers are callous baby-killers who only care about abortion because it allows them to "whore around" without consequences. Liberals on the other hand, think pro-lifers are misogynists who want to ban abortion because banning it will hurt women and because they want to make the country more like The Handmaid's Tale.
In my experience the Foss community tends towards the "legal weed and less cops" style of libertarianism and less the "police exist to protect my right to 3 12 year old wives from the tyranny of criticism" style.
I can generally get along with the "coercion bad" libertarians better than with the "abolish the government because rules shouldn't exist" crowd.
created one of the most popular operating systems on Earth, and then gave it away for free
He didn't created it alone and "then" gave it away for free. Since it's begging Linux was free and that created a community who made it the most popular OS.
Watching Linus take a big public dump on someone who deserves it is one of life's finest guilty pleasures. It's like a Maya Angelou poem. You can tell he really cared, and meant it, and took some time to get it right.
Reading his words really slams home which side of the political spectrum truly believes in personal freedom and liberty. And it's not the side that promotes fascism and wants to implement a Christian version of Sharia law under the Ten Commandments.
There are a great number of nutjobs running (F)OSS projects, so I wouldn't assume much about any software maintainer. Also, Linus explicitly only cites upsides to FOSS that pertain to developing the software itself, not to any greater social effort.
You jest but it's because you chose a manufacturer that made a closed-source driver minefield and the volunteer paramedics haven't been able to get to you yet.
The "good guys" still (chemically) castrated one of their greatest minds that won the war for ten, just because he happened to like dicks.
Theres a reason people wanted to reduce the victims of the Holocaust to just being Jewish and ignored all the other groups that both sides wanted to persacute.
They did the same thing this time, target LGBT to build the movement and are now expanded to other groups.
Hopefully everyone stands up while we still have the numbers, otherwise they'll keep chipping away fringe groups.
In Europe being trans friendly has fuck-all to do with your political leanings on the left-right axis. It's just USA warping the political discourse with their literally one-dimensional politics.
While the right tends to be religious and does not really approve anything LGBTQ-related, they've learned to behave and to mind their own business, which is actually fine. Respect other people, even if you don't agree with them and as long as nobody's getting hurt, we can all live happy lives.
This new wave of "America-style" extreme right lunatics though, that's a different story. Those entitled fuckers feel they're allowed to mess with other people's lives, and they're due a harsh lesson in civility.
What the Americans call libertarians have some minority representation in Europe and they’re tolerant of minorities. Not as good as leftists but better than conservatives.
It's pretty hard to make an accurate blanket statement about what the US believes any more. There really are two very different Americas, and the evil one is in power.
The Right doesn't care what people actually believe.
They happily quote MLK on a daily basis.
Ray Bradbury was always anti-fascist, but he called out President Obama because there were no space missions during the Obama terms. After Bradbury died the Right tried to cherry pick quote to make him look like a life long Republican.
"Bradbury considered himself a political independent.[83] Raised a Democrat, he voted for the Democratic Party until 1968. In 1952, he took out an advertisement in Variety as an open letter to Republicans, stating: "Every attempt that you make to identify the Democratic Party as the party of Communism, as the 'left-wing' or 'subversive' party, I will attack with all my heart and soul."[84] However, Lyndon B. Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War left Bradbury disenchanted, and from 1968 on he voted for the Republican Party in every presidential election with the exception of 1976, when he voted for Jimmy Carter. According to Bradbury's biographer Sam Weller, Carter's inept handling of the economy "pushed [Bradbury] permanently away from the Democrats".[83]
Bradbury called Ronald Reagan "the greatest president" whereas he dismissed Bill Clinton, calling him a "shithead".[85] In August 2001, shortly before the September 11 attacks, he described George W. Bush as "wonderful" and stated that the American education system was a "monstrosity".[86] He later criticized Barack Obama for ending NASA's crewed space flight program.[85]
In 2010, he criticized big government, saying that there was "too much government" in America, and "I don't believe in government. I hate politics. I'm against it. And I hope that sometimes this fall, we can destroy part of our government, and next year destroy even more of it. The less government, the happier I will be".[85] Bradbury was against affirmative action, condemned what he called "all this political correctness that's rampant on campuses", and called for a ban of quotas in higher education.[21][85] He asserted that "[e]ducation is purely an issue of learning—we can no longer afford to have it polluted by damn politics".[21]"
Yeah that's uh... that sounds about right. I wonder a lot about that generation.
Would Rod Serling, a humanist at heart, who campaigned to bring black actors onto mainstream TV sets, and always sent a message that the individual should always fight against an oppressive regime.... would he too be lost in a sea of republicanism as he got older and the world changed around him?
Bradbury needed to look closer then because Obama was working on NASA to get it built back up. Trump didn't magically make rockets available in a couple years. That stuff takes a very long lead time to get right.
That stuff takes a very long lead time to get right.
Yet somehow, people still think Mr. "We'll be on Mars by 2025," who is still launching rockets that explode mid-air, should be allowed to throw out this tried and true method. Surely, the idea of "move fast and break things" is more financially responsible than polluting debris and waste over the country. Fucking monorail salesman...
I think he really struggled understanding that he was seen as a leader, and that people were modelling his behavior because he was setting the standard. Once he realized that, his criticisms became more... measured.
makes you wonder what the reply would have been like 10 years ago. probably something along the lines "just breathing the same air as you already makes me feel stupider..."
To be fair what he's described is at most Progressive. The left rejects the current economic model as a start. Workers owning the means of production instead of an owner class.
There's a whole lot of river to swim between fair and equal treatment and full fledged socialism. Not everyone on "the left" sleeps with Karl Marx under their pillow.
Oh definitely. it's a spectrum, but his post doesn't go that far left. The idea that any of that is "left wing" is spread by conservatives to make those ideas look radical.
I don’t really know much about his personal politics, but his work seems to speak pretty loudly about rejecting the idea of software as private property to be bought and sold by capital, which, you know, that’s more than just progressive, even if it’s just in one area.
I'm sorry, and I don't want to be disrespectful or rude, but as a person who has no clue about computers I am very surprised the creator of Linux is still alive. I somehow thought he is super old and probably dead by now or at least not using the internet. I'm so sorry for my ignorance.
Edit: Thank you everyone for the many interesting replies, I've learned a lot of random stuff which I greatly appreciate!
That's the thing, my dad was one of the first informatics people (computer based algebra in Russia and Germany) and my mom did her thesis on how to design a cigar shaped body in 3D on a computer. But they are in their mid to late 60s now and my dad went from being a professor of IT to "how do I open the internet" so my confusion is based on bias from my family. All his former colleagues also didn't stay up to date with technology and they worked for an elite university in Germany.
Anyway, good that they are alive and kicking! And glad their kicks are not so random as my folks'.
Linux is not that old. There's a reason why the "Actually it's GNU+Linux.." meme exists, because Linux is built using tools that were already around, he didn't start entirely from scratch.
spoiler
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
Oof for someone who isn't tech savvy this was a hard read but I appreciate it!
My experience with Linux - and as I now know, probably GNU? - is limited to not pressing a button while my dad's computer at work turned on so that I would end up in not in Windows. He had one amazing game on Linux where some troll had to roll stones (I wish I could find it again). I came to work with him every now and then and was allowed to play while he would half desperately half violently try to get rid of the chaos on his desk, which consisted of about 700 pounds of paper and occasional random paper clips.
I loved these days. And the canteen's gravy with rice for some reason.
@RedSnt@volvoxvsmarla Well... not all of them. There is <strong>at least one</strong> <a href="https://chimera-linux.org/">Linux distribution</a> that's decided to use a BSD userland instead of a GNU one, so I guess it could be called BSD/Linux...
(and no, I'm not associated with them. Right now I run Ubuntu, but project #3 on my list of personal projects is customizing either CachyOS or OpenMandriva to my taste, complete with custom repos, I haven't decided yet.)
You might be thinking of Unix, which is what Linux is based on but not really. Unix was created in the 1960s and for sure the people who created it are passed
Heh, back in the early 2000s when I was busy reading up on computer history I was very surprised that a lot of Internet standard pioneers and computer science giants were still alive. Like, people from the stone age. This is such a young field.
I seriously thought John McCarthy (creator of Lisp programming language) had reached such a status of existence that he would probably never die. (sadly, he did.)
I got all excited cause I saw that Linus had a mastodon account and I went to follow and saw that I already followed and he hasn't posted since early last year..... ah well, good on ya 2023 Torvalds
Despite him not posting, I visit his Mastodon profile from time to time. It has such a cute sea turtle banner. Glad to see that despite him being a kernel developer titan, he still spares a thought for the humble shell programmers too.
I hate both religon and atheism but agree with everything else Linus has to say
Edit:
I would have edited my comment to explain why but the existing downvotes would cast a negative view of any explanation I do give since people online tend to disregard comments with downvotes
Also the downvotes killed any mental will and motivation to type up and clearly think of an explanation in addition to the reasoning above
Maybe I'll come back later and edit my comment again if I actually get that mental will and motivation back but it's not likely
Atheism includes both those that passionately disagree that gods exist and those that simply do not believe in deities. So you hate both people that believe in deities (religion), and all atheists. I guess you left out non-religious non-theist's.. People who don't believe in theism but have some kind of pagan belief system.
That's a very small ellipsis of the Venn diagram you're carving out of people you don't hate.
Crystal girls that list 'spiritual but not religious' on their Tinder?
so if he was a nazi, then we should follow the guidance of our lord and savior and agree with everything he thinks because linux. we should advocate for more sheep mentality idiolizing celebs and computer geeks. \s
You're in a blog memes community dude. It's literally all screenshots of blog posts idk what you expect other than like.. screenshots of noteworthy peoples social media posts and related memes.
I actiallyvthink the open source community (and wider programming in general) are very proactive in calling out and speaking out against poor behaviour among their community leaders and peers. Just off the top of my head I can think of:
PolyMC dev who came out stating he is very against queers and leftists. Rest of his dev team goes "OK bye" and forks the project. Their project, Prism MC now has more than 3* the stars on GitHub as the original project, indicating much larger userbase and following.
The developer of the most popular game of all time, Minecraft, Markus Persson (Notch) made a number of posts on Twitter that were your standard anti-feminist, anti-trans, pro-white alt-lite chud crap, and this enormously popular billionaire is now persona non grata in the Minecraft community and unwelcome even by Microsoft.
The problem you allude to (blind hero worship) is really a far more common occurrence amongst the right wing, because as conservatives they seek to preserve existing structures of power and tradition above all else. Leftists seek egalitarianism. These two ideas are incompatible which is the whole reason they're branded as opposing ends of the political spectrum.
I agree with all you said, but I only disagree that I don't believe that 'hero worship' is rightwing-exclusive.
I also love these two examples you mentioned of PolyMC and Mincraft boycotting and branching away from inhumanity
Pretty sure people admire him because he shares their values, which is not at all what you're describing. Which value that he listed above do you have a problem with and why?
"Well regulated" translated from 1700's speak just means "in good working order", not meaning regulated by a bureaucracy issuing permits.
The intention was for state governors not having to rely solely on National Guardsman or Federal government, and can simply pluck a militia ran by civilians who developed a military-like hierarchy in their organization to answer to said governor of the state in order to address issues withinthe states with threats of violence.
A militia in 1700's speak is simply a group of able-bodied males who own and are trained to use their own personally procured firearms, and serve their local government (village, city, or state). That way the local government doesnt need to pay money out of local city/state funds to arm them and train them and eventually mobilise them to arms.