8 ms·
Ubuntu Philosophy
- O_H_E 6y agoFor those who didn't check the link yet, this is not about Ubuntu the linux distro, but an ideology that has its roots in mid and south Africa. >[Ubuntu philosophy] is often used in a more philosophical sense to mean "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity."
- umvi 6y agoRight, but it's clear that this philosophy is the inspiration for the distro: - the ubuntu linux logo is 3 people holding hands - their homegrown desktop manager is/was called "unity" - GPL/FOSS sort of = 'a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity'
- snthpy 6y agoYes, and Mark Shuttleworth is from South Africa and was well aware of this philosophy when creating the distro.
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoWorth pointing out that the FSF have specifically called out Canonical/Ubuntu, for failing to behave in keeping with Free Software values. [0] Stallman has also mentioned Ubuntu in his talks, as a rare counterexample of how Free software is generally free from functionality that acts against the user's interests. [0] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do See also https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html#Ubuntu https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html#Ubuntu
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agorms is a Saint, His virtue is unyielding to mortal pleasures. Such extreme asceticism is certainly not for everyone, so you shouldn't hold it against Canonical, for you are a sinner yourself.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- monadic2 6y agoSure, but ideological purity claims seem distracting from the from the conversation about the word "Ubuntu".
- hezag 6y ago> Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. https://ubuntu.com/about https://ubuntu.com/about
- jdub 6y agoFunny bit of Ubuntu history: It was almost "Canonical Linux" by the company "Ubuntu", but it didn't take much for the founding employees to convince Mark that it should be the other way around. I don't think any of us had heard of it before, and were absolutely blown away by how similar it was to the way we thought about FLOSS.
- omginternets 6y agoWell yeah... and the distro is literally called Ubuntu.
- johnisgood 6y agoYeah well, Ubuntu is also the distribution that uses Snaps. Canonical is horrible.
- FpUser 6y agoUbuntu is now dead to me unless they get rid of this horrible new package manager
- LeSaucy 6y agoOh snap.
- FpUser 6y ago;)
- the_af 6y agoThis is not about Ubuntu linux (though of course, Canonical chose the name based on the philosophy).
- rbanffy 6y agoThe GPL is a very Ubuntu way of making software.
- the_af 6y agoWhether that's true or not, I was replying to someone complaining about how Ubuntu was a horrible linux distro. This article is not about the Linux distro.
- rbanffy 6y agoIndeed it's not, but there is a strong alignment between Ubuntu as a philosophy and the GPL as a social contract where you acknowledge we are all better off sharing our knowledge and labor.
- the_af 6y agoI totally agree with that! Still, I thought complaining about a linux distro was misguided in this case.
- mmargerum 6y agoWTF does this have to with being a hacker?
- dang 6y agoThat question comes up often, but it's answered in the first section of the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. "Being a hacker" in the sense that HN uses that word has to do with intellectual curiosity, and we take a broad and generous view of what that means. That's the original spirit of the site, because the hacker who founded HN has always been curious about many things. It's true that not every story gratifies everyone's curiosity, but that's to be expected. If you don't find this one interesting, there are others to read, and if you run out, click 'past' in the top bar and you'll likely find lots that you missed.
- setgree 6y agoFWIW, Ubuntu is a 'core value' of City Year, an Americorps organization: https://www.cityyear.org/about/history-values/values/ https://www.cityyear.org/about/history-values/values/ And CY is the type of organization to trumpet its values early and often to its own participants (which I was in 2010-11).
- blindm 6y agoWow TIL Nelson Mandela was used in a promotional video for Ubuntu, the Operating System we all know and love. You can watch the video here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Experience_ubuntu.ogv https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Experien...
- renewiltord 6y agoI have this vague memory of this video being on the Ubuntu CD or something. It was an example video you could play to see that you could play videos or whatever.
- op03 6y agomore grist - https://riskmagazine.nl/article/2018-09-30-ubuntu-vague-philosophy-or-valuable-concept https://riskmagazine.nl/article/2018-09-30-ubuntu-vague-phil...
- throw890132 6y ago> the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity." And we all know what happens if you refuse to share...
- the_af 6y agoWhat do you mean?
- throw890132 6y agoAbsolutely nothing, Zimbabwe is a shining beacon of humanity.
- dang 6y agoPlease stop creating accounts to break HN's guidelines. Doing that will eventually get your main account banned as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tnelsond 6y agoUbuntu is an ancient African word meaning, "can't configure Debian."
- sterwill 6y agoI had been using Debian for 6 years when the first Ubuntu came out, and never had any trouble configuring anything. I was getting tired of waiting what seemed like forever for new stable Debian releases, so I gave Ubuntu a shot on the desktop, liked what I saw, and then started rolling it out on servers. It's been my Debian-flavored distribution of choice since then because of its steady stable release schedule.
- Koshkin 6y agoTo be fair, African is not a language.
- rbanffy 6y agoI think this is part of the joke - that the person who prefers Debian over Ubuntu because it's harder to configure also doesn't know African is not a language.
- djsumdog 6y agoWhen reading Wikipedia, always check the talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ubuntu_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ubuntu_philosophy and always go back in time a decade: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ubuntu_philosophy&oldid=66847698 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ubuntu_philosophy...
- johnchristopher 6y agoI don't know what to make of that. I remember the 10 year old Ubuntu page (I mean, the word and the concept) but the current page seems more dense but fills with factoids, unstructured and obviously missing some paragraphs (`:` without follow up).
- djsumdog 6y agoThere's not much with this particular page, but I just kinda meant in general; read the page from a decade ago. You'll see how the page grew and you'll also see any bias that creeps in over the years.
- johnchristopher 6y agoI see it everywhere now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan#HUAC's_Hollywood_hearings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan#HUAC's_Hollywood... > In October 1947 during HUAC's Hollywood hearings, Reagan (whose name also appears as "Regan" in text of the hearings printed by the US GPO testified as resident of the Screen Actors Guild:[55]) testified:
- GloriousKoji 6y agoI know this is a subjective metric but when was wikipedia in it's prime? Seems like sometime in the past decade there was a mass sweep of edits on articles that stripped out a lot of detailed information for the sake of being a more pure "encyclopedia" and in a more abstract language. The best data point I can provide is 2004, when a self aware article was created reflecting the emerging game like behavior of wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_an_MMORPG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_an_MMOR...
- CraigJPerry 6y agoThis was front and centre of the press releases about the Linux distro at the time, it’s the only reason i know what it means :-) When warty or hoary were released, Shuttleworth was mentioned on BBC news for his sponsorship efforts (although they spent as much time talking about his outer space shennanigans as they did linux). I cant remember if theres a connection between Mark Shuttleworth and Elon Musk (paypal - am i just making that up?) but they always stick in my mind together for some reason. Typing all this has triggered a memory i’d forgotten - a podcast series from around this time. 4 British chaps, Jono Bacon was one of them. I can’t remember the name but it was fantastic entertainment, lots of laughter but it was a podcast about linux. Ubuntu featured heavily. They disbanded some years later.
- axaxs 6y ago> they always stick in my mind together for some reason Same here. I don't remember them ever working together directly, though...Shuttleworth made his fortune on Thawte, and Musk on Paypal. Probably that they're both white tech entrepreneurs from South Africa with a side interest in space, and about the same age, if I had to guess!
- mattl 6y agoLUGradio. I was on an episode. Recorded in Jono’s spare room.
- prmph 6y agoThe meaning of Ubuntu all too often gets lost in vague translations such as "bond of sharing", "unity", and "collective humanity". This is a bit unfortunate, because Ubuntu expresses an interesting and specific concept. Ubuntu can literally be translated as "I am what I am because of what we all are", ie., that individual meaning is bound up with collective meaning. To give some simple examples, a king is so because a kingdom with subjects exists. Were he to diminish his subjects, he diminishes himself. An elected politician draws power from the socially constructed collective rule of law and norms. We he/she to attack these collective norms, his source of legitimate power can crumble. As software engineers, our (admittedly advantageous) socio-cultural position derives from unique place the tech industry has carved out in society. If we act in ways inimical to the sharing and openness that underpins the industry, we are attacking our own position in the long-term. These examples illustrate the spirit of Ubuntu, and it is not hard to see why it implies values such as sharing, attention to collective interests, and the like. But at its core, the philosophy is something quite specific.
- lucian1900 6y agoSo it’s a form of dialectics, very interesting indeed.
- ngcc_hk 6y agoWorld spirit kind yes. But dialectics could emphasis the difference forever. That is the bad part of Hegelian and later Marxism.
- omginternets 6y ago>Ubuntu can literally be translated as "I am what I am because of what we all are", ie., that individual meaning is bound up with collective meaning. In philosophical terms, Gilbert Ryle would argue that "Self" and "Other" are in the same category, just as up/down, anxiety/contentment, life/death, black/white are are different instances of the same stuff. If you're a zen Buddhist (or a fan of Alan Watts), you're already familiar with this idea as well. Self can only be understood in opposition to non-self, life in opposition to death, light in opposition to dark, etc. A corollary: there isn't really an ontological difference between self and other (or life and death for that matter). Historical Note / Tangent: Ryle uses the notion of category to do away with Cartesian dualism. It is very much the reason the mind/body problem is largely considered to be a pseudoproblem these days: mind and body, by virtue of the fact that they are defined in opposition to one another, are ontologically the same stuff -- they're in the same category.
- bigdict 6y agoCategories are created to distinguish between their members. If two things are in the same category, then they are by definition not the "same stuff". Otherwise they would be one thing.
- omginternets 6y agoBy "same stuff" I mean, "related by some essence". This is why they were grouped in the same set to begin with. Red and black are different, but they are of the stuff of color.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- igitur 6y agoMaybe this is a good place to mention that the correct pronunciation of Ubuntu (both the philosophy and the Linux distro) is "ooBOONtoo", not "you-bun-too", which I often hear. IPA pronunciation: ùɓúntʼù
- Kattywumpus 6y agoThis should be horrifying to any sane human, but we live in a time of great insanity, and much of what ought to be criticized passes by unremarked in plain sight. > Ubuntu asserts that society, not a transcendent being, gives human beings their humanity. Let's be clear on what we're talking about here: Your humanity. Are you a human being, or aren't you? Are you a moral entity or not? In the West, we say your humanity is intrinsically, unalienably situated in your person, bestowed upon you by a higher authority even than society itself. It may at times be recognized or unrecognized by the crooked timber of human institutions, but with or without them, it exists. You are a human being even if society doesn't want you to be, for whatever reason. Compare and contrast with Ubuntu: > According to Michael Onyebuchi Eze, the core of ubuntu can best be summarised as follows: > 'A person is a person through other people' strikes an affirmation of one’s humanity through recognition of an ‘other’ in his or her uniqueness and difference. It is a demand for a creative intersubjective formation in which the ‘other’ becomes a mirror (but only a mirror) for my subjectivity. This idealism suggests to us that humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual; my humanity is co-substantively bestowed upon the other and me. Again, cutting through the obstructive bafflegab: 'A person is a person through other people' humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual The examples given are even more grotesque. > When someone behaves according to custom, a Sotho-speaking person would say “ke motho,” which means "he/she is a human." > The aspect of this that would be exemplified by a tale told (often, in private quarters) in Nguni “kushone abantu ababili ne Shangaan,” in Sepedi “go tlhokofetje batho ba babedi le leShangane,” in English (two people died and one Shangaan). In each of these examples, humanity comes from conforming to or being part of the tribe. In other words, three people died, but only one "human". Think deeply on the implications of that. Growing beyond this kind of tribal denial of humanity has always been one of the proudest achievements of the West. It's a shame to see us sinking back into it, endorsing it, even celebrating it again. See this kind of literal dehumanization pass by without much notice at all.
- whatshisface 6y ago>See this kind of literal dehumanization pass by without much notice at all. Look, nobody actually reads this stuff, and if anyone reads it, they don't think about it. It's filler meant to contain words like "community," "society," and "humanity."
- ngcc_hk 6y agoQuite a horrible philosophy. It is really totalitarian in nature. Marxism and nazi going together. Obviously it seems ok to unify and pardon. But read this. Horror. Individual can opt in but not mold like a clay. Whilst we should interact but not find ourselves in the group only. Individual is the base. Or at least some of us trying and should not be joined only pray of a group even though you label the group as humanity. What if my minority group is a different kind. What is I want myself, my family and my county only. Yes we can have a country or a culture and there is an us. But that us should not forced upon me, my family or my town to conform. Or my little race my little county ... another china just too small currently but another china. That might be a link between Africa and “ "Ubuntu" as political philosophy encourages community equality, propagating the distribution of wealth. This socialisation is a vestige of agrarian peoples as a hedge against the crop failures of individuals. Socialisation presupposes a community population with which individuals empathise and concomitantly, have a vested interest in its collective prosperity. Urbanisation and the aggregation of people into an abstract and bureaucratic state undermines this empathy. African Intellectual historians like Michael Onyebuchi Eze have argued however that this ideal of "collective responsibility" must not be understood as absolute in which the community's good is prior to the individual's good. On this view, ubuntu it is argued, is a communitarian philosophy that is widely differentiated from the Western notion of communitarian socialism. In fact, ubuntu induces an ideal of shared human subjectivity that promotes a community's good through an unconditional recognition and appreciation of individual uniqueness and difference.[12] Audrey Tang has suggested that Ubuntu "implies that everyone has different skills and strengths; people are not isolated, and through mutual support they can help each other to complete themselves."[13] "Redemption" relates to how people deal with errant, deviant, and dissident members of the community. The belief is that man is born formless like a lump of clay. It is up to the community, as a whole, to use the fire of experience and the wheel of social control to mould him into a pot that may contribute to society. Any imperfections should be borne by the community and the community should always seek to redeem man. ...”