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I actually agree with you that Linux development has been captured by corporations. Except that I believe it's not sustainable. Eventually the Shareholders are

I actually agree with you that Linux development has been captured by corporations. Except that I believe it's not sustainable. Eventually the Shareholders are going to come knocking and ask why so much engineering time and money is being wasted on some hippie-dippy Open Source junk and not returning value to them. It needs AI in it, or maybe a Linux Pro subscription with ads for the freeloaders. This is why I'm glad the kernel is tied to the GPL, so we can fork when their interests stop aligning with ours.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
You're assuming that community driven FOSS development is sustainable, or can make a good long term project the size of a kernel, or a multimedia package, or anything larger than a tool or library. In practice, I'm going to be honest and blunt, it's never worked. 3 decades of trying to replace Photoshop with GIMP (founded 1995)? Barely a dent. 3 decades of trying to unsettle Windows with the Linux desktop (KDE, 1998)? Barely a dent. 3 decades of trying to beat 3D packages with Blender (founded 1994)? Finally working now, ironically only because corporations started getting involved. Before then, Blender 2.7 was never going to do it. 2 decades of Apache trying to kill Skype with OpenMeetings (founded 2007)? Not even a dent. 2 decades of trying to kill proprietary CAD packages with FreeCAD (founded 2002)? Not even a dent. 4 decades of trying to beat Microsoft Office with what is now LibreOffice (roots in StarOffice, 1985, which was ironically a proprietary corporate project for the first decade and a half)? Barely a dent. The Linux community, and FOSS communities, overestimate their strength without corporate interests. They have none.
- segasaturn 2y ago
  Why should I care that Microsoft Office has more users than LibreOffice? I care which is the better product and has my interests as the user, and not the product, in mind. For example, and relevant to the article, I can use an ad blocker on Firefox without Big Brother Google stepping in and taking it away. Photoshop takes 30 seconds to open and illegally scrapes its users' private data for AI training. Windows has mass surveillance built in with Recall and shoves tabloid garbage and ads into the Start Menu. It means nothing to me that the worse products have more users, they are still worse products.
  - dotancohen 2y ago
    > Why should I care that Microsoft Office has more users than LibreOffice? Because people are going to send you documents in Word format, and expect you to be able to send them documents in Word format. Including embedded objects, RTL text, animations, and many other features that LibreOffice barely support and do not transfer well between its own native format and the Word format.
    - seszett 2y ago
      I'm sure it's a problem for some. But at my company we've been using open/libreoffice for about 20 years and I can count on one hand the times it has actually been a problem. And all our customers often send us MS Office documents. They never use the fancy features.
- rstuart4133 2y ago
  > You're assuming that community driven FOSS development is sustainable I'm confused. Is FOSS is something more than someone or some entity contributing their time and releasing the source for for free? Does it really matter if thing doing the development is a a person in a garage or a company? There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference to me. Both a people in garages and a company have kept their pet projects going for decades, giving away their efforts over all that time. Both people in garages and and companies have lost interest in open source projects. As an example Debian is one of the longest lived open source projects on the planet. It is a community drive development. To me it looks likely it will outlast Ubuntu, which is a fork that isn't community driven. The central tenants that make FOSS work don't seem to have much to do with whether it's community driven or not. Both can succeed. Yes, community driven efforts can fail. But so can corporate drive FOSS, as WordPress may well demonstrate.
nh2 2y ago
> ask why so much engineering time and money is being wasted on [Linux] Most likely the corporations will say "because that is much cheaper than developing our own; 10 of our devs on Linux an 99% of devs from other corporations are much cheaper than 1000 of our devs on our own OS". And the shareholders will likely accept that. The key thing is that for most corporations that contribute to Linux, Linux is not the product (except Red Hat, SuSe etc). Google, Facebook, etc, just need a good OS to run their billions of servers on. > so we can fork when their interests stop aligning with ours You can fork but you likely cannot maintain Linux as-is. Where do the 1M hours/year come from? That's hard to do in free time. That is also fine from the perspecitve of Free Software. The 4 freedoms do not include "the program must be maintainable with little enough manpower for people to do it in their free time, free of independence on corporate interests": https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms The GPL is great in that it gives large power to users of the software, no matter if those users are corporate or personal, and even if the makers of the software are mostly corporations.
- segasaturn 2y ago
  > You can fork but you likely cannot maintain Linux as-is. Where do the 1M hours/year come from? That's hard to do in free time. Maybe a question too radical for Hacker News, but why does Linux need 1M hours/year? How much "worse" would Linux be for the end user if this year, that time spent dropped to 100k or even 10k? And which "type" of Linux user was benefiting most from that time spent (person or corporation)? Why is more automatically treated as better than less? > The GPL is great in that it gives large power to users of the software, no matter if those users are corporate or personal, and even if the makers of the software are mostly corporations. Indeed, I respect the wisdom and forethought of Stallman greatly in drafting the GPL.
  - atq2119 2y ago
    I think it's a reasonable question to ask, and there's surely some churn that we could do without. But don't underestimate the effort that goes into device drivers.
  - 2y ago

gjsman-1000 2y ago

You're assuming that community driven FOSS development is sustainable, or can make a good long term project the size of a kernel, or a multimedia package, or anything larger than a tool or library. In practice, I'm going to be honest and blunt, it's never worked. 3 decades of trying to replace Photoshop with GIMP (founded 1995)? Barely a dent. 3 decades of trying to unsettle Windows with the Linux desktop (KDE, 1998)? Barely a dent. 3 decades of trying to beat 3D packages with Blender (founded 1994)? Finally working now, ironically only because corporations started getting involved. Before then, Blender 2.7 was never going to do it. 2 decades of Apache trying to kill Skype with OpenMeetings (founded 2007)? Not even a dent. 2 decades of trying to kill proprietary CAD packages with FreeCAD (founded 2002)? Not even a dent. 4 decades of trying to beat Microsoft Office with what is now LibreOffice (roots in StarOffice, 1985, which was ironically a proprietary corporate project for the first decade and a half)? Barely a dent. The Linux community, and FOSS communities, overestimate their strength without corporate interests. They have none.

segasaturn 2y ago
Why should I care that Microsoft Office has more users than LibreOffice? I care which is the better product and has my interests as the user, and not the product, in mind. For example, and relevant to the article, I can use an ad blocker on Firefox without Big Brother Google stepping in and taking it away. Photoshop takes 30 seconds to open and illegally scrapes its users' private data for AI training. Windows has mass surveillance built in with Recall and shoves tabloid garbage and ads into the Start Menu. It means nothing to me that the worse products have more users, they are still worse products.
- dotancohen 2y ago
  > Why should I care that Microsoft Office has more users than LibreOffice? Because people are going to send you documents in Word format, and expect you to be able to send them documents in Word format. Including embedded objects, RTL text, animations, and many other features that LibreOffice barely support and do not transfer well between its own native format and the Word format.
  - seszett 2y ago
    I'm sure it's a problem for some. But at my company we've been using open/libreoffice for about 20 years and I can count on one hand the times it has actually been a problem. And all our customers often send us MS Office documents. They never use the fancy features.
rstuart4133 2y ago
> You're assuming that community driven FOSS development is sustainable I'm confused. Is FOSS is something more than someone or some entity contributing their time and releasing the source for for free? Does it really matter if thing doing the development is a a person in a garage or a company? There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference to me. Both a people in garages and a company have kept their pet projects going for decades, giving away their efforts over all that time. Both people in garages and and companies have lost interest in open source projects. As an example Debian is one of the longest lived open source projects on the planet. It is a community drive development. To me it looks likely it will outlast Ubuntu, which is a fork that isn't community driven. The central tenants that make FOSS work don't seem to have much to do with whether it's community driven or not. Both can succeed. Yes, community driven efforts can fail. But so can corporate drive FOSS, as WordPress may well demonstrate.

nh2 2y ago

> ask why so much engineering time and money is being wasted on [Linux] Most likely the corporations will say "because that is much cheaper than developing our own; 10 of our devs on Linux an 99% of devs from other corporations are much cheaper than 1000 of our devs on our own OS". And the shareholders will likely accept that. The key thing is that for most corporations that contribute to Linux, Linux is not the product (except Red Hat, SuSe etc). Google, Facebook, etc, just need a good OS to run their billions of servers on. > so we can fork when their interests stop aligning with ours You can fork but you likely cannot maintain Linux as-is. Where do the 1M hours/year come from? That's hard to do in free time. That is also fine from the perspecitve of Free Software. The 4 freedoms do not include "the program must be maintainable with little enough manpower for people to do it in their free time, free of independence on corporate interests": https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms The GPL is great in that it gives large power to users of the software, no matter if those users are corporate or personal, and even if the makers of the software are mostly corporations.

segasaturn 2y ago
> You can fork but you likely cannot maintain Linux as-is. Where do the 1M hours/year come from? That's hard to do in free time. Maybe a question too radical for Hacker News, but why does Linux need 1M hours/year? How much "worse" would Linux be for the end user if this year, that time spent dropped to 100k or even 10k? And which "type" of Linux user was benefiting most from that time spent (person or corporation)? Why is more automatically treated as better than less? > The GPL is great in that it gives large power to users of the software, no matter if those users are corporate or personal, and even if the makers of the software are mostly corporations. Indeed, I respect the wisdom and forethought of Stallman greatly in drafting the GPL.
- atq2119 2y ago
  I think it's a reasonable question to ask, and there's surely some churn that we could do without. But don't underestimate the effort that goes into device drivers.
- 2y ago