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Was open-sourcing Linux a cynical, offensive move to devalue commercial Unix (a scheme hatched by duplicitous Finns)? But more seriously, DeepSeek is a massive

Was open-sourcing Linux a cynical, offensive move to devalue commercial Unix (a scheme hatched by duplicitous Finns)? But more seriously, DeepSeek is a massive boon for AI consumers. It's price/performance cannot be beat, and the model is open source so if you're inclined to run and train your own you now have access to a world-class model and don't have to settle for LLaMA.

sho_hn 2y ago
> Was open-sourcing Linux a cynical, offensive move to devalue commercial Unix (a scheme hatched by duplicitous Finns)? No, but the same sort of people certainly told us that we were :-) Cf. the whole "the GPL is viral and will kill the industry" spiel we got to hear for years.
harrall 2y ago
At the end of the day, some people think like Linus Torvalds and others think like Bill Gates.
- mistermann 2y ago
  And most people "choose" which of the two they will use depending on which best serves them under the given circumstances.
- fuzztester 2y ago
  Linus is not too different from Bill, actually. He has also spoken about world domination ;) https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    I'll find the quote eventually, but this caught my eye: >If you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and should fix your program. Got me thinking. I might heighten up to 4 or 5 simply because modern code needs 2 indents just to start writing a function in a struct. But the quote wasn't as crazy as I thought, even 30 years later.
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      In code reviews I call them sideways christmas trees and mark it as a bug.
eunos 2y ago
You jest, but honestly, if open source accelerated during the peak Cold War and the Soviets leveraged them to own capitalists American software industry, you bet that the US Govt would be hostile to the open source movement.
- suraci 2y ago
  hahaha that would be funny you could be a communist if you open source your project so maybe in that alternative universe, there would be something like close-source-statement instead of open source license, to avoid be accused as a communist
- spamizbad 2y ago
  The Soviet Union did exactly that during the cold war - hell it lifted entire semiconductors - but it ultimately amounted to bupkis.
  - osullivj 2y ago
    My father taught HnD computing in the 70s and 80s at Trent Poly. One of his industry contacts did time for shipping DEC Vax VMS kit to Bulgaria in crates marked "tractor parts"...
dluan 2y ago
> duplicitous Seattleites
tbrownaw 2y ago
> Was open-sourcing Linux a cynical, offensive move to devalue commercial Unix No, because as Stallman had pointed out Linux isn't GNU. One of the differences between the "open source" crowd and the "free software" crowd is that the latter actually does have an explicit goal of denying proprietary software the ability to exist.

sho_hn 2y ago

> Was open-sourcing Linux a cynical, offensive move to devalue commercial Unix (a scheme hatched by duplicitous Finns)? No, but the same sort of people certainly told us that we were :-) Cf. the whole "the GPL is viral and will kill the industry" spiel we got to hear for years.

harrall 2y ago

At the end of the day, some people think like Linus Torvalds and others think like Bill Gates.

mistermann 2y ago
And most people "choose" which of the two they will use depending on which best serves them under the given circumstances.
fuzztester 2y ago
Linus is not too different from Bill, actually. He has also spoken about world domination ;) https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  I'll find the quote eventually, but this caught my eye: >If you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and should fix your program. Got me thinking. I might heighten up to 4 or 5 simply because modern code needs 2 indents just to start writing a function in a struct. But the quote wasn't as crazy as I thought, even 30 years later.
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    In code reviews I call them sideways christmas trees and mark it as a bug.

eunos 2y ago

You jest, but honestly, if open source accelerated during the peak Cold War and the Soviets leveraged them to own capitalists American software industry, you bet that the US Govt would be hostile to the open source movement.

suraci 2y ago
hahaha that would be funny you could be a communist if you open source your project so maybe in that alternative universe, there would be something like close-source-statement instead of open source license, to avoid be accused as a communist
spamizbad 2y ago
The Soviet Union did exactly that during the cold war - hell it lifted entire semiconductors - but it ultimately amounted to bupkis.
- osullivj 2y ago
  My father taught HnD computing in the 70s and 80s at Trent Poly. One of his industry contacts did time for shipping DEC Vax VMS kit to Bulgaria in crates marked "tractor parts"...

dluan 2y ago

> duplicitous Seattleites

tbrownaw 2y ago

> Was open-sourcing Linux a cynical, offensive move to devalue commercial Unix No, because as Stallman had pointed out Linux isn't GNU. One of the differences between the "open source" crowd and the "free software" crowd is that the latter actually does have an explicit goal of denying proprietary software the ability to exist.