6 ms·
But Linux is US tech? Isn't the main guy American?
by casey2 6mo ago
But Linux is US tech? Isn't the main guy American?
- boomskats 6mo agoNo, and no? ...what?
- redat00 6mo ago?
- GardenLetter27 6mo agoYeah, he became American, just like Einstein, Fermi, Von Neumann, etc. There's a big lesson for Europe there, everyone super productive and able to move to the US does so at the first opportunity.
- drivingmenuts 6mo agoWhen the US is being run by relatively sane people, it's great. That is not the situation at the moment.
- bogeholm 6mo agoYeah, um… That might have changed somewhat, recently.
- skillina 6mo agoYou might want to do a bit more reading on why European intellectuals migrated en masse to the US in the 1930s.
- pseudony 6mo agoDefinitely. And then one could start wondering if the direction might reverse.
- znort_ 6mo agoto europe? hardly. maybe to east asia ...
- T-A 6mo agohttps://time.com/7379376/scientist-migration-us-to-europe/ https://time.com/7379376/scientist-migration-us-to-europe/
- Aerroon 6mo agoIt would take something miraculous for the direction to reverse towards Europe. People have been complaining about European tech, economy, and freedoms (as in free speech) for decades now. Things have become worse on all of these fronts. I think the AI act is a great example here. The EU came up with regulation for an emerging technology that basically killed the chance for Europe to compete. Lots of people disagreed with this criticism when the act was debated, but it turns out the critics were right. Europe will be buying AI services from elsewhere because Europe wasn't able to compete. This entire way of thinking in Europe would need to reverse for there to be a chance that the brain drain changes course.
- swiftcoder 6mo agoOn the flip side, with the US cutting funding for scientific research, and increasing persecution of minorities within the US, I know a whole bunch of qualified scientists/researchers who are either moving to or actively hunting for a position in the EU
- bigfudge 6mo agoReally not many people outside far right proponents of hate speech (and more recently MAGA shills) have been complaining about free speech in Europe. Yes, there are laws against holocaust denial for specific historical reasons. The UK also had regulations on some Irish republican organisations access to TV, but not other forms of expression. And yes most European jurisdictions accept that speech can cause harm and try to balance this against free speech. But there is really no case that nonviolent political speech is -- in practice -- discriminated against in EU and UK. On the IT and AI services: Europe hasn't really failed to compete in innovation, as much as scale of operation. That might change if we have a security imperative to protect our own markets for these things against an increasingly hostile US.
- bogeholm 6mo agoJust Wiki Linus Torvalds my friend: > Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland > In 2004, Torvalds moved with his family from Silicon Valley to Portland, Oregon.
- jll29 6mo agoLinus Torvalds created Linux as a student in Helsinki, Finnland. He later took U.S. citizenship and lives in Portland, Oregon, TTBOMK. Now on some level, the question makes less sense, because Linux as we know it now is an international proejct that thousands of developers from dozens of countries collaborated on. But perhaps most would agree that Torvalds, who serves as main integrator, has more say than others regarding the directions of Linux, as long as he is alive. The open source property of Linux is more important to the question which OS a country's government should adopt: corporate systems are hard to scrutinize, whereas open source systems you can inspect and compile yourself, and it is a wise move of the French government to go in that direction. It will also save a lot of money, but that should not be the primary motive.
- mirpa 6mo agoIt is open source. Many companies which contribute to it are American, but nobody from America can tell you what you can or cannot do with it - unlike Microsoft or Apple with their proprietary OS being forced by US government.
- rzerowan 6mo agoFunnily enough there is some level of control that can be exerted by the US gov via the distros (at least the major ones - see legalese restrictions on Redhat/Ubuntu etc when you want to download , stating the various US gov laws/sanctions that they follow) and also via the kernel - i think some time back Russian kernel maintainers were removed. So Open source it may be , however there are still pressure points that can be used. I believe this is one of the main reasons RISCV foundation moved to Europe.
- roblabla 6mo agoEurope has a major distro in the form of SUSE, so that’s not too worrying. Even if upstream linux banned european contributors, there are enough european contributors that a fork would just emerge. So I’m really not too worried about that happening.
- hdgvhicv 6mo agoThe “main guy” is Finnish. He also got American citizenship recently, but given the US has increased attacks on naturalised citizens [0] and has a history of this [1] it’s not a solid foundation. [0] https://www.npr.org/2026/01/16/nx-s1-5677685/as-focus-shifts-to-denaturalization-what-protections-do-foreign-born-americans-have https://www.npr.org/2026/01/16/nx-s1-5677685/as-focus-shifts... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
- drstewart 6mo agoIf Japanese internment worried you, you should see Europe's treatment of perceived outsiders [0] and get reallyyyy worried about the ongoing attacks [1] and rhetoric [2]. I would urge extreme caution to anyone in Europe that is at risk. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Jews_from_Spain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Jews_from_Spain [1] https://www.ein.org.uk/news/home-office-remove-euss-pre-settled-status-individuals-who-have-clearly-ceased-maintain https://www.ein.org.uk/news/home-office-remove-euss-pre-sett... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/0e29224f-9d06-4315-a89f-e334ffbc6d39?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/0e29224f-9d06-4315-a89f-e334ffbc6... Also, what nationality do you say Elon Musk is, out of curiosity? Let's test your consistency :)
- ajross 6mo agoDidn't have "Europe is antisemitic because of the Spanish Inquisition" on my bingo card today. No one expects it, indeed.