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interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

The Conference at Redmond

Well, they finally did it. Bill Gates, the Monopoly Warlord of Redmond, and Linus Torvalds, the caffeine-fueled architect of Linux rebellion, have shaken hands like two aging mob bosses who accidentally showed up to the same funeral. The image alone is enough to make a ThinkPad burst into flames. Gates, the man who once viewed free software the way a vampire views sunlight, now smiling alongside Torvalds, the supposed Patron Saint of Open Source, as if decades of digital trench warfare never happened. It’s like watching Che Guevara and Milton Friedman split a dessert sampler and talk cloud strategy.

Mark Russinovich, playing the role of High Priest of Corporate Reconciliation, quipped “no major kernel decisions were made.” But let’s not kid ourselves, this wasn’t just dinner. This was a symbolic convergence, a ritual unification of cathedral and bazaar into a suburban steakhouse of existential despair. Somewhere in the void, the ghost of Richard Stallman is chain-smoking over a broken Emacs install, muttering, “I warned you bastards.” The only thing missing from that picture was a scroll of NDAs and a PowerPoint titled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Surveillance Capitalism.”

What we witnessed was not diplomacy, it was absorption. The rebel king has been invited into the palace, offered wine, and handed a commemorative hoodie with the Microsoft logo stitched in ethically-sourced irony. Forget forks and pull requests; this is the final merge. Linux has breached the 4% desktop market share, and capitalism has responded the only way it knows how: by smiling, shaking hands, and quietly buying the table. Welcome to the Conference at Redmond. Weep for the dream. Or laugh maniacally, if you still know how.

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