Because the distinction matters. The corporate raping of Linux has to stop being tolerated or else nothing is solved. The technical details of the kernel don’t actually matter; the licensing and openness is what matters. Hell, if the Windows NT kernel got magically relicensed to AGPLv3 tomorrow it would instantly become the superior option just because of that.
Linux doesn’t fucking matter. Copyleft matters.
Rothe@piefed.social 1 day ago
Sigh. This kind of nonsense is why so many people get scared away from even trying linux. Who cares which distro you use, as long as it is linux it is a step in the right direction, and a whole lot of people (including myself) have taken that step very recently, despite some arrogant linux bros doing their best to gatekeep us away from even trying.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
do you seriously think roku, tizen, amazon fire are a step in the right direction?
enumerator4829@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Yes. Kinda.
How do you think Linux devs get paid? The devices are locked down, sure, but there are strong incentives to upstream code and fund further development upstream. Linux ”won” because of this. You can’t build and develop Linux for such a wide audience and hardware flora with a bunch of hobbyists.
As Linus himself said plenty of times - GPL2 was the correct choice. Roku, Tizen, Chromebooks and Amazon garbage are absolutely within what the developers intended, and the devs are doing the work after all.
From a consumer standpoint, I absolutely agree with you, open everything is wonderful. However - commercial interests currently fund most OSS development. Without those funds, development stops and developers must take other paying jobs (probably closed source). Would be nice to change this, but then we need to completely pivot our funding model. You need to pay devs, either directly or indirectly (taxes, foundations, etc).
So far, the open source community hasn’t been very good at figuring out funding models for consumer products. It usually ends with the development team needing to put food on the table, so they add a subscription and close down parts of the project. About two seconds later, the project has ten forks and the original author can’t buy groceries.
”Buy me a beer” simply isn’t s viable mechanism to fund open source. How should we do it?
Personal preference: Slowly move the public sector towards open source, and require them to provide financial aid to products they use. Not perfect, but something that could happen gradually, without shocking the system.
tl;dr: yes, but also no.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
if these companies were upstreaming code, it would not be a problem to replace the factory operating system on their products with something else. however just like phone makers, they don’t upstream the driver code needed for the onboard devices to work.
so far the only good I found to have come of it, is that after we find a vulnerability in their code, we can open a shell in the system and use ready made familiar tools to try to tame the devices from inside. until they force an update that patches the vuln because it got too popular, and you are locked out again.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
No they arnt, but also using terminology like rape is a huge problem. He’s entirely right, the avg vocal Linux user is fucking insane. And a big reason there’s still much misinformation and fud around Linux for your avg user.
The worse thing for Linux is unironically it’s fucking vocal users.
grue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Sure, because caring about users’ rights is “insane.” Because caring about societal effects of (lack of) antitrust and consumer protection law is “insane.” Because having an ounce of goddamn self-respect and not wanting to be abused is “insane.”
No, I don’t think I’m insane at all, actually. I think you can fuck all the way off with your corporatist simping!
cley_faye@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Do you think anyone, anywhere think of roku and amazon fire when they hear “you should try linux”?
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
read this thread again, please, because you completely missed the point. but you know what, I’ll help:
grue said:
Rothe said:
roku, amazon fire, tizen and co are all “linux based” operating systems. the topic was not about people recommending linux to each other, but about corporations misusing the foundations of it to further their greed. point being, something runs linux does not make it good. and that’s where grue’s call for real linux on these devices gets relevant.
grue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What the fuck? I said I don’t even actually care if the kernel is Linux or NT (or anything else) as long as it’s genuinely open so the user can modify it, and you somehow try to twist that as quibbling over distros?! Way to miss the point by a goddamn mile!