this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2026
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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You know all the big FOSS projects are the same. Foss is nightly controlled by corporations because as much as people would like to deny it people like to eat.
Eh, for sure corporations do contribute a lot to every major FOSS project out there. I don't expect huge, versatile codebases to be maintained by volunteers lemmy-style, and corpos are the dominant organization kind under the capitalist mode of production, so of course they will have the resources to have a foot in every door.
But the key differentiator is how much control any single entity has over the project's code, maintenance and infrastructure. On one side of the spectrum there's stuff like Rust or ffmpeg or GNU which are being pulled in various directions by various corpos and the community, on the other there's stuff like Chromium and AOSP where Google unilaterally controls everything. Projects like Linux or Firefox fall somewhere in the middle. We desperately need more projects to be of the first kind, and I feel like to achieve this projects should go as far as to ban donations over a certain amount and limit the number of contributors affiliated with a single organization. "Avoid success at all costs" is my single favorite rule of FOSS building, and it should be applied to technical, financial and organizational decisions all the same.
I'm tempted to put Linux in the second class: I didn't vote to put Linux in AI servers, defense projects, Teslas. I didn't choose to ban devs based on their nationalities either. I'd be pretty wary of allowing MIT kernel modules.
I think the key point with Linux is that at least no single corporation has enough control over it to dictate the direction of the project on its own. Sure, modern Linux is fairly corporate and somewhat beholden to capitalist interests in general, but there's a lot of different actors pulling things in different directions, and the community (by that I mean non-corpo interests) still plays a role in decision making.
The definition of FLOSS mandates that software authors relinquish control over how and by whom their software is used, see for example the JSON licensing controversy. But I agree that we should rethink this somewhat libertarian approach and at least try to prevent our software being used for evil.
Yeah that one was a yikes. Especially given it wasn't even prompted by any legal threats, it was just the Linux devs complying with an unjust law prematurely.
Wait, is that a thing?? Unless you mean the out of tree modules, in which case the MIT ones are not the worst offenders (looking at you NVidia)
Yeah, out of tree modules... For now.
It's too bad that Stallman is just a neckbeard ancap.