Happy birthday 🎊🎉 GNU/Linux.
Today GNU/Linux is 32 years old.
It was thankfully released to the public on August 25th, 1991 by Linus Torvalds when he was only 21 years old student.
What a lovely journey 🤍
this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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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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Top members are all companies that have made bank abusing their users to no end. Linus Torvalds refuses to upgrade to GPLv3 because he doesn't see the value for enforced freedom restrictions. He is a "freedom for me, but not for thee" type of person. Hurd on the other hand will never suffer this issue because of it being a GNU package.
The kernel is filled to the brim with nonfree firmware blobs. These blobs can be updated/modified by the vendor but not by the user, by that definition, they are nonfree. You could say that Linus Torvalds chose the "pragmatic" option. You wouldn't be wrong to deduce that none of the companies on that board member list would EVER contribute to the kernel if they had to also respect the user's freedom.
But that's the thing, Torvalds still sold out. Scandals like the proprietary Nvidia driver (which will now get its home in nonfree firmware) gets to happen (and will continue to happen) because the precedent was set. Torvalds historically didn't even want to liberate his kernel until he was convinced by the work of the GNU project to do so.
Torvalds is the poster boy because he does not threaten any sort of status quo. No one is immune to propaganda, and the Torvalds "Open Source" media narrative is still the dominant one. The GNU/Linux vs. Linux controversy is propelled by this Faustian pact.
Have these members made any notable changes that hampered Linux's freedom? How is not adding more restrictions for freedom to allow more freedom "not for thee"? How did "Torvalds historically didn’t even want to liberate his kernel"? It was open-source from the start, and also had his self-drafted free license which he later switched to GPL which also removed his no commercial distribution clause. By your arguments that sounds like he sold out to GNU. The FSF is way too idealistic to be able to move the world under the current status quo.
Intel and AMD both have tons of blobs that they ship to the kernel. Google has Android which relies on more nonfree firmware and proprietary user space. ChromeOS is also another example.
Strict copyleft has always shielded contributions from being used nonfree programs, ensuring their freedom. Weakened copyleft or pushover licenses should only be used in certain circumstances.
"Open source" was not a concrete concept back then. It was certainly not as we know the concept today. The noncommercial clause in torvald's initial license would not comply with the 4 freedoms, thus it was proprietary.
Torvalds didn't "sell out" to GNU. He liberated his own project for use in the GNU Operating System which is and always will be a project to create a fully free operating system.
Libre != noncommercial, neither are virtually all definitions of the modern open source movement. If torvalds were to sell out he would have kept his kernel as it was.
The FSF is not "too idealistic." It is simply an organization dedicated to a set of standards for software freedom. They solve problems related to living without nonfree software and share those solutions.
The real "idealistic" world is the status quo, where all humans are meant to grovel at the IT tyrants as computer science becomes more and more stripped away from public conciousness. It is idealistic to think that human citizens would not revolt against this system and expose it for the parasitic shell that it is.
The FSF is a response to freedom being stripped away from us day by day. The reason you didn't think of it that way is because no one is immune to propaganda blasted to you 24/7.
Every good natured family member who tells you to use facebook, every peer who tells you to go on a discord "server." Every weak redditor. The huge amounts of e-waste produced by OEMs with little to no regulation. And all the kids who are being raised under the jailphones of iOS and Android. This is all propaganda designed to manufacture consent for you swindling away your freedom to privacy and computer science. If the ghouls could convince you that computers were magic, they would.
Why would this not spawn the most fierce resistance campaign that spans the entire globe? One that is unyielding and hostile to threats?
And why wouldn't one want you to think that they're too "idealistic?"
macOS is based off FreeBSD, which is completely free. Not sure what you mean here. I don't really see much documentation that shows GNU made Linus use GPL or not. You can't assert that.
Being dedicated to software freedom doesn't exclude you from being idealistic. They propose solutions that would require good sacrifices that many greedy people simply won't follow. If you really think the status quo is "idealistic" then you don't know what that word means. Computer science is already very much in the public consciousness and corporations have already been exposed, but they still operate. It's idealistic to think they would sacrifice their greed. Despite how much software the FSF have funded, they're still unable to attack.
Linux is a practical response to non-freedom. "sell out", "liberated", "changed his license" is all just word choice. There is still a long gap between open-source and proprietary. Nobody should co-opt words, including that "open-source" shouldn't be redefined to libre software. You can argue that any promotional stuff, including FSF, is propaganda being blasted to you 24/7. Yes, these are very awful, but we need workable alternatives that can do many of the same stuff to switch to before we can rejoin freedom.
Doesn't this depend a lot on the vendors having a lock-in on the GPU market? Semiconductor manufacturing is super expensive and there is little incentive for Nvidia to release a Free as in Libre device driver. There aren't any FOSS GPUs in development so FOSS drivers can't be made.
So we either have the choice of accepting proprietary drivers or just not using the functionality of GPUs.
Linus Torvalds has a large political influence, even he couldn't hold back and flipped off Nvidia. But Torvalds and the rest of the foundation don't go further than that. They're willing to criticize but not to condemn.
You're right in that the larger hardware industry is an even bigger shithole artifice than IT is. Thats a failure of state actors who have an open secret of corruption (esp in the US) and laziness. Projects like RISC-V and coreboot are promising in that regard.
Thats just life. This is still a transitionary period. But soon in the future, all software will be libre and all proprietary elements will be purged, never to come back ever again.
If you're willing to accept that, then why are you so critical of Linus? The fact that you can build a fully free version of Linux seems like the best of both worlds. From your perspective: get market share now by allowing non-free components, and then eventually transition them out while maintaining compatibility with the majority of the ecosystem.
"ecosystem" is a misleading term here. There is no "ecosystem" in CS, market giants explicitly make decisions about what their product policy is and rarely budge on them out of goodwill. Ecosystem implies that we implicitly lack a large degree of control and are only observers. That may be true for cutting edge research (only sometimes from a certain perspective), but hardly the case for when a company wants to create jails in their software for their clients. Or refuse to release firmware for a wifi card that they don't even sell anymore. Those are gardens meant to trap users in. The garden of the GNU project is all unapologetically libre software meant to prevent users from endangering themselves with nonfree software.
The GNU project never "allowed" non-free components, but they will always exist. The goal is to obtain a fully free operating system on all levels. It's okay to use proprietary software for the purposes of study and reverse engineering (a la using UNIX to develop userland/kernel). What's not okay is to stop agitating for more freedom.
The current GNU/Busybox + Linux desktop is virtually a complete operating system, but is held back by blobs and users advocating for proprietary software (users complaining that proprietary "X" doesn't run on "Linux").
We get market share by being more free, not by making ruinous compromises.
We do in fact not have much control over non-free software especially when they have a monopoly and exclusive features.
There is a(n) (unofficial) version of Linux that strips away all the non-free blobs. So we do have a completely free OS. Not to mention BSD.
Tell that to Windows.