[zeroCalories]

Haha, I can't deny that I love the catty drama that happens around the free software community. While I do wish people would get along better for the health of the project, I also suspect that these strong characters are why the movement hasn't been completedo taken over by corporate interests.

[artyom]

I'm 100% with you on that. Strong free software leadership (e.g. classic Torvalds), despite all its problems, is naturally anti-corporation.

Anyone with a real job in a moderately Big Co. can tell you that.

[wkat4242]

Is it really though?

Look at the who's who of the Linux foundation and it's all the big tech lackeys deciding everything. Even very questionable companies like Huawei are highly represented. I don't call that anti-corporate.

[xyzzy_plugh]

Cue gratuitous eye roll.

The Linux foundation is not equal to Linux. The entire point of the Linux foundation is to interface with the rest of the world's beuracracies, corporations included. Anyone can be represented by putting in the work and putting up the cash.

Ultimately corporate garbage rarely leaks into the kernel proper. Most of the filth is off in driver land, which isn't even that bad given it's always going to be a vendor landfill.

[artyom]

Yup, exactly the point. Corporate garbage not making it into the kernel is solely the outcome of Torvalds-like style of saying "this is garbage and you're an *diot", where it's very rare that any processes or governance bodies would do anything about it.

[Dah00n]

>Even very questionable companies like Huawei

That is an extremely Americanized take on that awful member list. Is Intel's history of being anticompetitive better? How about their presence in Israel? Is Meta better? Microsoft?

To a non-American, many (most) of those companies are worse than Huawei. Actually, any company who share user data with the government (as shown by Snowden) is much worse than Huawei.

[thefurdrake]

> Actually, any company who share user data with the government (as shown by Snowden) is much worse than Huawei.

Implicit bias exposed by trying to remove Huawei from the list of companies that share data with their government, combined with whataboutism trying to distract from the meaning of the comment by focusing on a minor item provided as an example.

[bombolo]

To non-americans, all the companies in the linux foundation are as questionable as huawei.

[beebeepka]

Exactly. But we're on a US site where shitting on anything China is almost a guaranteed karma boost. Some posts are literally impossible to downvote.

[wahnfrieden]

Anti-corporate licenses would be the Peer Production License, Anti-Capitalist Software License, etc. whereas GPL/MIT/Apache etc. are all extremely corporate-friendly as can be plainly seen by the companies that have adopted them.

However GPL software being corporate-friendly can be a good thing if it leads to "exvestments" into public goods that create alternatives to corporate software (such as with Linux) in ways that are not direct investments into corporate aims

[dehrmann]

I was thinking it's part of the reason it never offered a cohesive desktop OS.

[zeroCalories]

Linux already has a cohesive de, it's called emacs!!

[DANmode]

Okay, everyone, line up behind KDE and push!

[PrimeMcFly]

He said cohesive, not 'kohesive'.

[wkat4242]

KDE is by far the better desktop, Gnome will never be great as long as they abhor choice. The "you're using it wrong" is too strong there.

[jokethrowaway]

I agree on KDE being better but that's just because they consistently put in the effort and results piled up over time.

Sure, with a few setbacks (cue 4.0 nightmares) but overall their technological choices (Qt in primis), architecture and quality of contributors won the battle.

Gnome used to be way more polished at the Gnome 2 vs KDE 3 era but kind of lost its way over time.

It's definitely not about unchangeable defaults vs configuration (there's a market for both).

[bombolo]

and yet people love apple

[IshKebab]

People love Apple because it makes very high quality hardware, and its software is generally very reliable. They don't really like that you can't configure things. They just put up with it.

There's a whole industry of little apps that let you fix things about MacOS that doesn't really exist on Windows. Rectangle, Karabiner Elements, SteerMouse, SteerMouse, etc.

Gnome copies the worst things about MacOS.

[lelanthran]

> and yet people love apple

That doesn't minimise the impact of open-source software.

I've yet to see an Apple user who doesn't install brew as a first step before doing anything with their computer.

From what I see, people may love Apple's OS, but they can't use it with without open-source tools.

[raverbashing]

Yes

Because Preview works, KPDF works and Gview behaved weird or in the wrong way most of the time

Apple builds the automatic car by removing the gear shift, Gnome builds it by removing the gas pedal and just having a button called "Go" which makes you go at 10mph

[em-bee]

he didn't say gohesive either. do you want to propose CDE then? i understand it's free software now.

[OO000oo]

Are you suggesting the corporate interests want that?

I think in fact the corporate interests already get 99% of everything they want and they simply don't care for a cohesive desktop OS.

[mcpackieh]

It's wanted by people who want linux to become mainstream and think forcing everybody to use their personal DE of choice would be a step towards that goal. It's fine though, it's never going to happen because the whole point is that users are free to use what they want how they want. And if somehow that freedom was taken away, mainstream adoption of linux would be a pyrrhic victory anyway.

[OO000oo]

Incredibly ignorant comment. It won't happen because corporations won't let it. Adobe alone could make Linux Desktop happen tomorrow, but there's nothing in it for them. That's all there is to it.

[mcpackieh]

Bizarre remark. Adobe has no power to unify the Linux desktop. They cannot force me to stop using the DE/WM of my choice. Desktop fragmentation is a natural and desirable consequence of user choice. You seem to be confused as to what this conversation is even about.

[Gordonjcp]

> a cohesive desktop OS

What would that look like, then?

[userbinator]

One can't help but wonder if the corporate interests are actually responsible for creating this drama as an attempt to derail or impede these projects.

[Gigachad]

I doubt it. The libreboot maintainer is just unstable and willing to cause huge amounts of drama whenever possible.

[enneff]

It has happened before. But it doesn’t really matter whether that’s what’s happening here, as it doesn’t affect how you need to deal with it.

[hsjqllzlfkf]

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4031841

LOL!

[INTPenis]

The way I see it is there's office drama just like this, difference is that open source is transparent for everyone to see, and global. It's like a global office that we all get glimpses into.

And in this particular case, it reminds me of Red Hat and CentOS actually. Because one project just wants to ensure that people who download <name brand> are actually getting <name brand> and not something else. That concern is just as valid in open source as it is in big enterprise.

[OO000oo]

> I also suspect that these strong characters are why the movement hasn't been completedo taken over by corporate interests

They already serve 99% of corporate interests. A "takeover" would sacrifice the veil of what the propagandized "open source community" interprets as corporate egalitarianism.

[zeroCalories]

If you make no distinction between free software and open source, sure. But the free software community, centered around fsf, is known to be hard to work with.

[OO000oo]

Sadly, that difficulty is practically the only difference in the distinction. Each share the same crippling shortcomings: those of capitalism itself.