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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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?"