Linus’ thread: (CW: bigotry and racism in the comments) https://social.kernel.org/notice/AWSXomDbvdxKgOxVAm (you need to scroll down, i can’t seem to link to the comment in the screenshot)
Political? For everyone outside of America that’s just common sense.
Hello I’m a trans person from the UK here to tell you this is sadly not the case at all.
In Canada it’s starting to become “political” since our morons are egged on by the morons down south.
Outside the US this no longer has to be political, is probably more what it really is.
I can relate to the “how the fuck is being a concerned human being extreme/poltical?” energy in the post hard.
Linus has always been political and principled, I mean he chose the GPL for a reason! Glad to see him state all of this outright though, it only makes me respect him more.
Woman right to choose, fair enough. Regulated guns, absolutely. The less guns the better. Gay people stuff, I couldn’t care less. Check.
The man said it as it should be said.
One great thing about about software is you don’t have to agree with or care about what the creators thoughts and beliefs are, software is at the end of the day just software.
Doesn’t get any less political than that.
I create software by myself and disagree. First it’s very political where and for whom I choose to develop software. Second, software is always made for a purpose and the purpose can be indeed (and is) very often linked to political or social cause. E.g. a software which only purpose is to harm people, say for controlling mass destruction weapons is in my point of view a very political software
software is always made for a purpose and the purpose can be indeed (and is) very often linked to political or social cause
Its not though, typically software exists to serve a basic function at its core, and it could be used or contributed to by anyone for any number of things.
You are thinking of software as if it exists in a vacuum. Software that is libre is a political statement. Software that is proprietary is also a political statement. Lemmy choosing to be decentralized/federated/interoperable is also a conscious political decision just as Apple chose to create its own proprietary ecosystem instead of caring about interoperability.
You can grow potatoes for political reasons too. Everything a human being does might be politically motivated, but that doesn’t mean potatoes are political.
Anyone can take that same software, that was created as a particular political statement, and use it for the completelly opposite political reasons to make a completelly different political statement. Just the same way as many have used songs in contexts that are completelly politically opposite to what the original author of the song intended.
In the end, the only thing that’s political is the goal/purpose/motivation of an action, not the result of the action. No piece of software/hardware/thing is political when you dettach the artist from the art and just see it for what it is, regardless of what the author might have wanted you to see it as.
That’s true. It’s the human element that creates the political attribute.
Linus gives exactly zero fucks about saying exactly what’s on his mind. And it’s almost always massively based. He’s always been great about that, we don’t deserve such a great mind.
Remember the time with the anti vaxxer, man was firing with all cylinders
Seriously, we are super blessed to have him.
Holy fuck, I love that guy even more now. I didn’t know that was possible.
I half agree with his gun regulation stance. While ideally there would be more caution given to who owns guns that is unfortunately not the world americans have been living in the last 80 years or so. The fascists have guns, lots of them, and I’m not giving mine up while they have them.
Everything else he said is 100% based.
Yeah the gun law regulators generally ignore the fact that everyone and their grandma already has guns. And those with guns are not willing to do trade in programs.
I’d like to see better psych eval and requiring to re-license every so often. That should start steering the country in the right direction. Of course I don’t see this happening any time soon.
Well, yeah, fascists having guns is a “randomly giving guns to any moron with a pulse” problem.
I think fascists is going too far… they’re crazy and dumb, that’s it.
They attempted a violent coup. They’re crazy, dumb, and dangerous
Personal is political.
Holy shit a based Linus is not what I expected to see today. Makes me prefer Linux even more than I already did.
What would you use for a synonym for based? I keep seeing that used. I always thought it was just some alt-right meme bullshit, but I’m learning I was wrong. I still don’t get the use. My mind always thinks “based on what?”
Every human opinion is essentially “political” in some way, and is even interpreted differently be country? But open source software as a technology should not be taking any stance for or against gender, guns, rights, race, etc…
Well, it’s not any official statement by the Linux Devs as a collective.
It’s simply the personal opinion of Linus - who also happens to be the person who created Linux and still manages it.
I don’t see how his, very reasonable, views makes Linux itself (more?) political. What is the point of this post?
I don’t think the title is good, but I do think it’s notable to some extent. With people having weird, shitty opinions, it’s nice to see someone who is relatively famous in the tech community for having somewhat sane opinions and being vocal about it.
In my experience, the Linux community has got its own bunch of free speech weirdos who would reject some of these political points (especially the trans position), so I do think in that context it is kind of important.
I’ve never been made happier by one of his rants.
After being disappointed by Steve, Linus lifted my spirits.
Based but don’t make Linux political
