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Linus Torvalds schools Lennart Poettering on the importance of users (m.youtube.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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[–] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Linux community is so inherently meritocratic that one can't meaningfully force anything upon any large group of them.

Even for developers, there is a very substantial cost to any deviation from the herd and little time or money for these projects. Factually a handful of companies run the Linux userspace and a handful of people run those companies.

You can go your own way but existing market share and resources matter more than quality or merit.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    As a Red Hat employee who had his all-around sensible Fedora Change to prevent it from falling too far behind RHEL (!) rejected, I think I can confidently claim that your statements smell of conspiracy theories.

    Do Linux-involved companies have resources to develop the projects they like the most? Yes. Do companies dominate userspace development? I don't think so, in fact, they're all seem quite focused in their interests, and their involvement with a median package on your community distro desktop system isn't even minimal, it's none. Do the se companies at least all push for a united agenda? Absolutely not. Can they force a single random community distro like Debian to pick something over something else? No. 99% of the distros? Goes without saying.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's not a conspiracy theory to imagine that IBM's vision for Linux compared to 2000s or 2010s era Linux is opaque, complicated, and enterprisey. It's who they are.

    The grandparent comment

    Linux community is so inherently meritocratic that one can’t meaningfully force anything upon any large group of them.

    Is pure fantasy. Software projects are dictatorships of those willing to put in the work, not meritocracies. There is nothing immoral or wrong about this but we should be realists. The entire software ecosystem is dominated by oft shitty good enough solutions which people poured enough work into to solve problems well enough.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    IBM's vision

    Anybody can have a vision, but it's the work that matters. I'll be worried when they become a player.

    Software projects are dictatorships of those willing to put in the work, not meritocracies.

    Most linux distros are slight variations on the best components available. Yes, one can put in resources, do a great job and now everyone switches to the fruits of their labor. No, it does nothing to stop another player from one-upping them and taking the lead with their next best good enough. In political terms, dictatorships are incompatible with voting with one's feet.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Even for developers, there is a very substantial cost to any deviation from the herd and little time or money for these projects.

    If everyone thought that way, we'd all still be using MS-DOS. This is an absurd take for a Linux user.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I didn't say we should be satisfied with "good enough" I said in practice we build our sandcastles on the beach irrespective of the approaching tide because it's what we know. In that context, it is no longer an absurd take it's just recognizing reality.

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