Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)

    • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      capitalist arguments that profit motive is necessary for innovation and technological advancement

      I don’t know who is arguing this because it’s incredibly stupid. The greatest scientific minds of history, the mathematicians, the physicists, the inventors, were not capitalists, they’re people with passion for their work.

      If we move to a society that guarantees basic human needs and good education, we’re only going to have more scientists and engineers that progress technology even faster.

      • Thorned_Rose@kbin.social
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        9 months ago

        Capitalists argue this because it gives them the appearance of a moral high ground.

        Enshittification shows how untrue this - capitalism by its very nature will always devolve into worse and worse offerings because it’s reliant on squeezing out ever more profit.

        Capitalism will only ever puh out the bare minimum of technological advancement. And keeping people in indentured labour (aka employees) to the capitalist system so that they either have no time to come up with innovations themselves or they own the intellectual property of any indentured workers means that the overwhelming majority of innovation is monopolised by capitalism too. Which also contributes to the appearance of pushing advancement.

    • S_H_K@lemmy.fmhy.net
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      1 year ago

      The innovation argument is shaky at best many of the corporations innovations are brought or copied really. Is a story that became pretty common in the latest decades one guy come with a good idea some other mofo takes it and profits with it.

    • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      This is true to some extent, but the best, most successful open source software is nowadays to a large extent made by for-profit businesses developing it for their own use but sharing it with the world.

      There is a strong correlation between “is this kind of software mainly used by businesses vs. individuals” and “does this kind of software tend to be open source”. Hardly anyone uses proprietary version control or web server software anymore. But (other extreme) in the area of video games, nearly all of them are still proprietary and probably will be for a long time. Software such as web browsers or office suites sits somewhere in between, both kinds exist there.

    • zabadoh@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I disagree somewhat.

      A lot of high tech development comes with a greed motive, e.g. IPO, or getting bought out by a large company seeking to enter the space, e.g. Google buying Android, or Facebook buying Instagram and Oculus.

      And conversely, a lot of open source software are copies of commercially successful products, albeit they only become widely adopted after the originals have entered the enshittified phase of their life.

      Is there a Lemmy without Reddit? Is there a Mastodon without Twitter? Is there LibreOffice without Microsoft Office and decades of commercial word processors and spreadsheets before that? Or OpenOffice becoming enshittified for that matter? Is there qBittorrent without uTorrent enshittified? Is there postgreSQL without IBM’s DB2?

      The exception that I can see is social media and networked services that require active network and server resources, like Facebook YouTube, or even Dropbox and Evernote.

      Okay, The WELL is still around and is arguably the granddaddy of all online services, and has avoided enshittification, but it isn’t really open source.

    • anarchotaoist@links.hackliberty.org
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      1 year ago

      Linux and open source in general completely blow apart capitalist arguments that profit motive

      Wrong! Linux and open source only shows that the profit motive is not the only motive. One should broaden the definition of profit to encompass value in all its forms. ie A person can gain value from the satisfaction of DIY as it can be self-empowering. One can gain emotional value from sharing. It also invokes the law of reciprocation - value exchange but without a $ sign. The Open source ecosystem is also heavily funded by business who relies on open source components. It is a capital investment.

      • yogo@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        If the profit motive is not the only motive that drives innovation, as you just agreed, then it isn’t necessary, logically. And not sure why you would then go on to expand the definition of profit into meaninglessness after agreeing there are other motives.

        • anarchotaoist@links.hackliberty.org
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          1 year ago

          What? How the f do you transition from ‘not only’ to ‘isn’t necessary’? That is not logic - that is mental gymnastics with a triple back flip! Profit is the PRIMARY motivator! People wish to move away from discomfort more than anything else. Currency is the best way of alleviating discomfort!

          • yogo@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago
            1. If X is a necessary motive for Y, then in the absence of X, Y cannot happen.
            2. Innovation can happen in the absence of a profit motive.
            3. Therefore, the profit motive is not necessary for innovation.
    • Auli@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      This is so wrong. It’s not volunteers writing this code it is people employed by companies who are paid to write this code. You do know people have to eat.