Re: [gentoo-user] from Firefox52: NO pure ALSA?, WAS: Firefox 49.0 & Youtube... Audio: No

[Daniel Campbell]

On 12/17/2016 11:45 PM, Tom H wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 4:36 AM, Daniel Campbell <zlg@g.o> wrote:
>> On 12/17/2016 12:53 AM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
>>> On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 00:55:21 -0500, Walter Dnes wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Again, the average home user is being jerked around for
>>>> a corporate agenda.
>>>
>>> Yes, it is disgusting that developers add the options desired by those
>>> that pay their wages while completely ignoring the users that give them
>>> nothing! It's almost like they are scratching their employer's itch while
>>> ignoring yours.
>>
>> I get where you're coming from, but Walter's talking about a real
>> concern when it comes to libre software and corporate involvement. The
>> profit motive has the potential to devastate community-oriented
>> operations, be they libre software, swimming pools, common areas,
>> municipal Internet, or even housing efforts. That potential for damage
>> should be baked into any community-based operation's decision-making
>> process.
>
> Greg KH has (IIRC) made the argument that it's the involvement of
> corporations that has helped Linux grow exponentially, unlike the
> BSDs. (IIRC, he attributed their involvement to the GPL, but that's a
> different topic.)
>

The licensing absolutely had the attention of companies. A kernel, free
of cost? And oh snap, the OS that started the free software movement --
these two projects aren't likely to change a whole lot in their
licensing or approach. They're _the_ foundation of a system, so
naturally if a business intends to build something, they'll want to
build on the lowest, most stable level.

Thankfully the kernel seems to have sane management; as long as Linus is
around, anyway. Just recently AMD had some of their code rejected, so
with a vigilant-enough team, you can effectively protect your project
from monied interests (be it poor code or an attempt to manipulate). Now
picture what might have happened if AMD was employing Linus or had some
other sort of contract. (For the record, I use an AMD CPU and like it;
they just happened to be the most recent corporation who's rejected code
popped on my radar. No bias intended.)

Growth comes from multiple things: quality, interest, cost, and
extensibility. The kernel definitely has the last one; modules are a
staple now. Maybe they weren't when it was first released. Quality has
naturally improved over time, but I think that's the most variable part,
since quality means different things to different people. Linux being
extensible coupled with a permissive license allowed companies to fix
bugs themselves and, if the code is good enough, spread their fixes to
everyone else. Other companies may see that, and either take part in
contributing code (for notoriety), or use it in-house to reduce costs
and improve whatever metrics like uptime or what-have-you. A community
then builds.

None of those actors have to be corporate, money-seeking entities in
order for growth to occur. Corporate involvement may have *accelerated*
Linux's growth, but it had quality of design and code going for it, so
growth was inevitable as it filled a huge niche at the time and
continued to do so until the BSDs opened up and GNU Hurd was released.
By that point, most heavy development was already on Linux, and the risk
of switching to another OS/kernel -- after contributing code to Linux --
would be a hard sell to a company. BSD of course garnered a decent
portion of the networking world and found its own niche, but Linux had a
lot going for it early on that helped spike its growth, separate from
*who* that growth came from.
-- 
Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer
OpenPGP Key: 0x1EA055D6 @ hkp://keys.gnupg.net
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