How is the direction to be taken for kernel development decided? Is Linus something like the CEO of the Linux Foundation?
Linux Foundation has a research division who do research on several things.
There are also other factors too that decide the direction, but usually there is lots of discussion and testing first. When Rust came out Linux tried and said it is not ready yet because he found several drawbacks, I speculate he did the same, some practical tests, then more research, discussions and now he adopts new standards.
Linus used to be a benevolent dictator for life (BDFL), but in the past years he took some time to reflect on some shitty behavior of his, and delegate more power to the other maintainers. He’s still the grand maintainer of things, but certainly treats outside opinions/patches more gently than before.
Just for clarification, updating to modern C is not at all a controversial change. It was delayed for decades due to dependency on older GCC versions, but now that this technical concern has been solved, it’s a very consensual change that will enable much better maintainability of the kernel.
Linux is a statement that we can own technology.
That’s only true if there’s an organized effort for that from users and developers, and still that would be true only for ownership of software limited to the Linux operating system. As for technology in general, it’s almost totally under the control of the capitalists and large shareholders.
I just thought about all the Linux distros out there that protect your privacy in certain ways, out of the reaches from Big Tech control. If we can own this, we can own a lot of other things too. Open hardware moves like RISCV and open projects like the Open Book and Koreader show that it is possible to actually own these means. Open source shows, at least to me, for the first time, that it is possible to own these things without going through capitalism. We got also the social medias, the fediverse and a lot of protocols. We are not into the early stage of this - it got some maturity to it.
I don’t see the capitalist control in my life anymore, and this is thanks to these things. Of course there are capitalist rules out there - but I must say, for myself, that I see an actual fighting chance.
I just thought about all the Linux distros out there that protect your privacy in certain ways, out of the reaches from Big Tech control.
To a certain extent, yes. But if you think about hardware, we are very far from having control. Even my highly niche distro, Parabola GNU/Linux-libre, which is one of the few distros accepted by the FSF for the promotion and use of free software, still is obligated by the circumstances to leave proprietary code related to some Intel processors microcode. Even FSF accepted distros have to allow things like this related to hardware, otherwise their system would be unusable.
But yes, Linux laid down a very solid framework to develop alternatives to corporate control of your software. However…
I don’t see the capitalist control in my life anymore, and this is thanks to these things.
Even if you don’t see “capitalist control” of your life, it still exists irrespective of your knowledge of it. Everything you need to fulfill your existence is a commodity, and to buy these goods, you need money. If you have no properties, to earn money you either steal it, or you sell yourself (your labor, your life) to a small or large capitalist in exchange for money.
Capitalists achieved monopolies on the internet, such as Meta, Inc., Google, Reddit, Twitter, etc… They’ve all become propaganda networks of the United States bourgeoisie. These corporate monopolies share a similar business model: to earn money through advertising and capitalist propaganda. The selling of commodities tailored to your interests based on an algorithmical profile description, and the push of narratives usually following the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
Irrespective of your decision not use these platforms, your family members do, your friends do, your colleagues do, even your cousin’s three year old infant has an Instagram profile nowadays. Considering all of this, I think you’ll agree with me that we can’t escape capitalist control by changing our distros, but I agree with you that it’s a healthy direction to use free software.
Ok, but it’s different in the way that before you HAD to use these platforms, now you don’t have to. The transformative power free software had in me is that I saw a community where the priority isn’t making something that will please the market or that will be beneficial to everyone (as in, I make profit out of it giving you the boon of software applications). This community doesn’t care about that. Even if there are discussions about what kind of software would be good for society and companies, there are many applications that are out there because the devs think they should be.
Example: ots (open text summarizer) is FOSS and does the exact same thing that profit driven websites that summarize books and texts, with the difference that the profit driven ones reinforce that they are just doing it for the money or because they had a “brilliant” idea that needs to prosper, while ots is just there as a service to the community, something someone wanted to make that they thought would be useful.
Being introduced to this niche made me think: “Wow, this is actually possible.” and try to thrive in this context (as a programmer and as a servicer to society in general). I know community driven things comes before software or even computers, but this was what gave me release from thinking that everything must be profit driven. That’s what I meant by getting released from capitalist control - I don’t think profit is necessary anymore. It’s just a concept that mainstream media and overall political and corporate culture pushes on us daily to believe.
Heck, I’m going through my undergraduate course and every single professor talks about how profit and making software for profit is good. How the Big Tech companies are awesome. It’s hell, but it’s worth it.
Why not just jump to C++ while they’re at it? Sure a freestanding implementation lacks most of the advanced features but it would still be quite a bit more pleasant experience.
Im not sure whether this is irony… But in case it Is not, you should definitely search for the comments Torvalds had on C++ for the kernel… Because they are very good (although of course a bit rant-y).
Modern C is basically an oxymoron at this point.
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