How widespread is the permeation of the GNU/FSF philosophies?
I was inspired by the philosophies of the free exchange of information, the distribution of free software and source code, etc. to learn to code. I think it stems from my hippy political tendencies and love of a bargain.
I'm wondering how widespread this is through out the so-called 'tech-industry'. I know many people on this website are software professionals and might have an idea. Or what are your own views?
From my experience of watching documentaries like Steal This Film and RevolutionOS, some would make out that everyone holds these philosophies, but with increasing moves towards restrictive uses of software/hardware (i.e. Microsoft making it very difficult to install Linux distros on Windows 8 machines; Apple's new MBPs being almost impossible to fix (hardware) yourself). Or is this just the big businesses? Are there more liberal ideas among indie devs?
Is the internet still the beautiful anarchy I love to imagine it is?
Re: How widespread is the permeation of the GNU/FSF philosophies?
I think you're going to have a hard time getting concrete numbers- there isn't a "this percentage of the tech industry is open-source, this percentage are evil corporations". It's way more complicated than that- you have plenty of evil corporations using open-source software and even giving back to the open-source community in the form of money or new software. Then you have a ton of hobbyists working on open-source in their spare time, or even using open-source software to create their own for-profit software.
So, it's not that simple. Both are around. Both are here to stay.
Re: How widespread is the permeation of the GNU/FSF philosophies?
Quote:
I'm wondering how widespread this is through out the so-called 'tech-industry'
Good question. But what is "this": support for the aim/intention/philosophy/etc as you express, or the implementation of it as part of for-profit businesses? I'm not part of this industry, but would be intrigued to know (for either).
We all love free information and freedom of information. (Well, I do. And all == me + anyone thinking sensibly). But there's a long line of folk - from Galileo Galilei to Julian Assange - for whom it's been a costly bargain. I think all partisans of freedom should consider doing their bit, and paying some small part of the cost of defending, promoting, and extending free.
