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Evil corporations poisoning Linux

 Long long ago, the Linux kernel was released with its source code for free to the world. The linux kernel does not do much on its own, but by pairing it with other free open source tools, drivers and programs such as those from GNU, you get a modern operating system primarily for the Intel x86/64 processors but also many other processor vendors.

Putting the kernel and hundreds of other free tools or drivers together is not easy and thus, we had the rise of distribution or Linux Distros. Many distros were maintained by volunteers but others also had commercial companies behind them. It didn't make sense to sell a distro back then, due to Windows's monopoly, the distro's not being very polished or easy to use and most importantly made of free open source software which anyone else could easily copy to sell a competing product.

So how could these distro companies make money, well, by selling support licenses. Linux would have failed a long time ago if it wasn't for its free distribution because Microsoft would have easily beaten any of these companies out of business with a simple aggressive pricing policy. If there was a special program that only worked in linux and hence pushed customer's towards it, Microsoft could very easily rebuild that program in windows and offer it for free such as Netscape navigator vs MS Explorer. Even Windows Media Player was the demise of another software company in the 90s. In one of the videos, Microsoft's lawyer goes to say that offering better software at a cheaper price is an American thing to do. By that logic, Linux is either the best American thing to happen or perhaps the only example where communism succeeded anywhere. Thousands of developers working together expecting nothing in return to build something that can bring down a giant Monoply just like the Tsar himself.

Speaking of lawyers, reminds me of another giant, Oracle. They are more a law firm than a software company. They were known for their databases before their lawyers and now there are many open source Database programs that are if not better at least equivalent in their functions. But that is not why they are relevant to this discussion i.e having better software, they are relevant for poisoning FOSS.

Initially, the open source systems did not have a major share of the software market and hence were largely ignored by the monopolies but as their market share increased, the giants started to slowly poison the free rivers of open source software.

First, they straight up started acquiring the commercial FOSS companies for large sums of money and then grinding development of the open source software to a halt. For instance, After IBM acquired Redhat, they put an end to CentOS and now are no longer providing the source code for RHEL unless you buy a license from them. In protest, Oracle, (yes, Oracle), is saying that IBM is trying to make profits at the expense of the open source community. I mean, just look at what oracle did to MySQL and why MariaDB exists, or how about Java and that rabbit hole.

What is the solution for all this?

Don't fall to the temptations of the giants and donate/support the volunteers maintaining FOSS. Use the following:

https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

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