i am just reading "its not allowed" "rules are being broken" "not premitted" lol. how should you invoate and break free from the current ISP model, if everythig is not premitted?
Ubuntu isn’t too big to target, if anything, its dominance makes it the obvious target. When you look at the trajectory over the years and some of Canonical’s decisions, it’s hard not to raise an eyebrow. Major distros like Ubuntu and Fedora didn’t scale globally without taking big tech money and money rarely comes with no strings attached. At some point, players like Microsoft are going to expect a return on that investment.
I, for one, miss the promise of the old Internet, that you could connect with people from all around the world. I always saw it as an exciting extension to real-world interactions, not a replacement. And I love the fact that over the past 30 years, I was able to make friends (or pen pals, if you will) in the US, Canada, Mexico, Bolivia, Japan, Indonesia, Russia, New Zealand... the concept of finding people sharing your niche interests, wherever they were on the globe, even as you were stuck on your cozy suburb, was amazing to me, and I'm sad that we all but lost that.
I believe what you're saying is the benefit of Bitcoin (or other crypto) to get around gatekeepers.
I don't believe Patreon at this time supports any crypto. If they wanted they could open this up. Not sure if Apple would allow this (on an store app) without their 'slice' of the pie.
Give it a few more years and Linux will complete its inevitable evolution into Microsoft, same consolidation, same gatekeeping, just with better slogans and a smug sense of moral superiority.
thanks for the clarification on how the kernel development works.
do you mind expanding on what is the benefit for companies like Microsoft, Google, IBM, Red Hat, Meta, Oracle, SUSE, Canonical, Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcom, Samsumg, Broadcom, Cisco, arm to spend an enormous amount of capital, both employing individuals to work full time on the kernel and making donations to cncf/linux foundation?
Certainly all of the big players behind linux have our best interest in mind and certainly NONE of this companies have some history of making decisions in detriment of consumer agency and freedom.
I would love to hear more about how linux is driven by passion and generosity if you don`t mind, please share!
I fail to see your point. Kernel development by the aforementioned big players benefits everyone and is all done in the open. Hence, "open source". In fact they use a public mailing list to submit patches.
All of the patches are auditable. If I don't want a patch, I can *trivially* omit it from my kernel before compiling.
How exactly are open source kernel modules and drivers affecting my freedom?
Yeah, you don't really understand what "Linux" is. It isn't one thing, you can't force anything into "Linux" because there are so many distros to choose from. With Windows that isn't possible - there's either Windows, or something else (or an old version of Windows).
Thanks for the clarification and to be clear, I don't doubt your personal intent or FOSS background. The concern isn't bad actors at the start, it's how projects evolve once they matter.
History is pretty consistent here:
WhatsApp: privacy-first, founders with principles, both left once monetization and policy pressure kicked in.
Google: 'Don’t be evil' didn’t disappear by accident — it became incompatible with scale, revenue, and government relationships.
Facebook/Meta: years of apologies and "we'll do better," yet incentives never changed.
Mobile OS attestation (iOS / Android): sold as security, later became enforcement and gatekeeping.
Ruby on Rails ecosystem: strong opinions, benevolent control, then repeated governance, security, and dependency chaos once it became critical infrastructure. Good intentions didn't prevent fragility, lock-in, or downstream breakage.
Common failure modes:
Enterprise customers demand guarantees - policy creeps in.
Liability enters the picture - defaults shift to "safe for the company."
Revenue depends on trust decisions - neutrality erodes.
Core maintainers lose leverage - architecture hardens around control.
Even if keys are user-controlled today, the key question is architectural:
Can this system resist those pressures long-term, or does it merely promise to?
Most systems that can become centralized eventually do, not because engineers change, but because incentives do. That’s why skepticism here isn't personal — it's based on pattern recognition.
I genuinely hope this breaks the cycle. History just suggests it's much harder than it looks.
