this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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I've always felt guilty by taking for granted the rare breed of virtuous humans that provide free excellent software without relying on advertising. Let's change that and pay, how much would I “lose” anyway?

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 8 months ago (9 children)

The real outrage is big tech clouds like amazon taking open source software for free and bundling it up in AWS services that cost a lot of money.

If they would contribute back to the authors, they would become rich, but of course not....

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (6 children)

AWS isn't charging for the software, they're charging to let you run stuff on their hardware

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

If that were solely true, there would be a lot more competition in the field right now. Amazon, (and to a much lesser extent the other 2 big names, GCP and Azure) are so massive not because they have a lot of power (plenty of other companies like digital ocean or OVM have plenty of scaling power too)— but because the integrations between their products are so seamless. Most of that functionality has a foundation in FOSS software that they’ve built on top of.

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