this post was submitted on 15 May 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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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I really don't get which critical contributions they do. On their own website https://opensource.apple.com/projects/ they seem to list basically tools and frameworks for building apps, which is on their interest first and foremost that developers have. I don't know what "Community projects" mean, and how big contributions they do there.

Also I don't really like your argument "why they should provide Linux support, they are a competitor". Well, this is what happens when a single company does both the hardware and the software AND doesn't care about the "freedom" part of Foss.

To be fair though most companies can't care less, open source is just a practice that some companies do to pursue their own interest. Microsoft does huge contributions to OSS (including the Linux kernel), same for Google, and yet I would not really say that those companies care about FOSS. Apple is even worse than them considering how they want to have the complete monopoly of what can run on their hardware, which is completely antithetical to the core idea of FOSS. Despite you paid already the 2.5k for your hardware and their OS, they can't just let you run whatever you want on it.