Linux Community Magazine

Presented are views that the community behind Linux (not all) has similar practices as Soviet communists and a clear example to support this opinion is given to the reader, as the author of this article has experience from the communist Czechoslovakia. Some advantages of the BSD license are highlighted too.

Communism is the ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization; however, its practice got far from the original ideas. This may also happen to Linux and its GPL.

Linux is the kernel on top of which are many (userland) utilities (and software) - this "beer and the barrel" makes a Linux distribution. There are two basic movements in the Linux world - communists and social democrats. Social democrats are not very harmful and they are often agreeable.

The communism type Linux is the "free-software" (and cult-like) movement of Mr. Stallman, which included even such distributions as Slackware, Debian, OpenBSD, FreeBSD (/distros/common-distros.html) into the list of "non-free" distributions. They monopolized the interpretation of what the GPL license and freedom are and they practice "groupthink", which is a term coined by a social psychologist Janis. However, you do not have to adopt the full psychologists' interpretation of what groupthink is, as this would give a podium for another form of groupthink.

I will explain it in my own words - you may either think convergently (as groups always want you), or divergently (you may be in harmony with the general opinion of groups, but not in total harmony). If you think divergently, groups tend to consider you an enemy, or not an enemy - they just ignore you. Unfortunately, all these psychological theories are actually nonsensical, as groupthink cannot understand groupthink. If you can liberate your mind from all these theories, you will understand why the crash of the US Space Shuttle Challenger happened and why the story about it is included in a number of sources that deal with groupthink.

In the communist regime, which had lasted from 1948 to 1989 in Czechoslovakia, there was a Socialist Property Ownership Act - it prohibited anyone from taking the shared (GPL'd) property of socialist ownership under sever punishment. Here readers will understand the following:1) You can take a code of the BSD licensed software and make it your own. 2) You cannot appropriate the GPL licensed software (if so, you are punished).

Here you see two different conceptions of what freedom is. The GPL license is the same thing as the communist Socialist Property Ownership Act, because you get equally punished in both cases (braking the GPL or the communist law).

The BSD license is in compliance with the philosophy of FSF - you can run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the software (see my above note about groupthink - philosophy of BSD is in harmony with FSF, but not in total harmony). However, BSD distributions are not in the list of "free software" that Mr. Stallman recommends, so here you must clearly understand that it is not "freedom", but the "monopoly of freedom" that matters here. The practice of communists was often aimed at depriving disobedient people of their jobs and this is what cult-centered communities do everywhere, not only in the Linux world. Cult-centered people always live in the glasshouse of groupthink.

I wrote (and sold) a number of Linux articles (I also wrote an Xmodmap howto -(/HOWTOs/mini/Intkeyb-1.html), but as I also write articles about FreeBSD, I realize that the community of readers is often unfriendly (because of groupthink), which reminds me of the past communist days. I remember my brother when he was arrested for being honest - he only said that communist had failed in making a few things better. Two years in communist prison is something Mr. Stallman has never experienced. My brother also knew some inmates that had shared the same cell with Mr. Havel, the first president of the post-communist Czechoslovakia.

I would be happy if readers understood that communism, like fascism, was a very bad thing and that they should not support groups that want to put a noose on their necks. This is not aimed at Linux, but at the communism of it. I appreciate Debian. I almost love it. Slackware too. However, both above distributions are on the list of "non-free" software and this why I will never use distributions that FSF considers free. They will never be free for me.

The FreeBSDnews.net informs that the FreeBSD Foundation has kicked off its annual end-of-year fund-raise drive - please support freedom and not communism! Donate! /donate/