this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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You posted this on an open source platform built by volunteers without any hint of irony. π€‘
If you seriously compare socialism with opensource then I'm sorry for you.
I'm huge advocate for opensource software and I can even say it's my life passion and I really know how important the relation between capitalism and opensource is.
You wouldn't have react.js without capitalism. You know what is made in react.js? Mastodon
They could have used different library for js. one made totally by volunteers, but they haven't. Why? Capitalism and opensource provide reliable products because there is a money factor and it fuels development
This is how big tech saw free software until quite recently. Microsoft used to call linux communist.
FOSS basically goes against the concept of private property of software and embraced common ownership of software. Without private property, there is no capitalism. I wouldn't call FOSS communism or socialism, but there are elements in it.
Ok, and what's your point? If you read Marx, one essential point he claims is that without capitalism, there cannot be socialism.
Probably because they saw no use in reinventing the wheel? And why should they?
It's as if you told a revolutionary during the French revolution "You used weapons that you looted from the Bastille, weapons that were produced by the king.". What exactly would be the argument here?
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When somebody thinks that something like react.js wouldn't be possible without capitalism, you can only laugh or cry. If you really can't understand that open source existed long before corps started messing with it, then you're an utter ignoramus not worth having a discussion with.
I don't think you understand what I have said. React.js would be possible without capitalism. But it is made by Facebook (capitalist company). And it must be a really reliable choice if Facebook and Mastodon decided to use it
The internet itself exists despite capitalism, not because of it. It was a public research project.
See, we can both cherry pick.
And you think internet would be as good as it is today without these companies that invest a lot of money to enhance it and hence make more money?
Of course. The infrastructure that underlies it has barely changed. You really don't know much about the subject, clearly.
Yeah sure, than who made 5G internet? Socialists?
5G internet is a misnomer. It's 5G mobile network, with access to the internet.
That's just an upgrade of existing mobile infrastructure. The internet itself did not change. In fact, cellular technology is only tangentially related to the internet in that it can also connect to the internet.
I'm not sure what's so special about react.js being made by a capitalist company. Saying that Mastodon uses a popular library that happened to come out from a commercial company is some kind of gotcha is frankly incoherent.