Post #4311785

2026-07-16 10:00 UTC

@pare@kamu.social @tante@tldr.nettime.org Doesn’t work for software developers who have day jobs or non-work obligations like child care. For end users it’s a non-starter. As someone who can take a raw sheep fleece and make a cardigan out of it, I don’t go around telling people who don’t like the jumpers on the market to learn to spin and knit their own if they want to be clothed. That would be unhinged. Make the same claims about software and suddenly it’s acceptable to a large number of FOSS advocates.

Replies (2)

@lizbian@chaos.social 2026-07-16 10:10

@akareilly@hachyderm.io @pare@kamu.social @tante@tldr.nettime.org Imagine going to any social event (private party, conference, whatever) and requesting food that you're not allergic to (or a vegan option or whatever), and they respond by saying "go cook yourself then"

Open ##4311787
@bjc@tines.spork.org 2026-07-16 10:25

@akareilly@hachyderm.io @pare@kamu.social @tante@tldr.nettime.org the problem with forking isn't technical, it's social. anyone can fork linux. now get enough of the maintainers on board. now convince others to use your kernel over linus'. projects can, and do, fork all the time, even big ones (emacs/xemacs, gcc/egcs, etc). there's a long and wonderful history of it from the beginning. we're even seeing it happen right now in response to llm-taint. but for the most part you have to piss off the community of maintainers for it to happen. outsiders getting mad isn't enough on its own. you can get a reasonable threat of a fork of linux if enough of the long-term maintainers get mad at linus. that's not impossible. the reason that "then fork it lol" is considered acceptable is because it sounds like a technical argument and it masks the much more important social one.

Open ##4314709