Thursday, May 7, 2009

Blast from the recent past.

A friend posted this 2003 IBM commercial recently. It's kind of creepy/eerie , especially the personification of Linux as a child. One of the things that might be immediately concerning are the somewhat socialist undertones.

There is, however, a distinct difference between the open source software movement and political socialism. Specifically, participation in OSS development is completely voluntary with the goal of creating something for the sake of meeting a need, or within capitalist structures - namely companies like IBM who benefit financially from its development on the whole. Open Source Software by its very nature is transparent, and anyone who wishes may modify it to fit a specific need or preference. Linux is a beautiful example of what can be created when a large community gets together with the aim to create something to fill a need without a corporate or government bureaucracy handing down edicts to benefit its own narrow goals of obtaining money and power.

Here's the video.

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