About ten years back I got and installed my first copy of Red Hat Fedora Linux. It was during the exact same time frame that I formally became a Libertarian. In a way, I believe that it’s both. First let us consider the beginnings of Linux. In the early 1980’s a longtime Unix programmer named Richard Stallman left MIT and started the GNU project and after the Free Software Foundation. He along with his team started compiling (pun intended) the various software elements of an operating system.
The impetus behind their work was the belief that software source code ought to be freely accessible to all users to ensure they could make alterations to accommodate their particular needs. These changes would then be freely printed so that others could gain and perhaps further refine the device.
With now, the aforementioned GNU project had assembled a number of the elements required, nevertheless, they were still lacking a functioning kernel. Torvalds set relating to this programing job. He plopped his kernel in the midst of the GNU elements, and voila. Linux came to be.
- Since that time, both Stallman and Torvalds have stayed active in the development community as many, many others have joined at the same time.
- Now, we’ve got a variety of distributions (i.e. flavors) of Linux from which to select.
- In addition to Linux has sprouted hundreds of software projects geared toward supplying programs to users that follow these same principles.
So what revelations regarding Libertarianism and Communism could be gleaned in the assessment of the Linux community? Before we are able to carry on with that investigation, there’s one entrenched political teaching of which we have to dispose. Nevertheless, I believe most folks would concur the two were fundamentally totalitarian dictators that tended to have more in common than not.
In the event the conventional left/right spectrum is a defective, then what’s an improved representation? I believe a circle is much better suited to political evaluation. The very top of the circle being a state of highly decentralized authorities as well as the underside being one of highly central authorities.
The top of the circle is the embodiment of what folks like Thomas Jefferson imagined for America. The excursion to the underside of the circle is simple. There’ll be folks trying to catch your rights and property in exchange for the security or service they’re providing.
It will not matter if these individuals are from the right or left or whether they are Communist, Fascist or Socialist. The ending effect is obviously exactly the same. Home in the underside of the circle under an extremely centralized, oppressive totalitarian regime.