On Free Software and Opensource Development
A personal reflection on a five-year journey with open source that explores the reasons behind its success and the role of GPL and RMS in its existence.
Still can’t believe it, but it’s been a whole 5 years since I got into open-source, with my first repo being a mere numerical system converter and my latest ones being frameworks, libraries, production bots, and full stack sites. It’s not too much meat, but you gotta admit it’s not bare bones anymore.
Nevertheless, it’s only in recent months that there were question marks flying through my head: why opensource is still alive, or at least why it is so popular even among commercial companies; whether Linus Torvalds is mainly a Linux creator or whether it’s opensource that is his main gift to humanity; and what RMS has to do with all of it.
So I’ve skimmed through hundreds of different pages, 5 books, and a few essays on the history of open-source software. And while yeah, I’ve searched for answers to my specific questions and made notes for myself as I always do, this time something different hit me. It became evident to me that my thoughts mean nothing without a proper reader and a proper critic, so take it or leave it, I am going online with this information.