There’s a meme I see floating around on Reddit and other places. It goes something like:
“That’s the beauty of Linux, Freedom of choice!”
I think this is mostly parroted by Linux know-a-littles to Linux know-nothings, but the ideas behind it are deeply embedded in the culture of Linux. On that basis I think it warrants picking apart.
In essence, what this misses is that Linux (and FOSS in general) is not about “freedom of choice” - it is a pleasant side-effect. The only “choice” Linux gives you is take what we have, or get lost and build it yourself if you don’t like it.
That’s not a criticism - very often it’s the only tenable position to hold. Devs are volunteers, the software is free, and the support burden is high - we really should consider ourselves lucky that FOSS continues to exist.1 Building software for the whole world is no easy task.
All that said - that attitude is very much not one of “freedom of choice”. To most people,[Citation needed] the notion of “freedom of choice” implies that there is the desire to, and effort has been made, for there to be multiple options to do the same logical “thing”.
In the Linux ecosystem, this notion is often times in conflict with reality. These conflicts are also often the nastiest, messiest ones that the Linux community has to deal with. systemd and Wayland are the two shining examples that come to mind. There are valid criticisms of each, of course, but the worst of the pushback boils down to entitlement.
Painting Linux as the paragon of “freedom of choice” exacerbates this sense of entitlement. It does a disservice to the community, because it misrepresents Linux. It pisses off users, and (in turn) developers. We need to stop it.
Footnotes
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Reminder to donate to your favorite FOSS project, even if it’s $5! ↩