Linux, Libertarianism and America
Roughly ten years ago I obtained and installed my first copy of Red Hat Fedora Linux. It was during that same time-frame that I officially became a Libertarian. Since then I have read many opinion pieces comparing Linux to both Libertarianism and Communism. In a way, I think it is both. First let’s consider the origins of Linux. Back in the early 1980’s a long-time Unix programmer named Richard Stallman left MIT and began the GNU project and later the Free Software Foundation. He and his team began compiling (pun intended) the various software components of an operating system. The impetus behind their work was the belief that software source code should be freely available to all users so that they may make alterations to suit their specific needs. These changes would then be freely published so that others could benefit and possibly further refine the system. In the early 1990’s, a Finnish graduate student named Linus Torvalds decided that he wanted to program a Unix...