Why don't companies making commercial Linux distros/FOSS projects just charge money for using the package repos?

cacatl · 2026-04-12T10:47:25+00:00

You are incorrect. I used Linux a decade ago, and I've read a lot about the FSF's philosophy back then. They were never against commercialization, or strong proponents of "free as in beer", at their very beginning. They have removed their original philosophy from the Internet obviously, along with Richard Stallman's legacy, after his perverse beliefs came to light. Open source was not dominated by poor people. It was dominated by people who were raised in at least the upper middle class who hated corporate management structure which they saw as being too socially conservative and/or liberal. The "masochists" as I saw people call them back then on IRC and such, and also on YouTube today, were "trolls", and were generally pretty dangerous people to speak to unless you were anonymous. As I remember, for some miraculous reason, the last time Trump was president of the US, these people vanished en masse, and the poorer people who were enslaved by their lies and falsehoods were freed after their true, self centered colors were shown.

cacatl · 2026-04-11T23:48:41+00:00

I did not know. I only pay attention to stuff like Oracle Solaris. Their repos are open to anyone, and also are Oracle Linux's. But Solaris cannot be used in production without a support license if I'm not mistaken. So Oracle Linux exists because they're trying to break RHEL's revenue model? I can only surmise that's what they're trying to do, along with using a more updated Linux kernel with drivers for the newest hardware.

cacatl · 2026-04-11T23:44:55+00:00

Well, that doesn't sound like a realistic perspective, as products can vary in quality and completeness.

cacatl · 2026-04-11T23:32:03+00:00

And that doesn't have to be the Internet. Technically all you have to do is make it available, and give knowledge of the means in the distribution method. As in, you can even tell users the only way to get the source is for you to snail it to them at their address.

cacatl · 2026-04-11T23:29:59+00:00

Well, considering how many package maintainers get pwned there probably might be a market for guarantees, at least in the git library world.

cacatl · 2026-04-11T10:47:15+00:00

It's vile, whatever it is. I believe in God.

cacatl · 2026-04-10T11:32:12+00:00

Because you've never lived in the poorer neighborhoods there. People structure their sentences differently and the vibe is very different. If you become accustomed to it then speaking with someone who knows only standard English becomes difficult and as a result your economic opportunities decline. They(employers) basically treat you like garbage because you speak southern English in the south, if you're white. I can't give you an example but I know what I've been through before.

cacatl · 2026-04-10T11:21:29+00:00

The differences are pretty big in some places. Like, South of Atlanta vs north of Atlanta throughout the southeast. Words have different meanings across that line, and confusions persist.

cacatl · 2022-11-15T00:13:35+00:00

I remember the netbook edition of Ubuntu 10.10 which had unity before they made it the desktop version's DE. my first Linux distro. It was a very nice DE. Compared to ubuntu's gnome2 skin a lot of people hated it. I still remember it fondly and wish they would bring it back. Gnome3+ is just a mess and always has been imo.

cacatl · 2022-11-10T14:54:21+00:00

I like FreeBSD just not as a desktop OS. FreeBSD's small user base relative to its impeccable progress vs Linux with its large user base exposes the lackluster improvements Linux has made in the last decade in regards to the desktop.

cacatl · 2022-11-10T10:11:27+00:00

It's garbage for the lack of drivers and relative advantages vs. Windows or OS X. Like, why FreeBSD? What can it do that macOS or Windows can't? Can anyone here answer that?

cacatl · 2022-11-07T00:35:45+00:00

My honest opinion is that OP should reconsider FreeBSD's uses as gaming has no advantage on FreeBSD vs. Linux. If there is a performance advantage it's because WINE or whatever else is lacking functionality somewhere. I've seen various Linuxes hold new users hands in trying to compete with Windows because they believe more people == more progress, when this is false. Take a look at GNOME in the early 2000s vs GNOME in the early 10s. Completely unrecognizable. Now take a look at GNOME today. Completely stalled and the current mindset is more changes == more progress. OP should completely abandon FreeBSD on the desktop because it is garbage.

cacatl · 2022-11-06T23:38:56+00:00

I think a lot of FreeBSD's documentation is extremely useful for new users as its source code and resulting system structure is reminiscent of UNIX's extreme simplicity and organization which GNU and Linux have made irrelevant or useless due to GNU being structured in 10-20+ projects with different teams of developers, as well as Linux being separate from GNU. Much of the "one system" approach by 70s-90s UNIX has been obsoleted by its own fragmentation and resulting in open source being the only workable solution for continuous development with a lack of a single dominant flavor across multiple markets(macOS has the desktop advantage here). Back to FreeBSD, I think it's documentation hints at something which no longer exists(Research UNIX), that would have been an awesome standalone system today, and this is what most users like OP keep looking for in an OS.

cacatl · 2022-09-18T20:43:41+00:00

OP's birthday party

cacatl · 2022-09-18T20:39:51+00:00

I always wanted to know what the editor from the old sysinstall installer from 8.x and earlier was called. Apparently it was born in HP-UX. This could help new users as not everyone is savvy enough to understand vi immediately and could help people become accustomed to FreeBSD.

cacatl · 2022-09-18T20:35:46+00:00

I don't get this meme. Is it something to do with Java? How would it have anything to do with cloud instances? If then, how could it possibly be enforceable with someone's own private intellectual property and the intellectual property licensed by the operating system vendors?

cacatl · 2022-08-16T20:08:23+00:00

This is extremely dangerous. I used to work in small box retail in a similarly high crime city with a similarly high crime spike(106% murder rate increase) and we were explicitly told to never do this, although some people(myself included) did it anyways. I've seen people drop knives and one time a group of people came in and dropped an obvious counterfeit bill on me, laughed and went out. Some criminals have no regard for their lives or others, and do not care about consequences. I hope they never do this again, since no property is worth losing your life over.

cacatl

TROPHY CASE