1/Not just for the nerds: there's a glaring omission in my posts about hackers which I will remedy by talking about Mr. Linus Torvalds. Of all the OG hacker legends, Linus is without doubt the most impactful, not just on tech, but on capitalism itself. Without Linus, the world of 2024 doesn't exist.
2/For the folks thinking "who the fsck is Linus Torvalds", Linus created a computer operating system called Linux (www.linux.com/what-is-linux/) in 1990. And b4 you ask, no, it doesn't matter if you haven't heard of it or have no idea what an operating system is, bc that's not the important part.
3/The important part is that Linus *gave Linux away for free*. But that's not genius or revolutionary. The genius? The Linux license says that derivative works must ALSO be free! The outcome? Probably the largest explosion of capitalism in history, and not just for rich people. Here's what happened.
4/By providing his code to anyone who wanted to use it, individuals and companies were free to modify it to their needs. This meant if you wanted to create a tech product, you were freed from the gatekeepers at IBM, Microsoft, etc. and all you needed were the programming chops to build your product.
5/This in turn made it possible for students, hobbyists, ANYONE, to bring their ideas to life for only the cost of time. The derivative clause didn't mean you couldn't make money from Linux, it meant that if you modified it or included Linux in your code, you had to make your code available too.
6/The recursive open source nature of the license led to rapid improvements building on one another as the most useful ideas were rolled back into Linux's mainline code. If not for Linux, billions of people would have been locked out of the technological revolution of the last 30 yrs. or so.
7/The delicious irony? Without thousands of people worldwide contributing their ideas, there wouldn't have BEEN a tech revolution as we would have been limited by big tech. Linux and its inventor are a beautiful example of human ingenuity and the best of what we can be when we work together.
