Communism in Open Source Software

At first glance, in the area of technology, and more specifically, in open source software, it appears that there exists a thriving communist community. Now, everything that my other opinions point to would say that, in practice, communism is doomed to failure, and is a very bad thing (e.g. Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union.) My initial thoughts on this issue told me that technology is an exception to my previously-stated opinions of how things should work. Upon further observation, I realized that the notable examples of open-source software successes have always had the backing of some corporation.

For example, Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution, is financially backed by Canonical. Another example is Firefox, which is backed by Mozilla who relatively recently formed a for-profit entity so that they could legally make a profit from Firefox. (Much of their money comes from advertising partnerships with Google.)

Additionally, you have the open-source database, MySQL, which makes money by selling licenses to use their software to commercial entities. MySQL was recently acquired by Sun.

An example that is closer to home for me is Fedora. This is my preferred distribution of Linux (and the one I am using to type this post). Fedora is backed by Red Hat who sells another commercial distribution of Linux.

Perhaps, the two most successful open-source projects of all are the Linux kernel itself, and the Apache HTTP Server. The Linux kernel has many financial backers, many of whom are mentioned on the Linux Foundation Members page. The Apache server is the most commonly used HTTP server on the planet. It also has many financial backers who are featured on the respective Apache Thanks page.

This post is turning out much differently that I initially thought it would. Don't get me wrong; I think that free open source software is an excellent thing, and that all that people can do to promote it should be done. Having been using free open source software almost exclusively for about three and a half months, I will say that it has reached a point where it poses a legitimate threat to Microsoft; it offers a viable alternative to Microsoft software to the average user. I could have used many more examples of open source projects that are financially backed by corporate entities, but I think what I have gets the point across. Even in the area of technology, communism does not work.

Having said all this, I have seemingly left out all the open-source developers who have donated much their time to improve the quality of open-source software. I would like to thank all those who have done so, and encourage them to continue their good work.

P.S. I initially had this as a rather large section of my previous post under the heading "Technology".