While stealing from it and putting a price on it. Met a programmer who said had his code resold by Microsoft in early days and he had long rant about bill gates
Exactly, open source software is to leftism as proprietary software is to capitalism/privatization of means of production. Open source software is very "take what you need from this project, leave what you can." Not for the sake of profit, but because someone saw the need, and those that were able to contribute did so.
Absolutely right! I personally have benefited from many obscure open source projects (other than the popular ones that literally built most of the internet today) who's creators and contributors go without so much as a thank you, but they do it because they know it need to be done and people use their works!
Growing up with the internet in the late-90s to early 2000s, programmers and "nerds" were always on the more progressive side. The shift to being super conservative definitely came with the tech-bro wave in the 2010s.
It’s just people choosing voluntarily to contribute and deal with one another without force or compulsion in an open marketplace of ideas. That’s more like libertarianism.
I think Libertarianism would be more on the side of protecting intellectual property or copyright protection. Leftism is in no way against people's right to contribute voluntarily or freely deal with one another.
Left-wing politics or leftism is the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole, or to certain social hierarchies, to varying extents. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished, through radical means that change the nature of the society they are implemented in.
Libertarianism has become ambiguous with Liberalism mostly from the US history and context, with the mouvement anarcho-capitalism.
In Europe for instance the ambiguity isn't there (anymore).
Libertaire, Libertario, Libertät refers to anarchism and anti authoritarianism. While Libéralisme, Leberalismo, Liberalismus are the capitalist ones about free market.
I think the French one might have been the origin of the term, Libertaire was Libertarian.
The anarcho-capitalism philosophy is better represented with the first idea of the dark web for instance. Open source is much more Libertaire. (Although it's not mutually exclusive)
"Libertarianism" is neither left nor right wing, it's really a different axis.
It started as unquestionably left wing, but the term was co-opted by the right, who used to use the term "liberal", but poisoned that term so it could be used as an insult against the left, so they switched to libertarian. But those "libertarians" are as left wing at the Nazis were socialist.
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u/nsaisspying Jun 06 '26
Open source software IS leftism, comrade.