Summary: Free software is extremely difficult to ban or to eradicate; it's almost inevitable that, by one route or another, 'world domination' will be attained in many sectors

LIKE a multi-headed hydra, Free software continues to grow. Kill GNOME? That's OK, we have KDE. GitHub shuts down? Not a problem, we still have Git anyway. Good riddance, GitHub (and also Microsoft, announcing no less than three rounds of layoffs last month).

The branches of Free software make it stronger, not weaker. It makes us more robust. Look what happened to Windows with Vista (and WinFS). What a mess. A "clusterfuck" (if it's still permissible to use such a 'dirty' word). They never quite recovered from that. We still use the term "Vista 10" as it's built on the very same 'base' with DRM and other nasty stuff.

"GNU/Linux is doing just fine the way it is. Its market share continues to grow, despite all the FUD and the patent attacks."Don't fall for the same old tales about how we need just one single distro with one instance of everything (like systemd). People who promote this basically say that GNU/Linux should just become another MacOS or Windows. Do we want that? Is that freedom?

Not only does this restrict technical freedom; it also makes GNU/Linux far more vulnerable to attacks. Microsoft's CEO has always complained (even on the public record) that it was difficult for him to attack GNU/Linux because it was not a company and it was all over the place. He loathed the GPL with a passion because the software that's GPL-licensed is far more robust to attacks from -- and abuse by -- proprietary overlords (ask the 'BSD heads' how their licensing worked for them, e.g. financially and technically, when Apple stepped in).

Nowadays I use three dual-headed laptops in tandem. Each runs a different desktop environment, but they all connect rather well over Barrier (Synergy but better). All those people who lecture us about how GNU/Linux is "fragmented" don't necessarily give informed and constructive advice; maybe they honestly don't know about GNU and Linux interfaces and APIs; or about POSIX principles and modularity. Maybe they even think that moving from Ubuntu to Fedora, for instance, is a massive task. In practice, it's hardly any harder than upgrading from one version of Ubuntu to the next.

Keep the tree alive. Water it. Cherish it. Help all the branches grow and bear fruit, or at least leaves.

GNU/Linux is doing just fine the way it is. Its market share continues to grow, despite all the FUD and the patent attacks. ⬆