Volunteers Built Linux and Wikipedia—and Rewrote the Rules of Software
From Linux to Wikipedia: How Volunteers Build the Internet
In 1991, Linus Torvalds called his kernel project "just a hobby" that "won't be big and professional." Three decades later, Linux runs on billions of machines, from supercomputers to smartphones, displacing proprietary systems from Sun, HP, and IBM. Drawing on their book Peer Production, Benjamin Mako Hill, Christian Pentzold, and Aaron Shaw trace how unpaid, self-governed communities produced Linux, Wikipedia's 68 million articles, and even the GuttenPlag Wiki that helped topple a German minister—and ask how these commons survive as platforms like Reddit enclose their data.
Linux took nearly every aspect of proprietary software development and threw it out the window.
- jillesvangurp
While a lot of this involved volunteers and people taking initiative, a lot of this is also people working and being paid to do so. Linus Torvalds was getting paid to work on the Linux kernel from pretty early on, for example. And a lot of contributions made to Linux are done by software engineers working for a very wide range of companies that each have their own commercial interest in moving the Linux kernel forward or getting their drivers or whatever.
Decentralization does not imply charity. You see the same around openstreetmap. There are a lot of organizations that benefit from their data that actively contribute to it or make donations to keep development funded. Same with Wikipedia.
- niemandhier
Things were build by passionate people, who had the skills and the means to do it.
I feel that modern tech first took away the passion, by making everything a product, than took away the means by making everything cloud, and now kills the skills by eutrophizing our brains with AI.
There is no cabal of evil tech that pushes this, but the results are the same.
- allexsendev
This has happened with most of the fields - volunteers do a lot of work, make their fields/areas good, raise interest, bring ppl into it which usually brings money then which usually brings money chasers who then usually "optimize" the hell out of every metric for maximum gains.
Great OS volunteers still exist today, but the ratio of genuine field lover to money chaser is absurd now.
- chaz6
We, the people, built the internet, and as usual it has been ruined by governments (censorship) and corporations (ads, tracking, monetization).
- jrm4
Excellent reminder. It very often feels like this place forgets where most of the good stuff comes from.