“…who are the latter-day Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
whose manifestoes moved both the Chinese government and the U.S.
Senate to action last week? Why, two computer science
students, of course: Linus Torvalds, who fashioned Linux,
a free and open operating system (OS), while a 21-year-old student
at the University of Helsinki, and Shawn Fanning, who invented
the Napster music exchange technology as a 19-year-old student
at Northeastern University in Boston.”
“These two revolutionaries each created a “people’s software”
around which fanatical followers have constructed suspiciously left
wing-sounding tenets like “Code must be distributed openly and
universally,” and “Music wants to be free.” I thought these slogans
sound innocuous until I read an article last week on the front page
of The New York Times about how the government of China had turned
against that bastion of capitalism, Microsoft, and its chairman,
Bill “the richest man in history” Gates, to throw its official
support to Linux. What could be more un-American?”
“This situation oozes paradox. Here’s the most closed society in
the developed world insisting that the survival of its citizens and
sovereignty demands an open source OS. So Windows is no longer the
official OS of China. As Times reporter Craig S. Smith wrote of
Linux, “The almost communistic ‘from each according to his ability,
to each according to his need’ approach appeals to China’s Marxist
leaders.”