Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Thanksgiving for a Continued Thriving Linux FOSS Harvest

Happy Thanksgiving (Image Credit: Mepiscommunity.org)

More than ever, we need to give thanks as part of our American yearly custom of celebrating Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November.

It's not about the harvest.  Nor is it about the President 'pardoning' a Turkey or religious proclamations made by Church priesthood in any secular sense.

No, we should not lose sight of what initially formed as the 'Pilgrim' holiday during the early 1600's in New England.  Pilgrim and Puritan immigrants from England brought their traditions to New England in the form of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving celebration.

It might make more sense to have such celebration following when the 'real' harvest bounty occurs, but history being what it is, the date chosen for Thanksgiving changed over time, most recently to the fourth Thursday of November from the last with a resolution made by President Roosevelt in 1941.

In terms of what we should be thankful for in the Linux Community, I feel the strongest consideration should go to the Gnu Public License from which a great bounty or code base sprang forth.  This bounty remains the stock of open source software that keeps giving of itself over and over, thanks to one Richard Stallman.  We should never forget that without such a novel licensing framework in place, the success of a Linux kernel and its 'moving parts' in the open source 'factory' would not have been possible.

So, remember as you celebrate this holiday that giving back to the FOSS community is essential, or, we would still be under the rigid control of monopolistic proprietary software vendors the likes of Microsoft and Apple.

Thanksgiving wishes go out for a continued thriving Linux FOSS harvest! -- Dietrich



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