Why Are Billionaires Funding a Linux Distro?

Hello everybody. I just have to rant about Tom Marchie and the Omon Foundation. So let's talk about them. Let me start with probably one controversial statement which is that I'm very happy to see that the works that Backree and Outfox I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly are doing is being sponsored and paid for. I think they are doing very [music] nice job. specifically if you're out of the loop which would be understandable. Vakree is the developer behind Hyperland the you know [music] tingling manager window manager who was a bit controversial in the past. I've done a video about that and believe me I do have things to criticize back for I've done that. [music] However, at the same time, I do think that he has improved generally speaking his behavior, his handling of the project significantly in the recent times. And he's just, you know, a a little bit cringe overall lately, which is okay. It's not that bad. Just a little bit cringe. Like the worst thing that's going to happen is that I'm going to get in discussions with him because he thinks that nowadays if you try to ask a woman out, you have the risk of being accused of sexual assault, which which no is not happening. If that happens, it means that you don't know how to ask a women out. That that's not something that happens. But, you know, if it's it's a bit of a cringe take, but you know, one day the canonical event is going to happen. He's going to get a girlfriend. is going to understand that [music] this kind of thing is cringe. Anyway, [laughter] sorry box and uh outf foxed is instead doing quick shell which is more likely that you haven't heard of and it's basically a library that helps you build uh desktops. Basically, it's a set of tools that you can have to like do panels and widgets and stuff which is really cool actually. Like I heard about it last year. I'm following the project and I'm really happy to see him and this [music] project thrive. Now I think he's been hired even uh to be the head of Omar Chi Sha. Cool or maybe not cool. We'll get to that. Generally speaking, I'm happy that there's now uh $15 million that are being spent on, you know, [music] making the Linux desktop more popular, more everywhere, more cool. I'm on board. However, [laughter] I do have a few howevers. Firstly, everything is led by the HH. Now, I have made something like a 40 minutes video about the HH and why I think is not a great guy. So, if you don't know that, you can just go check out that video, which probably is going to be in the video description. But long story short, um it's kind of racist. It tells that London has too few white people lately. Like it literally says that you can go through the streets of London and not see enough native British people, which in his data we can go and check his white people. Just that's what he defines native British as, which [music] um not great. He he's he also seems to support the first whole remration of immigrants and like gypsy people. I'm I'm not a fan at all. He also like supports far right leaders just you know not my kind of politics if you know who who I am and I would kind of wish that that was that nobody's kind of politics but apparently AFD is winning election. So yay. So how is that a problem you might ask? because some people do say sure DH might not be the best person but it's still good that we have like 15 millions on the developing of the Linux desktop and yes on on one hand [music] this is true but I do have some worries to be honest and my worries go a little bit beyond just the politics uh and it's more about the vibes so let me talk about the vibes and I know that right now I might seem crazy, but let me let me finish. Let let me try to convince you and we'll see. So, not only DHH is kind of racist, which okay, but also is very in favor of AI. He openly talks about how the project [music] Omari is done with a lot of use of AI development and is even trying to integrate AI as much as possible into Omari Quattro the latest version so that you can change your desktop using AI although [music] it's just an option when you install so you can just turn it off and it's not going to bother you but publicly is very for AI and weirdly enough I'm cool with it [laughter] don't kill me. I know you might disagree, but I'm kind of cool with it. I I like the concept of being able to say, "Hey, switch to a dark theme and a purple accent color and that's just going to happen." I think that's cool. Not necessarily something we would ship out of the box, but you know, cool. But it's the vibe. It's the vibe. Or another example. Or another example, it's been accused of like being a a bit, you know, or Omari has been accused of being like the, you know, oligarchy of Linux in the sense that yes, it's cool that you have, you know, 1 million of your own money to spend on this project. I personally don't. Most people don't have. And it's cool that you have your little rich friends that are able to also put 1 million into development of Homarchi. Again, most people don't have that sort of friends. So, you know, it's you're kind of the oligarchy. And what surprised me positively in some sense is the interview with the HH and B Robertson, which if I remember is going to be in the video description, in which he says, you know, I think this oligarchy joke that they made was funny and so I embraced it. And indeed he has he has made like I'm not sure if it was a contest or something but a lot of uh Omari artwork featuring the word oligarchy instead of Omari in the same style and the tier of $1 million and the 1 million and the donors that donated $1 million to March are in a tier called you know the oligarchs. It's kind of crazy to me that is embracing that which you know is the vibes. [laughter] But then there's more like let's see who donated this money and it's Dell and if you go check what are what the opinions of Michael Dell are and it's Jack Dor save and it's Coinbase in the form of Brian Armstrong and it's open in the form of Peter Stinsburg Dropbox cloudflare 37 signals you know if you had to ask somebody like this is the kind of ideas the kind attitude that this project has. Where would you put this project within the larger social cultural context that we're living with? [music] I I feel like that person is going to point a finger towards Palanteer, you know, Elon Musk. That kind of vibe. It's the same kind of vibe, is it? It's Yeah. No. Is it not that you know we have a mix of political opinions but they're kind of [music] far right opinions especially about like immigrants and we super support AI and we are the oligarchy that that's that's the Palanteer kind of vibe. No, [music] not which is not to say that uh Omari has any kind of tie with Palanteer. That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that currently more and more people are recognizing this kind of technofascist trend which we have lately this community that you know San Francisco is kind of leaning towards as a whole I would say which is also a you can just do things kind of community and again that's also what you see in VH if you go see the interview it's pretty cool it just says we can just do things the year of the Linux desktop yeah we can do that. Sure, you just have to put enough money and effort into it. Thanks, God, he has the money. So, all that to say, what's my worry? My worry is that [music] he's successful [laughter] in the sense that sure it's great if we get the year of the Linux desktop and I can go online from any hardware maker and buy a Linux computer and go into my store down the street and buy a Linux computer. But of course if he is successful that computer is going to be with Omari pre-installed and also if he's successful in Omar driving the Linux year of the desktop you know that means that most people's idea of Linux is going to be Omari right not for the few folks that already kind of know what Linux is but for like my mother who doesn't really care about Linux If it gets if she goes into the store and there's Linux with a marchie, then probably she's going to associate Linux with a marchie. And what could very well happen I think if he's successful is that more and more Linux is going to be associated with that kind of vibe. And who knows we might get a word where people start saying oh bad palenteer, bad Elon Mask, bad Linux. I see that happening. if [music] Linux becomes driven forward by mostly Omari and I also kind of see DHH [music] being successful here because he does have a lot of money and it does have a lot of drive to make this work. Of course, if he is successful then we get some upside as well such as you know the year of the Linux desktop. [laughter] It would be nice to see plenty of people use Linux. That's the upside. You know, life comes with upsides and downsides. And there's one more thing that annoys me here, which is that, you know, what has Omari done to deserve this much money in donations. And I think the answer is just, you know, he had rich friends, which like cool, but also there's people like KD doing a desktop environment, a ton of applications. Sorry for the swearing. [music] We do so much more than what Omicon is doing. So much more. There's so much more work put historically towards making Linux available for everyone. And what stops us is that we don't have rich friends. Is that going to be our issue? The reason that we can't succeed. I [music] kind of don't like that. [laughter] Which is not to say that they it's their money. You know, you can just do whatever you want with it. But I will be slightly annoyed that Mr. Dell has decided that the best use of his money to support Linux is going to be giving them to DHH and not you know giving them to the people that have been working tire tirelessly for 20 years to actually bring the Linux project forward as a whole. There's I'll I'll shut up in a second but I there's one further structural worry that I have in this whole setup which is uh what kind of projects are going to succeed from now on and I think I have one uncontroversial opinion and one controversial opinion about this. Firstly [music] I think that the kind of projects that are going to succeed are the kind of project that are able to fund raise more money and controversial I hope. Secondly, the kind of things the kind of projects that are able to succeed are the kind of projects that effectively use AI. Very controversial. Don't shoot me. Don't. I'm very well aware of the hate towards AI. [music] There are some parts that I agree with. There are some parts that I strongly disagree with. We could talk about that. It's for another video, though. I do think that whatever you think about EI, if you actually go see the frontter models, which you have to pay [music] for, I do uh they're good. They're like really good. And if you develop any kind of software project, having AI means being able to do more stuff, simply [music] put, personal opinion. And so what does these two things mean for the wider Linux ecosystem? Well, take Arch Packaging as an example. Uh, one of the first things DHH did was to offer uh, arch packers some money for the work they did. And because of DHH shitty opinions, political opinions in my opinion, uh, well, they refused that money, understandably enough. I get that. [laughter] I probably would do the same. But also that means that now D2H kind of wants to do its own packaging uh which he wants to replace the Archons packaging with. And you know if he keeps throwing millions of dollars at it you might succeed [laughter] because if you have a ton of money to spend on things you might be able to do that. Money is power I guess. [music] And so if it drives you know this amount of money forwards the kind of projects that don't want to be associated with the HH are going to get less money and the kind of projects that are fine with it such as Hyperland such as uh QuickShell are going to get that money and they're going to thrive and probably the whole community like Ladybird is an that kind of project again a cool project could even get some money from DH in some uh [music] again shitty political opinions in my in my view and he's not going to have a problem accepting the money which is going to make his job easier. So right now VH is making it easier for projects to succeed as long as they are kind of okay with being given money by a racist which is probably not a kind of incentive that we want to have. And [music] at the same time, of course, uh, projects like Gnome, like everybody else in the open source space, is [music] strongly rejecting AI tools. I'm I'm going to do another video about that, I promise. But my fear is that this is going to slow down uh the development of those projects compared [music] to projects that do use AI tools effectively. Especially because yes, there's the downsides of these new AI tools that a lot of people are flooding these open source projects with shitty lowquality merge requests which are AI generated with little effort, little thought, probably using very cheap models that produce shitty results. And those things still take a bit of time to review, even if just to turn them on, turn them down, and that slows down the pace even more. And that worries me. because of because of course what kind of projects are going to be fine with using AI tools likely [music] also the projects that are kind of fine with the HH ideas because that's the vibe you know the vibe from AI is the vibe that it's kind of fascist [laughter] even though I personally disagree with that but that's the vibe and I don't think that this is a good incentive and I think that the this AI fascist vibe is kind having a a easier life right now. They have more money. They have better tools in my opinion. I kind of do see them succeeding whereas other projects may not. And of course and of course it doesn't help that people are just sort of downplaying uh the opinions that these folks have. We we've seen the one password controversy. But yeah, the the developer from One Password said, you know, DH opinions are not that bad. It's stuff we could argue about, but it's kind of not the kind of things you argue about when you say that London doesn't have enough white people and we should deport the black people, which is what he said basically. Come on. I am not particularly interpreting his words. It's the article. [music] So, um, yeah, I'm worried and I would like to know what you think of this. Should I be less worried? Should [music] be more worried? And yes, now you can go ahead and shoot me because of the things I said about EI. I I'll do another video about that.