There should have been an off switch from the beginning though IMO, though perhaps there already is? But the number of corporates messing with the kernel for their own purposes greatly outnumbers the number of independent developers. That gives big tech a big influence. And the Linux Foundation is there to cement that influence.
I much prefer grassroots projects. Made by and for people like me <3 That's why I moved to BSD (well there were other reasons too of course)
Like others have mentioned, it's just a huge deal in the data center now. With that comes a lot of influence by corporates interests.
Whereas BSD has gone the opposite way. Started by Berkeley but abandoned to the community. Business is not really interested in that because anything they contribute can be used by anyone for anything (even their competitors can use it in closed source code). Netflix was the biggest user but I don't think they contribute anymore either. WhatsApp used it until Facebook acquired them. That leaves netgate and ix systems which are small. Netgate pushed a really terrible wireguard once but it was nipped in the bud luckily. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/buffer-overruns-lice... It also highlighted many trust issues which have been improved since.
Of course whether this is an issue for you is very personal. For me it is but clearly for a lot more people it isn't, as Linux is s lot more popular.
Yes, but I don't think it means what you think it means? Just because Linux was developed by basement dwelling hackers 20+ years ago, doesn't make it a grassroots project.
Arguably, the only somewhat mainstream operating systems today that deserve that label are the *BSDs. Haiku OS gets an honorable mention but I wouldn't consider Haiku OS to be mainstream.
Meh not really. I'm running BSD with the very latest software. KDE, Firefox, Chrome, LibreOffice. All rolling unlike most Linux distros. I really don't care how 'big' my OS is.
But yeah grassroots was perhaps not the right term. I meant the status quo, not the origin. I don't know what the right word is then though.
I much prefer grassroots projects. Made by and for people like me <3 That's why I moved to BSD (well there were other reasons too of course)