I&#x27;m sympathetic to the sentiment that trying to acquire market share has caused Linux to forget its roots and end up in a sort of uncanny valley. However it&#x27;s important to understand the forces that led to it so that we can do better in future.<p><i>Amassing a large user-base is a highly misguided aspiration for a purely academic field like Free Software. It really only makes sense if you&#x27;re a commercial enterprise trying to make as much money as possible. The concept of &quot;market share&quot; is meaningless for something that&#x27;s free (in the commercial sense).</i><p>It took me _years_ to internalize the importance of status in human relationships. Even if no money exchanges hands, much of human endeavor is motivated by the gain of status.<p>We hackers have this strange blind spot: we pride ourselves on focusing on only what is real, but we forget that &#x27;real&#x27; money is just a social construct, a reified form of status. It&#x27;s utterly blind to focus on this one form and ignore the real thing.<p>Open source software is just geopolitics by other means.<p>Related link: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ribbonfarm.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;02&#x2F;11&#x2F;minimum-viable-superorganism" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ribbonfarm.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;02&#x2F;11&#x2F;minimum-viable-superorg...</a>