Open source and hacker culture is basically a massive ethical triumph that has catapulted humanity forward.
There isn't a single person living on the planet that isn't touched and benefitted by this in some way, even remote island tribes we consider untouched, there is hardly a single ounce of space payload that doesn't have open source in it's causal chain.
There is no more pragmatically altruistic culture that has ever existed or impacted more people.
In the U.S. no culture has helped lift the impoverished out of poverty into the upper middle class through empowerment (ask any of us adults who were once kids going to bed hungry.)
People have their pet beliefs and metaphysics and ideological communities but "information deserves to be free" is the goat.
> There isn't a single person living on the planet that isn't touched and benefitted by this in some way, even remote island tribes we consider untouched...
That seems a bit over the top. I'd love to see your causal chain for that claim.
The Sentinelese monitoring program run by the government in India the works to enforce no contact rules relies on open source in it's causal chain.
My mother did remote tribal work in the brasilian interior, she grew up on the Amazon, I personally know well off Ruby devs who grew up unable to even read.
Whether you are against intervention or pro intervention, all across that spectrum, whatever your luxury belief may be, everyone is impacted by open-source.
Open source is an insane force multiplier, not just for production but for the entire training and r&d pipeline as well.
Thanks for pointing this out. We're so surrounded by the dystopian tech future, it's nice to see some positivity to tech, it's been a while.