Linux

I think we may be the same person.

it be a slippery slope

I don't really see the link to communism though I can see the parallels to social democracy.

Private ownership of computer code should lead us to a hellscape where all code is owned by a handful of huge companies and wealthy elites. But instead of doing away with private ownership and making all code public domain we added regulation in the form of free and open source licensing that democratized private ownership and made it serve our community. Perhaps that is the real lesson, not communism.

I believe you are not alone. I have the exact same journey. Started installing Ubuntu 20.04 on a mid-2011 iMac. Now, I consider myself as a near-libertarian communist, I spend my free time reading books on communist theory.

So Steve Ballmer was right all along

I think there is something fundamental about the pull of investigating, understanding, and reading that leads to so much crossover between the two.

This meme shows completely my journey. I became a FOSS advocate in 2020 after realized that all sites that I visited wanted my "cookies". I started to questioning myself about and after some research I became a disciple of Richard Stallman and a Marxist-Leninist.

For me, it was around 2015ish when I first installed Linux after learning about it from someone that was detasselling in a corn field with me. Then around 2017-2020ish, I eventually became radicalized (2017 is when net neutrality was killed, even though around 80% of Americans supported it, which made me question our government and economy).

But is socialism really the same as communism?

I honestly don't even know what a Marxist is.

Yes, I agree, I am at stage 3 and stage 4 looks more enticing every single damn day.