July 17, 2026
Kernel panic in the comments
Open Source is not immune to monopoly
Even “free” software can get too big, and the comments came ready to fight
TLDR: The article argues that even free, community-built software can become so huge and powerful that it starts acting like a monopoly and should be broken into smaller parts. Commenters mostly pushed back, saying Linux has alternatives, the monopoly claim is overblown, and the anti-Linus framing lit the fuse on the whole fight.
A spicy essay arguing that open-source software isn’t magically safe from monopoly behavior sent the comment section straight into battle mode. The writer’s big claim was simple: when a giant volunteer-run project becomes so huge that nobody can realistically split it up or replace parts of it, it starts acting less like a community project and more like a kingdom. Their proposed fix? Break giant projects into smaller pieces that can work together, so no one leader or one mega-project becomes too big to fail.
But wow, the crowd was not calmly nodding along. The biggest reaction was a full-on pushback to the monopoly label itself. One camp basically said, “Hold on, that’s not a monopoly, that’s a strong-willed boss,” with one commenter dismissing the whole thing as confusion between monopoly and a “benevolent dictatorship.” Others argued the article face-planted immediately by opening with a swipe at Linus Torvalds, saying the personal attack made the rest of the argument hard to take seriously.
Then came the practical crowd, waving alternatives like FreeBSD and OpenBSD as proof that Linux isn’t the only game in town. Translation for non-nerds: critics said, if you hate the big project, other options exist — they just take work. The funniest running theme? A sort of collective shrug-meme: “Nobody is forcing you to use Linux.” So while the article tried to spark a big conversation about power and control, the comments turned it into a dramatic brawl over whether this is a real structural problem or just another case of people being mad online at the guy in charge.
Key Points
- •The article argues that open-source software projects can develop monopoly or monopsony characteristics despite being open source.
- •It uses Linux and the conduct of its leadership as an example of how a major OSS project can become highly centralized in practice.
- •The article says monolithic project structure makes forking extremely expensive or effectively impossible, which it describes as anticompetitive.
- •It proposes breaking large OSS projects into smaller interoperable sub-projects connected by standard protocols.
- •It cites UNIX as an example of a resilient and long-lived system built from interoperable components.