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Chinjut12/07/20251 replyview on HN

Why are we limiting ourselves to business concepts?


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zbentley12/08/2025

Not GP, but … because the overwhelming majority of programming is done in support of businesses selling things?

I’m not just talking about people who program for a living. The majority of academic CS chooses its research directions because of what limits people are running into for business; even privacy-focused software has been commoditized by many business; a large amount of OSS development is by (and often paid for by the employers of) people working for money; heck, after Linus’s initial “just a hobby OS” period even Linux’s contribution base was primarily driven by business needs (even if those needs influenced it via “contributor had a problem at work and committed a solution for it upstream in spare time” as often as “paid contributor upstreamed a change on behalf of their employer”).

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