alt Hacker News> Kill the capitalist in your head.
Who referenced capitalism? And do anarchists, socialists, communists, et al., never question the usefulness of a thing either?
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The difference is those groups promote culture for culture's sake. Capitalism does not. Culture is only promoted if there is profit to be made off promoting it. As such what culture exists is severely inorganic and dependent on market forces rather than being some proxy of the actual ideaspace of the community.
I mean it's not hard to understand where the author is coming from. It seems like these days even a hobby project has to meet some kind of 'is there a market for it' threshold of justifying its existence.
So your parent may've taken the 'is it useful' comments to mean 'if not, why even exist' but I got the sense they're more from people who are considering an install, even if just in a VM.
For those unaware, modern day capitalism is often marked by the drive for profit-generating utility in all things. The original comment was probably light hearted in saying some things can be done for fun.