By Don Durham
The accompanying image has been making the rounds on Facebook and Twitter. If your social media consumption has not increased during quarantine, even casual use may have been enough for you to have seen it. It caught my eye for longer than the typical passing meme and I read the whole thing. The underlying ethos of Ubuntu was not new to me, but it was not something I could claim to have given much regular thought – except as of late, perhaps by coincidence.
My most pleasing personal hobbies in recent years have involved back-filling the gaping hole of non-existent technological skill I didn’t acquire in pursuit of an undergrad degree in Religious Education and an M. Div. The latest iteration of back-filling that hole has been satisfying the desire to learn more about how computers work, how to use them and how to write my own programs. As I began to dip my toes into learning to write computer code, I encountered the idea that I might be better off using a different computer operating system than Windows in which to practice. That led to my discovery of the Linux operating system and its various versions aimed at different user groups. Since Linux is free to end users, I started loading various versions of it on an old laptop in place of the pre-loaded Windows instructions and started playing and experimenting.
No one dips far into that pool before discovering that one of the most popular distributions of Linux is called Ubuntu. A few simple google searches reveal that the most common use of the word “Ubuntu” in America’s digital public square, is in reference to the various releases of the Ubuntu software. (Of course, in addition to a couple of Google searches, I also did an analysis of recent twitter uses of #Ubuntu and #Ubuntueconomics with code written in Python and executed on a machine running Linux Mint 20.4.)
The results are clear. If an American is using the word Ubuntu on social media, or in an article, it is more likely than odds of nine to one, that they are talking about an open source software tool with a rebellious streak as it is that they are referencing an egalitarian cultural ethos and humanist economic philosophy all rolled into one.
I have to admit that I cringed a bit when I first saw it. The use of the word as the name of a software tool can easily read as an appropriated trivialization of the word. Perhaps no matter how else we might read it, it is also always that too.
While I’m aware that it’s not my place to pass judgment on the propriety of uses of the word Ubuntu, I am trying to answer my own question about how to understand more fully any potential significance of this use. My hope is that this emergence of the word Ubuntu is more significant that the unavoidable cringe. I didn’t learn until writing this reflection that Linux was, in some significant measure, the result of a philosophical rebellion against consumerism in the tech sector. It was driven by folk who were more interested in the idea that society should be pushing technology for the benefit of humanity rather than for the mere ability of a few to profit.
While later additions to the ongoing Linux project are likely written for “free” by developers who are paid to write code, (It’s just that the code they write on the job to solve their own problems is also offered freely to the rest of the user community – like sharing recipes.) most of the early, core software of the Linux operating system was written by volunteers. They were provided little to no other compensation than the professional street “cred” and the personal satisfaction of participating in such a well-known and highly regarded project.
They wanted to be a part of helping make free tools that would equip people to explore and expand their own skills and knowledge because we're all better off when more people can do that with fewer impediments. It wasn’t that they wanted to start doing these things. The culture of computer engineering had always been inclined toward freely sharing solutions. Sharing software isn’t actually the anomaly at play in this story. The Johnny-come-lately-idea in computer software is that anyone would be allowed to write and sell software that even the purchaser couldn’t freely use after buying it. That’s the creeping virus the Linux coding community was trying to hold at bay. It is a fascinating story that pokes huge holes in the popular narrative that a proprietary financial profit motive is necessary for anything worthwhile to be accomplished.
Existence was Linux’s first challenge. It’s harder than you think to give something valuable away for free when the marketplace has been trained to mistrust anything not purchased at an inflated price. Add to that the fact that Linux had a fairly elite core of original users and has earned a reputation for being a lot of trouble to anyone who wasn't fairly skilled with computer tech. It is not unlike what people always say about the British sport car, the MG, "They're really fun cars if you're enough of a mechanic to keep them running!" Linux has come a long way in not requiring elite skill to be a satisfied user. I have two religion degrees and I manage.
The Linux desktop software, Ubuntu, is one of the reasons that last bit is true. Ubuntu (among others) is a user interface that makes using Linux feel a LOT like using Windows. That fact generates a fair bit of snark from the original “command line” users who used Linux when it was like walking to school up hill in the snow both ways. However, it also means that a far wider audience of users who inherited familiarity with Windows from their families and education now have much easier access to a whole suite of fully developed, FREE tools with which to explore productive uses of computers at far lower cost than having to purchase expensive software packages on their own.
We are all better off when more people are equipped as well as possible to access the things they need or want to do. Making that kind of access available in the worlds of computer hardware and software was part of the philosophical orientation that drove the early development teams who created Linux and left it open source for everyone else. That makes the use of the word Ubuntu as a one-word summary of what they’d done make more sense to me as messaging about the tools (not products) they’d offered their users (not customers). Mark Shuttleworth, the person who named the Ubuntu desktop was South African. Surely, he knew the history. It’s still not my place to pass judgment on whether it was honest homage rather than opportunistic appropriation, but I’m sitting with the question.
Neither the word nor the ideas of Ubuntu are new. They have roots in several South African languages and have had regular, focused political use in African unification and decolonization movements since the early 1950’s. Ubuntu was the theme of Nelson Mandela’s administration and was one of the organizing principles of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission led by Desmond Tutu. The idea of Ubuntu is often translated into English as, “I am because we are.”
Ubuntu is new only to Americans. After all, if anyone wants Americans to pay attention to a conversation, it had better have a profitable economic component – or disrupt one. The Linux story, while not the whole story, does seem a worthy case in which to consider our commitment to the idea that a profit-driven motive is the only feasibly scalable political economy for accomplishing worthwhile objectives or outcomes in our lives together. The economy of solidarity and mutual investment has thoroughly and persistently demonstrated merit as well.
The continuing growth of Linux's acceptance among users, even while swimming upstream against the norms of bringing software to market, is a testimony to the fact that we can function as an economy that equips people to thrive on a large scale, without having to depend on simultaneously needing to commodify people for profit. If we will.
But will we? And, if we did, what might it look like? Not just metaphorically, but practically. What would it look like to live into a political and cultural economy of mutual investment and relentless encouragement in practical, daily grind terms for working Americans? It’s easy to see the idealism of Ubuntu in saying we’re going to provide “free tools” to everyone who wants to explore and expand their knowledge and creativity – by learning to use computers. What about my nephew? He’s a mechanic.
My nephew is the last person on the planet with whom I would have expected to have a philosophically reflective conversation about the potential for “Ubuntu” in American economics. So, he was the first person I got in touch with as I began to ask this necessarily more practical question. He will not be embarrassed for me to tell you that he lives his life pretty far to the ideological right on most spectra of issues and doesn’t have much patience for conversations about giving stuff away for free to anybody.
I sent him a text to call me when he had a minute to talk. Within the hour, I was asking him if he’d seen the meme. He hadn’t. I described it, read it, and gave a little context for the word and ideas of Ubuntu. In my description to him, I summarized it as a foundational belief that relentless encouragement and mutual investment are better strategies for making people, and communities of people, than punishment and struggle.
He agreed that he could imagine how powerfully transformative it would be to go through an actual experience like the one described in the meme. I told him I might write about this but had questions I needed to run by a new, professional mechanic to help resolve the apparent gap between how all this plays out in the digital world vs. the greasy world first. He was game.
“Is it still true that mechanics are expected to provide their own personal tools even when they work in someone else’s shop?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. No doubt. I’ve got over $5,500 invested in tools. I mean, I bought a nicer toolbox than I had to at first, but I knew I would never regret it. Some shops have common tools, but they’re usually crappy and they never have what you need. You gotta’ bring your own if you want to get any work done. Oh, and some include a tool allowance with your pay – but it’s usually like, $50 a month.”
Then I asked him, “How long did it take you to get what you really needed to do your job?”
He responded, “Couple of years really. I had some things already – bought more in school – but it was a couple of years when I was just buying tools after I started.”
“So,” I asked, “you spent a couple of years not really having any money left over to go out to eat, or buy another pair of boots, or do – pretty much anything – and not really always having what you needed to do your job?”
“Yeah, I had a couple of good friends who let me borrow stuff when I needed to.”
“Okay, here’s my question: How much better off would EVERYONE have been if you had gotten a complete set of tools when you graduated so you could actually be a productive participant in the community on Day One? Now, the nicer toolbox is still on you buddy. We’ll get you started and you can upgrade as you like but, you know, ‘Here are your tools – get to work!’”
“Well, I’m not asking anybody to give me anything – but, yeah, that would’ve been a lot better for me.”
I continued, “Of course you’re not asking anyone to give you anything; but it’s not just about giving YOU something! It’s about how much better off we’d have all been, and faster, if we’d figured out how to equip you at the same time we educated you and had the foresight to stand around you and say, ‘We’re proud of what you’ve learned and the skills you’ve demonstrated and, just in case one of our cars breaks down on the way home, we want to be sure you can fix it! Here are the tools you’ll need.’ Sure, the cost of your education would’ve gone up on the front end, but it’s easy to see the added cost of a set of tools as a small price to pay, and one very much worth paying. By allowing you to start from a position of thriving rather than striving, we’d have all been better able to thrive too. Yeah, you had help here and there, and I know you’re grateful for it, but it was all pretty random. We should’ve figured out how to make sure it was ‘baked in.’ I’m sorry we didn’t figure that out. You deserved better, and so did we.”
I promised to keep him posted if the conversation became an article. He has approved the summary of our conversation above.
My earliest teacher in theology and ethics was Jack Partain, my professor at what was then Gardner-Webb College, now University. I asked him late in my senior year: “What makes it all matter? I love sitting around and talking about all of this theology, but when does it ever make a difference in the real world beyond just talking about it when we wake up in the morning and put our feet on the ground?”
He turned to face me with that intense fiery grin he sometimes savored when a student had arrived at an important question and decided to ask it. He locked eyes and said one word, “Ethics.”
He let me sit in my confusion for a moment as I tried to unpack the word, then began to help. “Questions like, ‘Who are we going to be in the world? How are we going to live in the world with one another? What will we do with everything we have to live out those truths?’”
I looked back, “That’s everything.”
“Exactly.” He replied.
Those are still the questions I’m asking: What are we going to do with everything we have to live in the world in the ways say we want to? How will we answer that as individuals and how will we organize our answers as communities?
The revolutionary geeks answered the question of how to stand around people in their world and give them the tools they need to help us all thrive by creating Linux.
What will it look like for you, in your world, to start, or find, or join a revolution of standing around people like mechanics, and teachers, and caregivers, and – everyone else – to give them the tools they need to help us all thrive?
— Don Durham is a dedicated farmer who grows food for poor people. He is also a writer, preacher, father, and a keen observer on the church and society.
