I think you may have read the parent's statistics backwards. Their point (correct or incorrect) was that younger academics are more accepting of the suppression of speech.
My only complaint with self-hosting matrix is that the canonical python implementation is quite resource-heavy. I was unable to run it on a cheap VPS. I hope that the ecosystem will improve in the future.
And similarly, some people are always hungry for an opportunity to villanize OpenAI. This kind of polarized, black-and-white thinking is not productive.
- Arch Linux isn't some fringe operating system full of zealots, it's one of the most popular Linux distribution (it was the most commonly used Linux distribution in the Steam hardware survey in April 2024, beating out Ubuntu). I think many people like it precisely because it takes an opinionated stance on issues such as these.
- You characterize people who ask for these features (for example in bug tracker) as "bullying" maintainers - the fact that such requests are common should show you how widespread support is for these ideas. It seems odd to procure feedback about what users want and then say, "well, that's not what they really want, it must just be a vocal minority".
- Directories like /use/local and /opt are not vestigial, they serve specific purposes. I don't think it's fair to call them a "holdover". For example, without /usr/local, how do you separate software compiled and installed by the user vs. from a package manager?
- I agree completely that containerization of apps is the future.