You do raise some interesting points. I’ll admit I do have some bias (same as most westerners, probably) towards conflating Russia/Eastern Europe’s current situation with being the result of communism directly when it’s more likely that it’s a result of a communist country not being able to directly adopt a capitalist system without turmoil.
I am still skeptical of USSR’s regime in the matter of individual freedoms (which Karl Marx did not want to infringe on, distinguishing between private property and personal property AFAIK) and human rights, which I greatly value, but I’ll admit I was wrong regarding scientific/industrial/societal progress, even under Stalin.
Note that I do respect Lenin’s ideals somewhat, even though he never lived long enough to put them into practice and I do respect some policies enacted by later communist leaders, such as Khrushchev’s housing plans, it’s Stalin that I take offense to, mostly. And while you might argue that later leaders had their wings “cut” by the Cold War and US interference, I don’t think you can really make that argument for pre-WW2/Stalin-era USSR.
I believe so, am I wrong? Do note that I’m talking about results for the people themselves, I understand that the country industrialized fairly efficiently in the 20’s, but at the expense of a lot of suffering for minority groups mostly (Russians were the ones really favored, making it sort of an elitist/pseudo-fascist regime in a sense) and with little to show in terms of wealth distribution for the proletariat, which is, in essence, the goal of communism, is it not? An elite class centered around Stalin still prevailed and retained a lot of wealth, they merely traded the imperial elite for a new class of elites…
or did a very influential, wealthy and powerful country go out of it’s way to make sure the USSR failed and then say…“look, it didn’t work for them!”
I get what you’re saying, but the US was mostly a geopolitically irrelevant country before WW2 (which was the event that really put them on the world stage), and by then the USSR had already existed for more than two decades, with little positive results to show. That was also the era of Holodomor and other such atrocities perpetrated by Stalin. You may argue that Stalin was not a true communist and more of a thinly veiled imperialist (and psychopath), and I agree, but many modern communists won’t agree with that sentiment and will still defend Stalin’s actions.
Personally I think they dealt with the issue rather well. It would be best at this time to focus on the key foundational issues behind what allowed the core team to disregard the code of conduct as they (allegedly) did and increase accountability for them rather than engage on a witch hunt which would only serve to further increase schisms in the community and incite unrest. We have plenty of examples in FOSS where such behavior has led to failed projects and forks.
FOSS also involves licensing software so that modifications remain libre in the foreseeable future. Same reason why Android or Chromium might be open-source but aren’t exactly considered FOSS.