With the caveat I’m technical not legal… Its largely kept data caps off domestic lines, but not entirely. Net neutrality has had a couple taking points and its a long fight at the FCC that’s gotten weirder by the decade.
Net neutral meant Microsoft couldn’t make the MSN dial up network prefer windows network traffic, over the years companies got smart and just opted to pay for peering instead of running the low profit access tunnel.
Google even drops boxes to cache stuff at tiny ISPs/WISPs, but doesn’t deprioritize traffic to other end points.
There have been intermittent swings at labeling this the pay to play it is, but since the investment isn’t spilling out of public works there’s a decent case this is the fastest you could give out access to everyone.
Source: am former network closet guy who racked google cache devices, installed WISP equipment, legal layman.
Fair.
I think in asking myself why I’ve never really held Linus conduct against him; he’s this weird 1:1 situation.
He’s unfortunately tasked with stewarding a project that runs the planets tech and it’s his name on the tin. Which whether he likes it or not at this point, makes his identity wrapped up in the quality of the project. I absolutely don’t condone the behavior, but I can understand how people handing you shit sandwiches becomes a personal attack of it’s own over time.
It’s probably a lesson we’ll refuse to learn about not doing this single leader thing again. Time and insularity tend to make bigger assholes of us all.