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Comment by vlaube | Hacker News Reader

I liked UltraEdit back in my Windows days, but this story kind of put me off: http://www.ultraedit.com/company/IDM_full_story.html

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So, he's a god botherer, don't judge him for that.

Judge him like a proper 'hacker' would, and that's by the quality of his products and his code.

Matz is Mormon (and he's Japanese, seriously what's with that!), and Jamis Buck is also a well known programmer who is very religious.

I'm not into god myself, but we're programmers and let's judge each other on our works, not our beliefs.

Well said!

Don't let good technology go to waste just because of the "weirdness" of the people behind it. It reminds me of the people who thought it horrible to use ReiserFS after what happened.

Firstly, I agree with you BUT this is not about judging the quality of the code, it is about giving money, since this isn't open source. The question is why you would directly give money to someone which you know have a disagreeable outlook, I wouldn't give money to a known pedophile or racist either. If she would've been an open source contributor I wouldn't care.

This. But I should probably thank him, because after reading that I searched and found an editor that suited me better and was Open Source. :)

I only skimmed that "IDM story" page but found nothing which would make it appropriate to compare giving money to them with giving money to a pedophile or a racist. Did I miss something?

They are just examples of things he disagrees with, and not meant as a comparison. But yes, there are probably better examples in this context.

The point is that you don't have to support people you disagree with.

Since I clearly need to spell this out. What is appropriate is clearly subjective, I was taking it to the extreme in order to make a point. But I'll reiterate the same question. Why would you not disregard political or religious outlooks, or even crimes for that matter, when buying(i.e. giving money for) "stuff" from "vendor"?

I don't know if you'd get very far if you only traded with people with the same political beliefs as you, and would wager that nearly everyone you trade with is guilty of breaking some law on the books at some level.

I completely and utterly disagree with your comments, but if you were selling something useful to me, I'd consider it like any other product on the market.

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