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Comment by SolaceQuantum | Hacker News Reader

What I find super interesting is that software development activism is not a new phenomenon (Eg. FOSS, letsencrypt, dragonfly) but that the activism has spread as the scope of technology has spread. Who you work for and where you work is itself a political act, which reminds me of being a “scab” (aiding anti-union efforts by accepting employment from a company who is trying to continue functioning during an ongoing labor strike, thereby weakening the union effort) which must’ve also been highly controversial at the time!

I don’t really know what will come from this but I’m super interested in seeing what will happen.

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It's not that the activism has spread, it's that the activism has become externally imposed on developers based on the politics of agitators, as opposed to internal industry politics and competition, and the tactics used have become much more hostile and aggressive.

Richard Stallman, for example, is extremely political. But any implied call for boycots and other sorts of direct action has always been with clear and specific reason that usually has to do with active moral violations by the company itself and not guilt by association. He clearly articulates what he considers to be moral violations on the part of companies such as Netflix and LinkedIn, and none of those violations involve merely doing business with an unpopular (among some) government agency. They almost entirely involve abuses of the provider/consumer relationship.

Meanwhile, he loudly advocates engaging in positive support of causes he cares about and rarely (if ever) advocates canceling an organization for mere association.

The change is not scope. The change is in how easy it has become to quickly organize a mob of people to lash out at a perceived enemy with the most convenient economic sanctions available.

” It's not that the activism has spread, it's that the activism has become externally imposed on developers based on the politics of agitators,”

Are these developers external?

The politics are external. The US-Mexico border situation is a controversial, hot-button political issue that has nothing to do with software except insofar as software is a generic essential element of operations at any businesses and government agency

Are the politics external when it’s coming from developers discussing things the industry is doing?

Lets say that the developers were calling for Github to stop any associations with hospitals providing abortions, would you still say that it is fine for companies to join in on politics? This is an extremely slippery slope, if you want your democracy to function then you don't want this kind of activism to exist.

It is warranted when the democracy is failing, but as far as I know USA is still holding fair elections at regular intervals.

Yes. If you still don't understand, I am sorry I do not think I will be able to explain further.

> Who you work for and where you work is itself a political act

This is correct, however, it does not follow that developers have the right to join an organization and force their political demands on management and ownership. Don't like working for a company that collaborates with your government? You're in luck! You're free to leave your job at any time and won't be penalized for it.

>it does not follow that developers have the right to join an organization and force their political demands on management and ownership

It actually does follow that they have a right to do that, as doing that is explicitly protected by US labor law as a concerted organizing activity.

Wrong

https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2016/07/polit...

Anyone at GitHub participating in this can be fired at any time.

Your own link proves you wrong. Starting with the following quote and proceeding from there, explaining exactly how what githubbers are doing would be protected:

>As interpreted by the NLRB, employee communications are "concerted" not only when he or she acts with or on the authority of other employees but also when the employee seeks to initiate, induce or prepare for group action or brings truly group complaints to management.

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