How about funding GitHub so it has the ability to be picky and choosey about its contracts? It’s really easy to voice concern. But github can’t fund itself on concern.
Drafting an online petition like this is not too far off from storming someone’s place of work and asking them to forego their main means of survival. I understand the outrage over human rights abuses, but this isn’t the forum.
Yes it is the forum. No it's absolutely nothing like telling someone to "forego their means of survival".
The CEO of GitHub is not going to starve if he gets fired.
But Companies are not People. So this is a dumb metaphor.
Vote, protest [2], run for office [2]. No other actions provide for material change.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21274511 (Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work )
[2] https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_pdf_file/kyr_...
If they add an ethical vetting layer in there, ok, sure this one is an easy call. But people will continue to complain about other government agencies, foreign and domestic. People will complain about corporations who violate privacy or violate open source licenses or violate web standards. People will complain about non-profits who align with religious or political interests. People will complain about polluters and arms manufacturers or companies with ties to polluters or arms manufacturers.
Next thing you know, GitHub can't sell to the State Department or DOJ or Ford or GM or Maersk or Boeing or Shell or Aramco or Google or Facebook or McKinsey or so many others. And, I dunno, cutting those organizations out might be a great ethical move, but I'm not sure spending significant amounts of time investigating organizations and adjudicating the results and deciding NOT to make sales and dealing with the inevitable lawsuits is going to help GitHub make money.
You don't need to do any of that, just wait and let the angry mob tell you who to not do business with.