Opinion: Open-source should stay away from all kinds of politics | Hacker News Reader

Opinion: Open-source should stay away from all kinds of politics

techtudor.blogspot.com

Look no further than Webpack shutting down their website and documentation then angrily dismissing POCs who are concerned they can't do their jobs. [1] In the same light, they shut down all of the incredibly respectful criticism they received, mostly centered around not having the website accessible after dismissing the message. [2]

[1] https://github.com/webpack/webpack.js.org/issues/3765

[2] https://github.com/webpack/webpack.js.org/issues/3762

Have we reached a point where open source will throw POC developers under the bus in order to score political virtue points?

It's a total trainwreck, and politics is used as a weapon in open source against political enemies through shut downs, egregious code of conduct policies and arbitrary enforcement actions.

When a company provides a service I expect them to continue doing so unless there's a case of "force majeure".

By all means support whatever causes you believe in, write a blog post, donate to the cause and (most importantly - which is what a lot of companies conveniently omit in the case of BLM) fix your own internal issues related to that cause.

But if you're going to degrade the service you promised to provide as some sort of "support" it is just bullshit virtue-signaling and it is actively hurting people including those that are part of the cause you're supporting.

This is an open-source project so there's no liability or warranty attached to it and we have no right to expect anything, but nevertheless I will definitely keep this in mind next time I have to pick a technology or library and will make sure to evaluate them not only on their technical merits but also on their propensity to such bullshit.

Exactly, they have no obligation to keep the docs and website accessible but are they really winning people over or bringing more awareness to this issue by preventing you from working?

It's obvious even they know their actions can't stand up to basic scrutiny, hence the immediate locking of the threads and even suspension of someone for daring to have the opinion that they shouldn't be doing it.

A dismissable banner for the cause that doesn't screw your users? Far less objectionable. It's baffling they went down that route, and it's emblematic of ideology clouding judgement.

Isn't webpack open source? I mean seriously, most devs I know aren't paying them a dime to use it...so stop complaining.

Use something else if you don't like it. Why does it matter how many people use webpack if their just an open source library providing a service to all devs for free?

Webpack's website and marketing clearly tries to get us to use it, so although it's open source, the author (and contributors) from the project have an interest in people using their software.

In this case, they kind of pulled a bait and switch. They encouraged everyone to use it and then are letting them down by preventing them from using it efficiently on the basis of their own political beliefs.

It wouldn't be a problem if the project was advertised at the start as one person's work that comes with no guarantee of maintenance, support and if the guy suddenly goes crazy (whether because of political beliefs or otherwise) he might take down the project.

This one on the other hand looks serious, has good marketing, corporate sponsors, etc so while you can't ask for more, you at least kind of expect a serious project relied upon by thousands to not degrade existing stuff on the basis of political beliefs.

It's fine if you want to decide how your project is used (even for political reasons) but the proper way to do so is via the license so potential users know what they're in for before they start using the library and will (usually) refrain from using the library if the license does not allow them. This on the other hand is just a bait and switch and has tons of collateral damage to parties unrelated to, or even part of the BLM movement.

Why does free and open source status exempt someone from criticism? They have the right to take actions to interfere with people's work for political reasons and I have the right to criticise those decisions.

If "free" was an excuse out of poor behavior then surely Google and Facebook are exempt from criticism about data collection practices because they provide free services.

Hoping this is satire or somer sort of joke....but otherwise,

Popular open source developers are using their platforms to advocate against oppression. This should be encouraged, not discourage - regardless of what your political leanings are.

Would you be just as upset if they wrote #AllLivesMatter? Probably not.

This post is using open source as a thinly veiled guise to rant about "SJW"s (the use of that term alone should disqualify it). This shouldn't be on HN.

> open source developers are using their platforms to advocate against oppression. This should be encouraged, not discourage - regardless of what your political leanings are.

What one person calls 'oppression' is another person's freedom. A drug-free society/the 'war on drugs' versus freedom of choice. Second amendment activists versus gun control. Freedom of expression versus various laws which either forbid or mandate the use of certain types of expression.

I have personally been denounced on social media for asking the question:

"How is 'all lives matter' divisive in any way?"

The response was "Oh, well, you know."

No, really, I don't. "All" seems like an inclusive quantifier.

The best understanding I can reach is that many of the arguments in circulation these days are NOT rational in nature.

Its divisive because it attempts to dismiss as invalid the notion that one racial group suffers a disproportionate targeting by police. It denies that racism is a problem or at best equates the problems faced by police to the problems created by police violence toward black people. When you say all lives matter, you're basically looking at these millions of people who are working toward making the world less hostile toward black people and saying "you're stupid, you're the racists."

"All lives matter" is divisive because "black lives matter" is a statement that black lives are largely devalued and forgotten in a system of institutionalized racism. "Black lives matter" leaves off the implied "too": "black lives matter, too."

> "WTF is the impulse behind changing #BlackLivesMatter to #AllLivesMatter. Do you crash strangers' funerals shouting I TOO HAVE FELT LOSS" - @arthur_affect on Twitter

I feel as though this discussion has more to do with the control over the discussion than with the content of either phrase.

Well, yes? That is, the phrase "all lives matter" seems like it's often used as a way to take control away from the discussion about largely devalued and forgotten black lives.

If you want an explanation better than "Oh well, you know", you might start with the criticism section of its Wikipedia entry, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Lives_Matter#Criticism .

I'd rephrase that as 'free software should not do any politics which goes outside of the specific issues which it was created to influence', i.e. issues around copyright law, freedom of expression and related areas. Software licences should be free of politics other than those mentioned areas, both to avoid weakening the licence as well as to avoid fractioning the free software landscape into political factions. Free software developers are of course free to do politics but it should be made clear that any political expression outside the mentioned areas is done on a personal note and does not represent the project - something which can be hard to do for 1-person projects.

The author is complaining about the twitter accounts of open source contributors. Should they withhold their views on justice because it offends some of their followers?

Yes, weakening free licenses with constraints aligned to individual causes is problematic but that doesn't mean we should ignore all other issues of justice outside of those related to ownership and control. If anything, we need more conversations about the increasing inequalities and injustices caused by technology and the role we play within that. How can we do that without having "political" discussions in public? Why shouldn't entire open source communities have these discussions collectively?

Anyone who claims that Black Lives Matter is a Democratic party initiative and uses "SJW" unironically should not be taken seriously.

While I agree on the BLM issue I do not see an issue in the use of the term 'SJW' given that the term does describe an actual phenomenon which is found in the Oxford dictionary. You might not agree with the interpretation - while it initially was used as a badge of honour by people who described themselves as such the term has taken on a more negative connotation in the last years - but that does not preclude others from using it nor does it imply that those people should not be taken seriously. Debate them on the merit of their position instead, either you or they may be enlightened.

I agree it in general. There's a workaround for affected people

> fmad89: DOCS LIVES MATTER!

Once it's alive, it's immortal on web archives. e.g.

https://web.archive.org

https://archive.is

> Do they think that democrats are more left leaning and thus supportive of open source than republicans?

Is this satire? I'm blown away otherwise.

No, this is not what they think, obviously.

The call is for developers to recognize the potential for abuse of the software they write, to use their means and their platforms to speak out against oppression, and to generally not be huge pieces of shit under the guise of purported software neutrality.

This post is extremely low quality. It lacks meaningful content, is basically just a "SJWs are ruining open source!" rant, and is poorly edited. I think this has no place on HN.

The user could be China's secret service. The Pentagon with a new mind control hack. You can't be apolitical, sorry. You have to stand for somethind and Open Source stands for equal access rights. Yes you can have no opinion in other matters excepting "equal access rights" but it's getting harder and harder to do so.

Free software is decidedly a political movement.

"open source" started in the 1990s, not as "an attempt to escape the clutches of proprietary and monopolistic companies like Microsoft and Apple" but as a way to make the source code part of the free software movement more palatable in proprietary and monopolistic companies like Microsoft and Apple.

And the GNU project started in 1983, before Microsoft or Apple had anything like their current influence. Apple didn't ship the first Macintosh until 1984, for example, and the Apple ][ opened computing domains far unlike the walled gardens outside of microcomputing.

If you go into open source to make the world a better place, then that's a political statement. Which might also explain why some open source programmers consider that open source development might not be the only way to make the world a better place.

There are of course other reasons that people go into open source. My statement is that there's no clear and obvious separation between the two.

I think a lot of people read "political" as a synonym of "Partisan" and use that as a filter (or maybe excuse?) to not engage meaningfully with the content of the discussion.

Any activity related to changing or reinforcing the balance of power in a society is a political action as is any effort to prevent injustice. Free software is a movement to give more power to users and so is, by definition, a political movement

These events are good for one thing though: expanding your own personal blacklist of companies, organizations, people etc. Like Sony being openly racist and tripling down on that.

Do people actively do this? My politics are so "off-center" that I'd starve to death in the street if I only associated with people and companies whom I agreed with politically.

How do you even keep track? If someone asked me the political stances of my closest colleagues or largest software partners I couldn't even tell you.

There was a time when companies were just companies and politically neutral. That was truly a good time. If they play this misguided game I think it's only fair to punish them. It's just baffling that even the giants do this - Coca Cola Germany or Siemens as examples.

Okay, I'll bite - when was this time? Because I can't think of any.

Consider how many companies were not politically neutral on the issue of worker's rights and unionization. Or neutral on employing members of the Communist party.

Or, quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_newspapers - "The Republican party was especially effective in building a network of newspapers in major cities to broadcast its statements and editorialize in its favor."

That certainly sounds like the newspaper companies of the early 1800s weren't politically neutral.

Well newspaper companies are kind of special, no? They very often have vocal and official slants.

But I think it's questionable if beverage or kitchen appliance companies should align themselves with a political party. That will by definition alienate some customers. And historically I have a hard time of seeing this prior to the last 10 or so years.

That was simply the clearest, least controversial example I could think of.

I seemed to have missed this controversy - what are you talking about with beverage companies aligning themselves with a political party?

In any case, Coors seems like an appropriate historical example, what with the Coors family involvement in CO and conservative politics, and the long boycott against Coors - https://www.cpr.org/2014/10/03/the-coors-boycott-when-a-beer...

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