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Comment by the_bear | Hacker News Reader

To be clear, we tell customers all the time that they shouldn't use our software. Each customer is worth $10/month, so it's not worth having people on the system that don't belong. This wasn't about the money at all, it was about the precedent it would set. How do we convince our other users that they can trust us if we're arbitrarily booting users because we disagree with them.

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They would start trusting you on your principals, if they didn't agree and you lost a customer, then it's a customer that didn't line up with what you as a person line up with, and therefore you shouldn't be worried about them.

Edit: Didn't really wrap up my final thought.

It's a really scary precedent to say that you can only use software if the software vendor's morals are compatible with your own morals.

Thought experiment: If the guys running Less Annoying CRM are strong atheists (note: I have no idea what their religious beliefs are), and this post was about whether or not they'd provide support for a devoutly christian customer, what would the reaction be? Would you still think it's ok for them to boot the customer because their principles don't mesh with their customer's?

Within the confines of this argument, it would depend on if the creators disagreed with the fundamental morals Christianity, or if they merely disagreed with the principles practiced by this specific branch of the religion. There can be a world of difference between The Church and a church, and that aside, it's illegal (in the US) to discriminate based on religion. It's not illegal to discriminate based on the actions of a group, religious or not.

Could you explicitly turn away all Christians? No. Could you turn away the Westboro Baptist Church? Yes. Morals are defined inside the law if you want to stay in business for very long.

As you've seen from the article, this is not "scary" in any way because most businesses will go for the money over compatibility with their moral views.

Also, advocating or even practicing exclusivity is not a precedent as it has been going on for centuries, in thousands of different forms.

Some of those most people disagree (e.g. there was a time a black man would not be served in many restaurants) and some of those people accept as completely valid (e.g. I'm sure there are many country clubs I'm not eligible to join).

It's scary precisely because software is different than physical establishments. If I frequent a restaurant, but one day they decide to impose their moral values and kick me out, I can always go somewhere else. But if I build my business on top of some vendor's platform, and then one day they decide to impose their moral values and kick me off, now my business is screwed.

Yes.

Just don't complain when all the religious customers go away.

What if it's a physical storefront? Would you be ok with, say, an ice cream parlor run by christians that put up a sign saying atheists are not welcome?

Note, this actually happened, and people were outraged. http://freethinker.co.uk/2011/11/23/missouri-ice-cream-shop-...

Again, yeah that would be fine with me, I'd go to a different ice cream parlor.

Another thing to consider, this guy that banned athiests, why not ban ALL other religions? Seems a bit hypocritical, but still, it's up to him.

(Yes I'm aware that religious discrimination is illegal.)

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