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Comment by selfsimilar | Hacker News Reader

"The language is intentionally neutral and apolitical, without any stance on social or political issues."

I don't applaud or condemn this, but it's strange that it's on the home and history pages. Putting this in a code of conduct document for collaborators might make sense, but on the home page? Maybe I'm the weird one, but for most languages I consider them a tool. So it's like going to the hardware store and seeing a hammer that has a label "This is not a Liberal or Conservative hammer." Yeah, buddy I know. It's just a hammer.

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It's kinda funny. There is a popular claim that goes something like "silence or inaction is implicit support for the status quo." The point is that there's not really such a thing as "not taking sides."

I don't quite agree with that, simply because no matter how many things you do take a stance on, there's always an infinite number of things that you haven't taken a stance on.

But when you go out of your way to explicitly mention that you're refusing to take a stance on all social or political issues, that actually does feel pretty close to explicit approval of the status quo for all social or political issues. Of course this likely was not the intent! So why say it at all?!

The stronger form of it is "Inaction in the face of oppression supports the oppressor."

I don't feel oppressed. I'm just happy with my life.

In this quote you'd be the one being inactive, not the oppressed nor the oppressor.

Youre not really helping yourself here

glad you dont feel oppressed though

> The language is intentionally neutral and apolitical, without any stance on social or political issues

TBH despite what it claims, to me it sounds like a political statement by itself.

(also it is usually the developers of a language -or other project- being judged about their actions/beliefs, not the languages/projects themselves :-P)

I was having doubts about this too. But in today's (geo)political climate it might be useful. Otherwise I can always delete it. But you're right, it's just a hammer.

and.. I want to avoid having to add a coc. Can try.

    - Why did you close your eyes ?
    - So that the room will be empty.

Your copy reads as "I'm a radical centrist and will die trying to preserve the status quo".

As it usually goes you'd then tolerate hateful, bigoted folks in the name of openness and Free Speech Absolutism™ (which is totally non-political /s) and chase away women, minorities and folks who care about them.

If this isn't your intention, a CoC is the way to go.

You regrettably can't make hate disappear by pretending it doesn't exist.

I dont care what you or anyone else thinks. I give you a free tool. That's all.

We need more people like this.

You've put it on a forge with issues and PRs open, which implies you expect external contributions.

I'm trying to warn you about the implicit message your copy sends.

It will chase away the folks I mentioned, and some day you'll discover that one of your non-political core contributors goes by @zyklon1488 on twitter.

>one of your non-political core contributors goes by @zyklon1488 on twitter

I think this is exactly what author meant? This is just a tool, private life or political opinions of contributors are not relevant, as long as they don't try to force them on other project members. The only thing that matters is the quality of submitted code.

But by doing this, you limit your talent pool to folks who accept to associate with hateful folks.

see this makes me think you have bad political views

I don’t think that’s fair. But i do get how others might read into that too.

Personally i read it more like “this project avoids having any political stance.” Similar to the HN guidelines on politics.

However i do agree that it’s better to remove that message and have no comment on politics, than to comment so visibly that you’re unwilling to comment. Even if you read charitably into the message, it’s still just a distraction on valuable page real estate.

Seems to be a newly emerging pattern, with now at least two examples. Here's the other one I'm aware of (from the Gleam programming language homepage):

Friendly As a community, we want to be friendly too. People from around the world, of all backgrounds, genders, and experience levels are welcome and respected equally. See our community code of conduct for more.

Black lives matter. Trans rights are human rights. No nazi bullsh*t.

[1] https://gleam.run/

I'm assuming it's referring to not using terms like "slave" or "master", etc etc. There isn't quite the same parallel when talking about a hammer.

There's always a loud someone who'll try to force their country's political issue du jour because "everything is political".

well that's what I want to avoid. What it means is that someone like xlibre-author could create a pr and I will not reject it.

I appreciate the desire to focus on the code.

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