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Comment by joejoe638 | Hacker News Reader

This is about being productive and weighing the overall value of things.

The politicisation of software is as harmful as requiring every research paper to be published with a political allegiance banner.

Software like most Sciences, Engineering, and, Trade is a much longer game for humanity than politics de jour.

It is easy to forget the extent of contributions from all sides of politics that has contributed to this trade, from Mohammed Algorithm to English, Russian, Chinese, and, everyone else to computing; but forgetting that and forging that for quick political hack points is a disservice to humanity.

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>Software like most Sciences, Engineering, and Trade are much longer game for humanity than politics de jour.

Not really, software, like sciences and engineering must survive politics first. If humans start tossing around nukes like angry apes then those that survive may be scratching simple arithmetic with a charcoal stick on a cave wall.

This take is completely blind to how sciences has worked throughout history of humanity and specifically post major world wars.

Additionally, it is based on a false notion that political banners in software helps in pursuing anyone let alone change political outcomes.

Science has absolutely engaged in the politics du jour, including in major world wars. See, for example, the Szilárd petition[1]. (If you need a post-WWII example, those same scientists continued petitioning after the war on the dangers of nukes, too.)

Further, political banners in software have absolute helped, and have changed political outcomes. As an example of that, SOPA, and later PIPA, were defeated by websites such as Wikipedia (which are software) putting banners aimed at informing the public of those bills.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szil%C3%A1rd_petition

A petition and including your political opinions whenever you engage in your trade or profession is not the same.

This is the entire point and objection with politicisation of everything.

> whenever you engage in your trade or profession is not the same

Feels like this is overstating the facts. Afaik, twice did the author on N++ did include a small political message in a release.

Is it really "whenever"? Blowing this out of proportions because some are so allergic to any political message that twice in 10 years is being pushy..

In the end, everything involving more than 2 humans is politics. You may want to ignore some topics, but those may be important to others. Until the day you yourself want to bring some attention but you're met with an "apolitical" response saying it's not the time or place for it.

Only for the ideologue every interaction must be burdened by partisan politics.

Are you really burdened because the N++ author put a small text inside their software, pertaining to current events?

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