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Comment by speak_plainly | Hacker News Reader

That OSS has become too entangled with political activism and ideological gatekeeping, when it should be about making great software, giving people control over their computers, and rediscovering the joy of computing.

I don't think Omarchy is anti-political so much as an attempt to revive the enthusiast/hacker ethos of the OSS community.

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"Freedom to compute" cannot be separated from "Freedom to exist" as it explicitly depends on it. The authors of Omarchy pay lip service to the former while taking a stance against the latter.

Fully agreed. I have yet to encounter someone who is claiming something elss and is not privileged enough to just not need to worry about this. Ignorance doesn't reduce the political tech entanglement, it just... ignores it. Which is fine, do whatever. But don't claim it's not related.

> I have yet to encounter someone who is claiming something elss and is not privileged enough to just not need to worry about this

1000x this

People who say they don’t need their rights guaranteed do that because they never realised they were protected their whole lives.

No, it is definitely possible to make great software without inserting messaging on irrelevant issues into it. Whatever the quality of Omarchy, DHH is right about parts of the free software world becoming entangled worth various irrelevant causes.

I have a feeling the right to exist might be something very relevant to a lot of people.

This equivocation on the word "exist" doesn't work anymore. It's not 2018 anymore. Normal people with common sense understand that keeping politics separate from technology isn't the same thing as existential violence. Nobody, to "exist", needs to make software political.

I feel like ironically their whole thing is doing exactly that, except in the other direction…

Take one glance at history, and you'll see that having a sovereign ethnic homeland is crucial to that "freedom to exist". So you're wrong on both counts - they are also taking a stance for the latter, and the two freedoms can be separated. Distributing FOSS does not require one takes a stance on every ethnic and political conflict on Earth. The GNU manifesto never once talks about the occupation of Tibet. This "cannot be separated" is nothing but a cheap attempt to attach your own cause to some other, more widely accepted cause.

> Take one glance at history, and you'll see that having a sovereign ethnic homeland is crucial to that "freedom to exist".

United States disproves this harebrained theory.

Like climbing free solo once disproves the need for a safety rope.

> Distributing FOSS

FOSS never was about the right of the distributor. It’s been always about protecting the user. The way to do it is to give the users a set of rights that cannot be revoked.

Maybe DHH should live by his own ethos and "shut up and program" rather than continually making divisive political statements that alienate people who might otherwise use and contribute to his distro.

I don’t think he’ll refrain from using the political power he amassed by building a very popular web framework. We gave him a megaphone and a soapbox, and he’ll use it.

We probably should have known better.

Is that not what he's doing? Where on any Omarchy page have you seen "divisive political statements that alienate people"?

> That OSS has become too entangled with political activism

Wait is that really the spin that DHH is pushing? That'd be insane given he's among the most politically active open sources developers put there by a wiiide margin.

Oh, but you see, when it’s their own points of view, it’s never politics.

'OSS "became" too entangled with political activism'

Statements dreamed up by people who get gilliganed by a coconut every morning.

> Omarchy is...an attempt to revive the enthusiast/hacker ethos of the OSS community.

...By injecting it with big money and pushing more AI slop?

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