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Comment by mattstir | Hacker News Reader

> which itself is fine, all software is political

I don't mean to get distracted from the topic at hand, but is that really true? If I create my own software stack for the TRMNL display I received as a gift because I think it's fun and interesting, is that a political statement? What politics does that involve? If someone makes a small Rust library that implements some days structure and a few hundred people find it useful, what political stance is intrinsically baked in by the author?

It's exhausting to go through life if you think every field is a battlefield.

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> If someone makes a small Rust library that implements some days structure and a few hundred people find it useful, what political stance is intrinsically baked in by the author?

Giving away for free things of value, contributing your work without compensation is a political action.

As for your trmnl project - how can you make your own software? Are the specs open? Do you use a free and/or open toolchain?

Is there are risk patents might deny you any of this?

Whole world is political.

It's easy to think things are "apolitical" when resting on the laurels of the results of political struggles and revolutions that brought us to where we are.

The idea that you should be able to create and own your intellectual efforts, and to do so without coercion.

> political statement?

> If I create my own software stack for the TRMNL display I received as a gift

Should you own what you create? Should you BE able to create? freely?

Should you be able to give and gift freely?

> some days structure

How do you think days are defined? Think "July" is a name that came absent of politics? What about October?

Saturday and Sunday are weekends? Since when did weekends exist as we understand and enjoy them without the action of political actors (union workers striking and other people fighting for labor rights).

What holidays are holidays? Which are national holidays? Those are all political.

Did you consider that your ancestors who went through those struggles fought so that you wouldn't have to? If your Sundays and holidays consist of nothing but self flagellation, guilt and reflection for the privileged life you lead, maybe you ought to chill a little and focus on something more constructive. Believe it or not, but going outside and touching grass can be apolitical.

Having green spaces in cities, with grass to touch, is also political

> It's exhausting to go through life if you think every field is a battlefield.

You don't have to think every field as a battlefield, but your choices are affected by and are about your beliefs and stance.

For example, some people believe that going all SaaS for everything in their life is not bad, and they can afford that, so they do that.

I personally don't trust companies much, and value my freedom a lot. So I self host the things I can and find valuable. I have my small infra which is not accessible from open internet, and I install services there if I want them to be unavailable to the public.

I mean, nobody will try to get my mundane code from my hands, but having it in a box in front of me makes me happier and feel better, so I do it.

Also, stances doesn't have to be loud/violent/up to the nose. You can be yourself with your own stance, and build it calmly and slowly. You can be just happy about achieving what you wanted to achieve.

On the other hand, software licenses are of course political and the issue can get heated and gets heated semi-regularly. We're humans and being opposed to each other in various forms is our base nature.

So, don't stay at DEFCON 1 all the time, but aware that range from 1 to 5 is always a possibility.

> is that really true?

Since I don't really believe in a universal right or wrong sentiment, I'll just say I think it depends on each person's own interpretation/definition of the word politics.

I don't personally care what people define it as to them, but if I were to look in my dictionary, I personally interpret that definition to mean "any time someone tries to influence others."

Now... we could argue that software by definition is trying to force people to only use it in a certain way (the way it's written or how it executes), and that that is by definition, political. We could also argue that bug reports and feature requests are also political because you are trying to influence the developer or community of a project in how they run things.

Not everyone is going to agree with those conclusions, and that's ok, because IMO there isn't a simple "right" or "wrong" answer.

Politics is how we decide things as groups. It’s not something to fear, hate, or despise, but something to be aware of.

> It's exhausting to go through life if you think every field is a battlefield.

This is really the whole conversation. 'Everything is political' is literally true (they mean downstream of politics, in some sense) but it's really only brought up habitually like this to create a political conflict. Everything is also downstream of water, but it doesn't give me the right to flood your house.

Isn't there always a political angle in the act of creating software?

In essence the human right and ability to learn and change and wield computers at an unlocked and low level is a policy decision.

What if governments said programs must be from companies and users should not be allowed to write their own programs, operating systems must be locked down to keep users safe or some bs 'think of the children' excuse.

Especially Linux and OSS is a political manifesto design specifically to stop this kind of government overreach from taking root. It would certainly benefit shareholders of large computer companies to the detriment of the individual user's freedoms.

It's easy to see a perspective like that where software is political. Politics is not a battlefield, that's an American two party system trick.

Seeing the word politics doesn't immediately mean bad or divisive.

I mean, yeah, you can't have politics in a vacuum. But any software that does anything interesting interfaces with the outside world at some point (via human proxy or otherwise).

That your TRMNL even allows you to write software for it is a choice (a cool one at that), and contributing to their ecosystem supports that choice.

The same people who love to push this "everything is political" drivel will also tell you that there "is no ethical consumption in capitalism". But somehow, in this particular instance, they feel compelled to impose an absolute purity test of your capitalist consumption regardless.

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