- You think homosexual are pedophiles?
- It's not important what he thinks about homosexuals. You're going to support him by using his software.
If he had held the same hate speech about women in 2014, everyone would be here talking how imbecile this guy is.
Your comment about "support him by using his software" is just silly.
Lots of creators in this world have had less than flattering opinions in different topics, but does not take away what they produced.
I can still enjoy Wagner regardless of his views on the jews. I don't have to reformat all my ReiserFS based hard drives after Reiser murdered his wife. And The Pianist by Roman Polanski is an absolute masterpiece, even though Polanski raped that poor girl.
So I evaluate SRC based on merits, not the creators.
I don't think it's fair to dismiss it as silly.
The only difference is that you don't care about those opinions because either you don't know about them or you don't think it is important. But they still exist.
Do you check the political views of all authors of each software before you decide to use it? What if those views (or your own) change over time and you disagree with them?
I mean, the fact that we're discussing ESR's views on pedophilia shows that his influence in an unrelated area (software) increases the exposure of those views. If he was just a nobody like me, would we be discussing his blog post on Catholic priests? Not likely.
Do you check the political views of all authors of each software before you decide to use it?
I sure don't, but why does that mean one should actively ignore gained knowledge?
But I think the main reason is that most software has more than one author, and it would be unfair to judge the usefulness of that software based on the (non-technical) views of just one of its authors.
Your reasoning would apply only for single-author software, and TBH I would consider those pet-projects anyway, and I don't think the original author would care much whether you use it or not.
Edit: about gained knowledge: I think you could apply this if you compare multiple competing solutions, one deciding factor could be the author's thoughts on various topics. Just like how a company's attitude towards various topics might be influencing your purchasing decision: for example Nvidia doesn't support open-source drivers, hence I don't buy Nvidia when choosing a graphics card.
But again for me those are all technical reasons, I wouldn't factor an author's/company's political views into that decision, unless it was something really horrible.
But doesn't that fit SRC itself?
But again for me those are all technical reasons, I wouldn't factor an author's/company's political views into that decision, unless it was something really horrible.
Ah! But then you're not arguing whether it makes sense to factor the political views in the decision - what you're actually arguing is that ESR's views are not really horrible.
But since pothibo supposedly considers them really horrible, it makes sense that (s)he would factor in those views, no?
It would be difficult to use software written by a person who openly had a political view that supports owning slaves.
This part:
> I want to have absolutely nothing to do with such a degenerate.
That you choose to support him says more about you than esr, or OP.
The same hate speech about gays in 2014, in Western Europe, would also be widely condemned.
"Apart from the fact that he hates Jews, he's a really nice guy!"