119 karma · joined February 20, 2013
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/huu; my proof: https://keybase.io/huu/sigs/gApbAdQ__AjpvAELrtRKUSZEMSe44DySrBUnEGDxNzw ]
You're probably right that this betrays a bias of mine. And you're also probably right that this isn't a great guiding principle for decision-making in the future.
Still, if I'm interested in increasing the total number of people contributing to open source projects, I would give an issue like the use of the word "retard" a fighter's chance.
Maybe it's not worth bending on free speech in some specific cases, but there is a point where it is worth it, ie, if there are enough people in the offended audience that the chance of losing a potential contributor is nontrivial.
Perhaps you would have contributed to that repository and now you won't. That seems materially harmful to me, to reduce the sum total of people contributing to open source.
Compare that to the potential of falling down a slippery slope to "total censorship" and I think there's a reasonable case, in a utilitarian sense, for Github's actions here.
This is the author's justification for why he's critiquing the film. I disagree, personally, because he himself is not a child. I doubt any child would enjoy "The Tree of Life".
Edit: Misread the parent posts and thought they were referring to C++11. Today I learned C11 is a separate standard.
If we could sweep any exclusionary behavior under the rug of "just office politics", there'd be no need for anti-discrimination laws in the first place.
Another fact: it would also be simpler had she not been (allegedly) lied to about the marriage status of the co-worker.
Even though we know that stealing is wrong, would you feel bad for the record store?
Specifically, the line "Support independent developers, such as:", endears me to the publisher's genuine intentions. "Support" is the operative word here, and I think the comparison between this and the Comcast ordeal is different because I can't imagine Comcast using those words to describe their competitors.
I don't think what the publisher is doing diffuses criticism. I think it anticipates it and wraps it under a notion of "I know I can't give you everything you could want in a podcast app, so try these ones instead if you want". To me that's very different from, "This is the best podcast app, these other competitors can't possibly give you what I give you."