I'm baffled by this statement.

Sure you have a say, you also (likely) have the luxury of having a skill set that makes you able to make these choices.

A while back there was an ask HN post about surviving through the first bubble (2001). If you find a group of engineers of that vintage it is likely that you can quickly find someone who worked putting up adult content. (Note I don't have an objection to the topic but realize that some do and this isn't exactly the most glamorous work in tech).

I tend to think labor should have more power over what it creates. I'm not sure how an example of being required to work on something they objected to due to economic factors outside of their control is an example that helps your case.

> I'm not sure how an example of being required to work on something they objected to due to economic factors outside of their control is an example that helps your case.

Quitting on moral grounds is a luxury in the scope of human history, and is a luxury for MOST Americans today. Im not sure it is a realistic stance for most people (but probably for most of HN).

I don't think GitHub is going to (or should) change its stance. I'm sure there are plenty of things on GitHub that are worse, or have been used to worse ends than providing source control for ICE.

> I tend to think labor should have more power over what it creates.

I do a lot of contract/freelance work.

The trade off is that control means I am also liable in the event that my work causes an issue (legally as well as from the stand point of being a good citizen and business person).

Indemnity is a wonderful thing. Indemnity is why we have open source. Lots of things work because labor, and its products are decoupled from the end use. Should we stop making guns because someone might kill another person? Should we stop making fertilizer because it can be turned into a bomb? The end result of both products is the same but the intent in the production of either is not HARM.

> Quitting on moral grounds is a luxury in the scope of human history

So what? Freedom of speech is a luxury in the scope of human history as well.

Moreover, someone is making these choices. If it's within your power to have an effect on the choice, and one choice is more moral in your estimation, you're practically obliged to act, even if other people don't have that power.

Guns and fertilizer are very different products. Guns were specifically developed with the purpose of killing. Their main use besides recreation is killing people.

Don’t understand the downvotes to my comment. The person I am responding to said “Should we stop making guns because someone might kill another person”. That is in fact one of the main reasons of guns, specifically because they are used to kill other people. I didn’t downvote that comment, I did not pass any moral judgement on guns. Instead of silently downvoting, it would be better to explain why you disagree with my comment. I believe I am operating in good faith here.

I agree it's a luxury, and I'm happy people at github can do it. I don't think it _should_ be a luxury. They are quitting because they have a direct relationship they feel is immoral. If people aren't supposed to take stands what they can work for, you're advocating for the vast majority of the population (ie. ~non CEOS) having no moral agency in the place where they spend a huge fraction of their lives.

> Indemnity is a wonderful thing. Indemnity is why we have open source.

What do you mean by this? I don't see any necessary connection between open source and indemnities. Professional developers might want to release free software but accept payment to guarantee its fitness for purpose. Conversely, malware authors shouldn't be able to disclaim responsibility for their actions simply by publishing source code.

So why are you baffled by that statement?

The rest of your comment seems irrelevant.

Should that baker bake the cake or not?

I mean, we carve out special exceptions for race, gender, sexual orientation, etc... Beyond those special carve outs, laborers should have the freedom to follow their ethics.

We carve out those special exceptions for reasons of striving to create a fairer world for everyone: people in this country have historically been (and contemporarily are) discriminated against for race, gender, sexual orientation. The discrimination, both from people personally and encoded into laws and large-scale businesses processes, makes society unfair for those groups, e.g. redlining put people of color at a significant disadvantage for home-buying and building intergenerational wealth for their communities. Those are also things people are born with. Discriminating against people for how they're born, individually and systematically, runs counter to creating a fair, just, equal society.

Additionally, the freedom argument in the Jim Crow era, "let racist businesses remain racist and eventually they'll be replaced by non-racist businesses" was tried out for a hundred years, and the status quo did not change for people of color. It took the civil rights era and outright banning of discriminatory behavior by businesses for the status quo to change for the better/fairer/more equal. I don't think it would be a good idea to return to that older state of affairs, even if it means business owners must serve people of color, gay people, whatever, because, from my reading of history, that experiment failed.

I think you misunderstand me. I don't think those carve outs are a bad thing.

Sorry, I didn't mean to say that in opposition to you -- it was more of a preemptive explanation of why those came to exist, since on HN there seems to be a lot of opposition to freedom-restraining laws (like compelling business owners to serve members of a historically disadvantaged class), even when there's a (to me) clear social benefit and historical reasoning behind those laws.

They can, by working elsewhere.

You have the right to express your opinion to your employer and ultimately to leave the company.

But you are also being compensated for them having the right to use the product of your labor as they see fit.

Implicitly, and probably explicitly in any decent work contract, is that they are the sole owners of the product of your labor and get to decide how it is used.

You do. Take your labor elsewhere. Other than that? Pretty much, no.