Can you explain this position? If GitHub were funding their free teams product with revenue from, say, organized crime which is kidnapping children, would it be appropriate and on-topic to ask about that? But it's no longer appropriate when it's a government agency?

Is it just US government agencies, or would it be appropriate again to ask if the funding were coming from ISIS?

Also, is it generally the case that complaints about the NSA and their spying programs are off-topic for HN because they too are a US government agency? Or is that different?

Presumably ICE buys light bulbs. Should we also call out light bulb manufacturers and distributors for “working with ICE”?

It’s not about politics for me, but rather the viewpoint that companies shouldn’t be the moral police of their customers.

If they do so directly, then yes, most certainly.

I mean, I'm open to discussing whether we should or shouldn't, but I think it's not an off-topic discussion!

pretty off topic to bring up customers of a lightbulb factory to shame them for selling headlamps to tanks...

All right, point taken - this is a politically incorrect discussion and we should be self-censoring ourselves.

No, your comment just doesn't make sense. Lightbulb manufacturers are not responsible for wars because tanks have lightbulbs in them, and GitHub is not responsible for all the harm in the world either because some bad actors use GitHub.

Sorry, I can't even discuss this with you. I rather disagree - this is what the whole "military-industrial complex" is about - but it's off-topic and forbidden.

This is totally not what the "military-industrial complex" is about. Wow.

The MIC concept is a specific application of the general idea of regulatory capture of policymakers to the vertical of defence contracting. This is nothing like that: the corporation here isn't a defence contractor and they're not bribing the government. It fits 0%.

organized crime doesn't exist. governments are indeed allowed to commit organized crime as you said.

if you want to overthrow or change that government you are free to do so. revenue obtained from that government is as bloodstained as any capitalist money, and most sources of profit can be dismissed as exploitive. its quite literally the point of profits.

if github teams were funded by isis I literally would not change my opinion on github.

It's not really fair to compare selling tooling to a large agency that does a lot of different things with directly writing software that does something evil.

I made no such comparison.

whats stopping torture workstations from being managed with Kubernetes and Chef?

you could use any modern orchestration tools to replace humans running torture machinery. code only serves to automate human behavior not create new behavior that isn't just amplifications of humanities worst desires.

Arguable but irrelevant. I'm arguing against your absurd universal and inhuman suggestion (nay, command!) to keep politics out of the discussion. On the particular topic at hand I think I'm somewhat in agreement with your conclusion (though I'd need to reflect more to be sure).

You know what the Greeks would have thought about someone that doesn't care about politics? They'd think their best station in life would to be a slave.

but how does politics apply to such a boring tool like github? its like saying ICE shouldn't use Google Docs or Gimp...

its not a weapon or an advantage in actual human cruelty that furthers non altruistic goals.

That right they shouldn't because they engage human rights violations as a matter of policy.

but anyone including drug cartels are free to use github and google docs.

sure it might be against Googles policy on a technically but are you seriously suggesting crime orgs care about the TOS included with their burner android phones?

You are not making any kind of argument here.

Having common sense to not shitpost about politics in every unrelated thread is not the same as not caring about politics.