Re:Enforced political advocacy in Google open source projects
by blargathon on Monday October 26, 2020 @10:41AM
(#24896636)
All of that is valid, and I don't disagree on most points.
However, we have a stupidly polarized political climate right now. It makes "agree to disagree" pretty tough since the press and social media tend to stir people up.
I think it's better to rise above the noise and focus on building things. I know people on both sides of the political spectrum that are good people and good engineers. I'd rather focus on common ground.
So rather than simply avoiding ethical dilemmas in favor of cooperation (because plenty of people are cooperating) what's being advocated here is concession to anti-BLM advocates exclusively as a prerequisite for their participation, and those are the only people condemning or demanding exclusion of anything (specifically, the political views of the project owners.)
Because again, no one is saying that people who don't support BLM aren't allowed to participate.
It's open source software, and as is often mentioned when someone objects to a project owner's right-wing views, software is apolitical, and contributing in and of itself is not advocacy. And forking is always an option.