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I'm not French, but even if I were and were a NF voter, I doubt I would care about his political tweets let alone uninstall the software as a result. ...as som

I'm not French, but even if I were and were a NF voter, I doubt I would care about his political tweets let alone uninstall the software as a result. ...as someone not involved in that political fight, I slightly worry that this will serve as a distraction for him in future project development, maybe lead to a broken release or a dev path and force me to look for a new tool - zeal often crowds out focus. ...but hey, it's a free tool and he has the right to express his political views. I persoanlly feel that publicly mixing work and politics is immature and bad for your resume, but to each his own.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
javindo 6y ago
Why is it any more of an issue in software engineering than, say, a singer or actor publicly supporting a cause?
- wtf_is_up 6y ago
  Singers/actors doing it is cringe inducing as well.
- khawkins 6y ago
  Those are even worse. Why can't we let political discourse stay in political spaces? That used to be the norm and everyone was far less stressed out and amicable for it. Now every space has become a battleground for sociopolitical discourse and we're drawing lines everywhere.
  - moron4hire 6y ago
    There is no such thing as "the political space". Politics is just the word we assign to the concept of people organizing and working out (or failing to work out) their differences. Everything we do is a component of it. None of us are absent from it. And just because you don't value someone's particular job does not mean they do not get to have or express an opinion on politics. When people complain about "politics", what they are complaining about is often a perceived failure within a system. Chesterton's Fence[0] is a parable that describes the need to understand where the system came from before making changes to reform it. For example, in a large corporation, we might say that the yearly review system is "political", but getting rid of it completely would be removing the one (albeit, flawed) means that the organization has to evaluate employee performance. In its absence, a new system would have to be created to replace it. Any system that would replace it would also be prone to being perceived as "political" to some people. What does that have to do with software? We write software to be used by and for the benefit of people. There is no point to it, otherwise. Writing software is fundamentally a political process. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...
    - khawkins 6y ago
      Your deconstruction of "political spaces" is deflecting from the concept which is intuitively understood by us all. Politics in this context means discourse about contentious government policy. Political spaces are places where these politics are typically discussed: think tanks, halls of congress, public debates, forums, close family, etc.
  - Anechoic 6y ago
    That used to be the norm When was that? In the US you can go back as far (at least) as Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe for popular figures getting involved in politics. In terms of actors and singers, you can go back to Bert Willams in the 1910s to numerous outspoken figures in the 1950's and beyond.
    - khawkins 6y ago
      Clearly there is a palpable difference between the sociopolitical climate of today and the sociopolitical climate 20 years ago. There were other times in history where it was similar to this, but not in most of our lifetimes.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    >> a singer or actor publicly supporting a cause? > Those are even worse. What? Music and acting are and have always been involved with politics and society at large. As a modern example, see One by Metallica. Is that not political?
  - detaro 6y ago
    In what that timeframe do you see that as having been the norm?
    - khawkins 6y ago
      Past 40 years.
  - MatekCopatek 6y ago
    To me, it's an integral part of celebrity. We expect them to be role models, give up their privacy and generally hold them to higher standards, so why shouldn't they be able to use their fame to support something they believe in?
    - koheripbal 6y ago
      > We expect them to be role models This seems like an odd expectation since so few of them have functional relationships and are an endless source of scandal. Also, literally nothing about their profession makes them an authority on any political, social, or human rights issue.
      - MatekCopatek 6y ago
        Agree on both counts, I don't think worshipping celebrities is doing us much good. But the fact is that we (as a society) currently do it, so it seems unfair to be upset when they use their platform for something political.
        khawkins 6y ago
        It's always fair to be upset when people use a powerful platform to spread ill-considered ideas, slander, and/or divisive rhetoric. Everyone agrees with this. If celebrities are significantly more likely to do this because they live sheltered lives and don't spend significant amounts of time considering what they call for, then they're more likely to use their platform irresponsibly. But the more prevalent issue is that using their platform politically results more in tribalism than the genuine changing of minds.
        MatekCopatek 6y ago
        It's one thing to be upset at a specific instance of a celebrity expressing a horrible opinion. I'm totally down with that. What was commenting on here was a wider remark that celebrities should just avoid making political comments in general. "He's a football player, he should just play football. Keep politics out of sports." This is the part I find unfair. If Kanye West has an opinion on global warming, we shouldn't reject it by default. If it's harmful, we should criticize it proportionaly to the reach of his platform (so... A lot). And if the negative effects get out of hand, we should be educating people on getting their environmental information from reliable sources, not limiting Kanye's freedom of speech.
  - minikites 6y ago
    Everything is political. Your ability to ignore that fact is one element of privilege. People without that particular privilege have never been able to separate politics from the rest of their lives, it was never the "norm" for them.
  - teraku 6y ago
    The implied privilege and obliviousness about it in this comment make me mad.
    - khawkins 6y ago
      That you assume I'm privileged because I want a more peaceful society suggests you will constantly seek to divide and set social groups against each other for the sake of some personal satisfaction.
      - teraku 6y ago
        No. I would love peace. I don't seek divide. But saying that we "let politics be politics" is a privilege. If you are in a minority, either by choice or by birth, it's not that simple. Standing up against discrimination and making that one of our core beliefs should not be as controversial as you make it out to be. And it's great for you that you can just keep politics in "political space", go home and live in peace. But others can't turn racism they experience off. I would highly suggest watching this video of a psycho-social experiment [0]. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPZEJHJPwIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPZEJHJPwIw
  - EwanToo 6y ago
    Standing against discrimination, whether it's taking the form of racism, sexism, homophobia, or something else, isn't a political act. It's a human rights act.
    - lucideer 6y ago
      I'm not sure what people think the word "politics" is. Human rights is politics... Like... I agree with the sentiment of your comment, 100%. Standing against discrimination is something everyone should (and should feel the right to) do. But.. it is a political act. Which is good. I understand the context and reasons behind "politics" becoming a taboo word (there is, by definition, "bad"[0] politics). But that doesn't invalidate the "good"[1] politics. [0][1] Yes, "good" and "bad" are of course subjective.
      - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
        Standing up for human rights is absolutely a political act, but it shouldn't be a politically controversial act. I think that's why people have always been more willing to make political statements in favor of human rights in contexts where making other political statements would usually be considered distasteful. Basic human rights for everyone should be the common ground that everyone agrees upon. Everything else we can debate in the appropriate contexts.
    - jeofken 6y ago
      Humans have a right to ownership of their property which includes their bodies and who they interact with. That includes having the right to discriminate. While it may be unkind, it is a greater evil to force someone to interact with someone they don’t want to, even if it’s for reasons of race, sex, living gay, or just being ugly, mean, old or young, or any other reason. Only in an unfree world there is no discrimination. I’m reminded of a tattoo I once saw written in runes: “free men are not equal; equal men are not free”.
      - minikites 6y ago
        Do you think it should be okay for businesses to hang "Help Wanted" signs in their windows that also say "no Irish need apply"?
  - smrtinsert 6y ago
    Are we supposed to pretend politics has no impact on our day to day lives?
    - khawkins 6y ago
      Are we supposed to pretend it's the only thing that determines our governs our day to day lives?
  - ivan_gammel 6y ago
    It was always like that. :) Artists, writers and singers did have political alignments and either benefited or suffered from them. In US-centric world post-9/11 reality may seem different and politically charged, but the rest of the world haven’t experienced the same “Belle Époque” as America in 1990s. And even in USA just 20 years before that plenty of things happened.
  - antihero 6y ago
    Because the the whole planet is a "political space". Politics is everywhere.
- robomartin 6y ago
  Politics is an interesting domain. Everyone has an opinion. Most are convinced they know what’s going on, despite the fact that they lack the skills and knowledge necessary to evaluate the subject matter (math, science, medicine, law, business, economics, etc.) and absolutely refuse to do the research necessary to have anything approximating a valid opinion. It’s D-K at it’s worst. I went through a phase of deeply researching topics in an attempt to communicate the realities and facets of many issues. After a year of nothing but frustration (and worse) I stopped caring. People take sides on these issues like picking colors. It’s crazy. It’s amazing to see just how attached they are to their chosen perspective while knowing so little and making no effort at all to research and understand. One of my favorites is Climate Change. Both deniers and supporters are engulfed and fully invested in their respective delusions. This means the reality of the matter is in the hands of a minority with no voice. The same brain that allowed us to survive in the wild is now driving mass delusion. We are still cavemen.
lucideer 6y ago
> I persoanlly feel that publicly mixing work and politics is immature and bad for your resume, but to each his own. I think your opinion here is a commonly held one, which I find increasingly frustrating and bizarre. I personally feel that work and politics are by definition inextricably linked, and attempting to separate them as some sanctimonious attempt at taking moral highground is naïve (at best, insincere at worst). Which makes the use of the epithet "immature" here particularly ironic.
- olvy0 6y ago
  I'm not sure either. I find that (in my personal opinion), mixing work and politics, despite they're being linked, is to me a disturbing trait. To be clear, I'm talking about office talk. If a co-worker does it, it implies to me he or she are uncivilized, and cause themselves and other people embarrassment. When co-workers do it, I secretly think of it as farting in public, or vomiting your ideas on my shirt, or drooling your ideas. Political thought is important for me, and I have my opinions, but I do not want to force them on other people, not in direct conversation. From experience, most people I know hold deep political convictions and couldn't be persuaded to see differently in a short office conversation, so it's short of pointless, a waste of words and a waste of my time and everyone else's, just so someone could farting his ideas in my general direction, and feel a bit better about himself / herself. Note that this is regardless of whether I agree with their ideas or not. I do enjoy reading other people opinions, whether they are the same as mine or different, in forums such as NH. But the key thing here is that this is a thing I do of my own volition, in my own free time, not subjected to it. To contradict myself a bit: while I find Notepad++ author making a political statement with his software releases just a bit odd, it's not as disturbing as someone doing it in a direct conversation, and he also does it a pretty non-intrusive way, which I'm fine with. In a way I almost like it, it's sort of refreshing. But that's just me. I'm not a very social person, though, so I guess my outlook might seem very bizarre to other, more social people.
- gegtik 6y ago
  That belief is in fact just another form of politics.
levosmetalo 6y ago
... unless you are in SV. There it's fully acceptable, and to some extent even mandatory to publicly take a political stance in bashing Trump and praising whoever is the Democratic Party hero of the day.
neves 6y ago
> publicly mixing work and politics is immature and bad for your resume Hope you know that you are taking a political stand if you think software developers shouldn't talk about politics. This is what a lot of companies want. Karl Marx coined a term for decoupling work from is impact in society: alienation.
gorjusborg 6y ago
Since we're sharing our personal feelings: I agree that in general, waving your personal politics around for petty matters is not a good look. He's not waving his around for petty reasons.
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  > He's not waving his around for petty reasons. Supporters of (in this case) the NF may thinks so, since "petty" is entirely subjective.
MatekCopatek 6y ago
Excuse the hyperbole, I don't want to judge, I just genuinely think it's an interesting dilemma. Would you write software needed to support a genocide? Would you consider someone complicit if they did? I'm assuming no and yes, but where do we draw the line? How much bad stuff can I do in the name of professionalism before I should start worrying about moral aspects?
- koheripbal 6y ago
  I'm honestly trying to imagine what kind of software would be needed to commit genocide...
  - MatekCopatek 6y ago
    There's a book called IBM and the Holocaust[0] covering one such example from WW2. I really meant anything where you are fully aware that your work will directly cause people to suffer. Like someone asking you to run a simulation to determine where to drop a bomb for the highest death count. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
drxzcl 6y ago
Not everyone has the option not to pick sides in this particular fight.
krapp 6y ago
>I slightly worry that this will serve as a distraction for him in future project development, maybe lead to a broken release or a dev path and force me to look for a new tool - zeal often crowds out focus. Between free software itself being highly political, with plenty of zealots writing code, and the progressivism (and anti-progressivism) in SV and the tech community at large, I don't see much evidence that holding political views creates more bugs or degrades software quality. When that happens, the culprit tends to be deadlines or negligence. The closest thing to an example I can come up with of this happening is the developer who pulled left-pad from NPM for essentially political reasons, but that was an act of deliberate sabotage rather than the result of distraction.
jonp888 6y ago
I work for a company with a six figure employee count. Notepad++ is available in out internal app store... but with the poltical message in the About dialog removed.
- antihero 6y ago
  That feels so violating. Who are a company to reap the rewards of someone's work whilst denying them their platform? Disgraceful.
  - krapp 6y ago
    Disgraceful? Notepad++ is free software. The free software movement considers the right of all users to modify and redistribute software for any purpose, without obligation or restriction (other than respecting those rights for other users,) to be an unqualified moral good.
antihero 6y ago
I personally feel that various aspects of politics are more important than a fucking resume.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

javindo 6y ago

Why is it any more of an issue in software engineering than, say, a singer or actor publicly supporting a cause?

wtf_is_up 6y ago
Singers/actors doing it is cringe inducing as well.
khawkins 6y ago
Those are even worse. Why can't we let political discourse stay in political spaces? That used to be the norm and everyone was far less stressed out and amicable for it. Now every space has become a battleground for sociopolitical discourse and we're drawing lines everywhere.
- moron4hire 6y ago
  There is no such thing as "the political space". Politics is just the word we assign to the concept of people organizing and working out (or failing to work out) their differences. Everything we do is a component of it. None of us are absent from it. And just because you don't value someone's particular job does not mean they do not get to have or express an opinion on politics. When people complain about "politics", what they are complaining about is often a perceived failure within a system. Chesterton's Fence[0] is a parable that describes the need to understand where the system came from before making changes to reform it. For example, in a large corporation, we might say that the yearly review system is "political", but getting rid of it completely would be removing the one (albeit, flawed) means that the organization has to evaluate employee performance. In its absence, a new system would have to be created to replace it. Any system that would replace it would also be prone to being perceived as "political" to some people. What does that have to do with software? We write software to be used by and for the benefit of people. There is no point to it, otherwise. Writing software is fundamentally a political process. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...
  - khawkins 6y ago
    Your deconstruction of "political spaces" is deflecting from the concept which is intuitively understood by us all. Politics in this context means discourse about contentious government policy. Political spaces are places where these politics are typically discussed: think tanks, halls of congress, public debates, forums, close family, etc.
- Anechoic 6y ago
  That used to be the norm When was that? In the US you can go back as far (at least) as Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe for popular figures getting involved in politics. In terms of actors and singers, you can go back to Bert Willams in the 1910s to numerous outspoken figures in the 1950's and beyond.
  - khawkins 6y ago
    Clearly there is a palpable difference between the sociopolitical climate of today and the sociopolitical climate 20 years ago. There were other times in history where it was similar to this, but not in most of our lifetimes.
- Shared404 6y ago
  >> a singer or actor publicly supporting a cause? > Those are even worse. What? Music and acting are and have always been involved with politics and society at large. As a modern example, see One by Metallica. Is that not political?
- detaro 6y ago
  In what that timeframe do you see that as having been the norm?
  - khawkins 6y ago
    Past 40 years.
- MatekCopatek 6y ago
  To me, it's an integral part of celebrity. We expect them to be role models, give up their privacy and generally hold them to higher standards, so why shouldn't they be able to use their fame to support something they believe in?
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    > We expect them to be role models This seems like an odd expectation since so few of them have functional relationships and are an endless source of scandal. Also, literally nothing about their profession makes them an authority on any political, social, or human rights issue.
    - MatekCopatek 6y ago
      Agree on both counts, I don't think worshipping celebrities is doing us much good. But the fact is that we (as a society) currently do it, so it seems unfair to be upset when they use their platform for something political.
      - khawkins 6y ago
        It's always fair to be upset when people use a powerful platform to spread ill-considered ideas, slander, and/or divisive rhetoric. Everyone agrees with this. If celebrities are significantly more likely to do this because they live sheltered lives and don't spend significant amounts of time considering what they call for, then they're more likely to use their platform irresponsibly. But the more prevalent issue is that using their platform politically results more in tribalism than the genuine changing of minds.
        MatekCopatek 6y ago
        It's one thing to be upset at a specific instance of a celebrity expressing a horrible opinion. I'm totally down with that. What was commenting on here was a wider remark that celebrities should just avoid making political comments in general. "He's a football player, he should just play football. Keep politics out of sports." This is the part I find unfair. If Kanye West has an opinion on global warming, we shouldn't reject it by default. If it's harmful, we should criticize it proportionaly to the reach of his platform (so... A lot). And if the negative effects get out of hand, we should be educating people on getting their environmental information from reliable sources, not limiting Kanye's freedom of speech.
- minikites 6y ago
  Everything is political. Your ability to ignore that fact is one element of privilege. People without that particular privilege have never been able to separate politics from the rest of their lives, it was never the "norm" for them.
- teraku 6y ago
  The implied privilege and obliviousness about it in this comment make me mad.
  - khawkins 6y ago
    That you assume I'm privileged because I want a more peaceful society suggests you will constantly seek to divide and set social groups against each other for the sake of some personal satisfaction.
    - teraku 6y ago
      No. I would love peace. I don't seek divide. But saying that we "let politics be politics" is a privilege. If you are in a minority, either by choice or by birth, it's not that simple. Standing up against discrimination and making that one of our core beliefs should not be as controversial as you make it out to be. And it's great for you that you can just keep politics in "political space", go home and live in peace. But others can't turn racism they experience off. I would highly suggest watching this video of a psycho-social experiment [0]. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPZEJHJPwIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPZEJHJPwIw
- EwanToo 6y ago
  Standing against discrimination, whether it's taking the form of racism, sexism, homophobia, or something else, isn't a political act. It's a human rights act.
  - lucideer 6y ago
    I'm not sure what people think the word "politics" is. Human rights is politics... Like... I agree with the sentiment of your comment, 100%. Standing against discrimination is something everyone should (and should feel the right to) do. But.. it is a political act. Which is good. I understand the context and reasons behind "politics" becoming a taboo word (there is, by definition, "bad"[0] politics). But that doesn't invalidate the "good"[1] politics. [0][1] Yes, "good" and "bad" are of course subjective.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
      Standing up for human rights is absolutely a political act, but it shouldn't be a politically controversial act. I think that's why people have always been more willing to make political statements in favor of human rights in contexts where making other political statements would usually be considered distasteful. Basic human rights for everyone should be the common ground that everyone agrees upon. Everything else we can debate in the appropriate contexts.
  - jeofken 6y ago
    Humans have a right to ownership of their property which includes their bodies and who they interact with. That includes having the right to discriminate. While it may be unkind, it is a greater evil to force someone to interact with someone they don’t want to, even if it’s for reasons of race, sex, living gay, or just being ugly, mean, old or young, or any other reason. Only in an unfree world there is no discrimination. I’m reminded of a tattoo I once saw written in runes: “free men are not equal; equal men are not free”.
    - minikites 6y ago
      Do you think it should be okay for businesses to hang "Help Wanted" signs in their windows that also say "no Irish need apply"?
- smrtinsert 6y ago
  Are we supposed to pretend politics has no impact on our day to day lives?
  - khawkins 6y ago
    Are we supposed to pretend it's the only thing that determines our governs our day to day lives?
- ivan_gammel 6y ago
  It was always like that. :) Artists, writers and singers did have political alignments and either benefited or suffered from them. In US-centric world post-9/11 reality may seem different and politically charged, but the rest of the world haven’t experienced the same “Belle Époque” as America in 1990s. And even in USA just 20 years before that plenty of things happened.
- antihero 6y ago
  Because the the whole planet is a "political space". Politics is everywhere.
robomartin 6y ago
Politics is an interesting domain. Everyone has an opinion. Most are convinced they know what’s going on, despite the fact that they lack the skills and knowledge necessary to evaluate the subject matter (math, science, medicine, law, business, economics, etc.) and absolutely refuse to do the research necessary to have anything approximating a valid opinion. It’s D-K at it’s worst. I went through a phase of deeply researching topics in an attempt to communicate the realities and facets of many issues. After a year of nothing but frustration (and worse) I stopped caring. People take sides on these issues like picking colors. It’s crazy. It’s amazing to see just how attached they are to their chosen perspective while knowing so little and making no effort at all to research and understand. One of my favorites is Climate Change. Both deniers and supporters are engulfed and fully invested in their respective delusions. This means the reality of the matter is in the hands of a minority with no voice. The same brain that allowed us to survive in the wild is now driving mass delusion. We are still cavemen.

lucideer 6y ago

> I persoanlly feel that publicly mixing work and politics is immature and bad for your resume, but to each his own. I think your opinion here is a commonly held one, which I find increasingly frustrating and bizarre. I personally feel that work and politics are by definition inextricably linked, and attempting to separate them as some sanctimonious attempt at taking moral highground is naïve (at best, insincere at worst). Which makes the use of the epithet "immature" here particularly ironic.

olvy0 6y ago
I'm not sure either. I find that (in my personal opinion), mixing work and politics, despite they're being linked, is to me a disturbing trait. To be clear, I'm talking about office talk. If a co-worker does it, it implies to me he or she are uncivilized, and cause themselves and other people embarrassment. When co-workers do it, I secretly think of it as farting in public, or vomiting your ideas on my shirt, or drooling your ideas. Political thought is important for me, and I have my opinions, but I do not want to force them on other people, not in direct conversation. From experience, most people I know hold deep political convictions and couldn't be persuaded to see differently in a short office conversation, so it's short of pointless, a waste of words and a waste of my time and everyone else's, just so someone could farting his ideas in my general direction, and feel a bit better about himself / herself. Note that this is regardless of whether I agree with their ideas or not. I do enjoy reading other people opinions, whether they are the same as mine or different, in forums such as NH. But the key thing here is that this is a thing I do of my own volition, in my own free time, not subjected to it. To contradict myself a bit: while I find Notepad++ author making a political statement with his software releases just a bit odd, it's not as disturbing as someone doing it in a direct conversation, and he also does it a pretty non-intrusive way, which I'm fine with. In a way I almost like it, it's sort of refreshing. But that's just me. I'm not a very social person, though, so I guess my outlook might seem very bizarre to other, more social people.
gegtik 6y ago
That belief is in fact just another form of politics.

levosmetalo 6y ago

... unless you are in SV. There it's fully acceptable, and to some extent even mandatory to publicly take a political stance in bashing Trump and praising whoever is the Democratic Party hero of the day.

neves 6y ago

> publicly mixing work and politics is immature and bad for your resume Hope you know that you are taking a political stand if you think software developers shouldn't talk about politics. This is what a lot of companies want. Karl Marx coined a term for decoupling work from is impact in society: alienation.

gorjusborg 6y ago

Since we're sharing our personal feelings: I agree that in general, waving your personal politics around for petty matters is not a good look. He's not waving his around for petty reasons.

stronglikedan 6y ago
> He's not waving his around for petty reasons. Supporters of (in this case) the NF may thinks so, since "petty" is entirely subjective.

MatekCopatek 6y ago

Excuse the hyperbole, I don't want to judge, I just genuinely think it's an interesting dilemma. Would you write software needed to support a genocide? Would you consider someone complicit if they did? I'm assuming no and yes, but where do we draw the line? How much bad stuff can I do in the name of professionalism before I should start worrying about moral aspects?

koheripbal 6y ago
I'm honestly trying to imagine what kind of software would be needed to commit genocide...
- MatekCopatek 6y ago
  There's a book called IBM and the Holocaust[0] covering one such example from WW2. I really meant anything where you are fully aware that your work will directly cause people to suffer. Like someone asking you to run a simulation to determine where to drop a bomb for the highest death count. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

drxzcl 6y ago

Not everyone has the option not to pick sides in this particular fight.

krapp 6y ago

>I slightly worry that this will serve as a distraction for him in future project development, maybe lead to a broken release or a dev path and force me to look for a new tool - zeal often crowds out focus. Between free software itself being highly political, with plenty of zealots writing code, and the progressivism (and anti-progressivism) in SV and the tech community at large, I don't see much evidence that holding political views creates more bugs or degrades software quality. When that happens, the culprit tends to be deadlines or negligence. The closest thing to an example I can come up with of this happening is the developer who pulled left-pad from NPM for essentially political reasons, but that was an act of deliberate sabotage rather than the result of distraction.

jonp888 6y ago

I work for a company with a six figure employee count. Notepad++ is available in out internal app store... but with the poltical message in the About dialog removed.

antihero 6y ago
That feels so violating. Who are a company to reap the rewards of someone's work whilst denying them their platform? Disgraceful.
- krapp 6y ago
  Disgraceful? Notepad++ is free software. The free software movement considers the right of all users to modify and redistribute software for any purpose, without obligation or restriction (other than respecting those rights for other users,) to be an unqualified moral good.

antihero 6y ago

I personally feel that various aspects of politics are more important than a fucking resume.