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I think the problem with these sorts of “everything is political” responses is they preclude the possibility of politically neutral grounds for otherwise differ

I think the problem with these sorts of “everything is political” responses is they preclude the possibility of politically neutral grounds for otherwise different people to interact and find shared humanity. If every place and action is filtered through all the possible political angles, it becomes impossible for two opposing people to find common grounds. Further it ignores that there’s a difference between related political concerns and unrelated political concerns within any given activity. Statistically some software maintainers are going to be evangelical christians. They don’t need to be using their node packages to evangelize or drop “god hates fags” messages on computers in IP blocks belonging to pride month participants. Statistically some are going to be communists. They don’t need to be dropping Karl Marx quotes into software installs running in republican strongholds. Some are going to be antivax, they don’t need to have their nose packages start sending “vaccines cause autism” messages to the logs. Some are going to be Biden supporters, they don’t need to be having their packages delete files when installed on computers run by Bernie Sanders supporters. In fact even for tangentially related topics, unilaterally changing the conditions of the interaction you have with your fellow maintainers and developers in order to insert your current important political issue into their machines is a fundamentally dick move. The GPG maintainers might be all about encryption and encryption rights, but if the EARNIT act passed tomorrow and in response they quietly changed all versions of gpg to send plaintext unencrypted copies of everything it’s asked to encrypt or decrypt to Wikileaks as a protest, that’s still a dick move even with the politics being explicitly related. It’s unnecessarily bringing politics (encryption rights) into a non political transaction (using encryption software to encrypt something). When people say they don’t want politics in their software that’s what they’re taking about. They don’t want people taking an existing agreed upon sphere of politics and influence and suddenly injecting new rules into it that fundamentally alter that relationship.

eyelidlessness 5y ago
Defining neutral (or even claiming such a thing exists) is inherently a political claim. Even if what you want is the most politically uncharged space where it’s maximally available and accessible to the largest proportion of society who would benefit from and foster that… look how many qualifying words I needed for this sentence. Can you imagine any of them being specified in a way none of that potential set of people objects to? Part of the reason I can’t is… there are things I can’t be neutral about because lives depend on it, including my loved ones and my own in some cases. I don’t think this was the right way to put very real human cost into software as an agent of change or discussion, but I can think of ways it could be (because) I can think of dozens of other ways necessary social progress would have been impossible without people interjecting “neutral” which wasn’t. And if that feels too radical for you or HN, let’s not forget that this is a common tactic of combat (and the “political” subject is literally war). Railroads and landing strips aren’t instruments of war, they’re ostensibly neutral. But they’re widely regarded as conventional targets because they facilitate otherwise non-neutral activity. The same goes for any other infrastructure. Again I don’t think this was a helpful action. But I think it was an inevitable one, and I think hoping for neutrality in software is just naive.
- tpmoney 5y ago
  Great, there are things you can’t be neutral about. I get that. My own spouse’s day to day quality of life, access to medical care and even literal freedom are debated every year at the state and federal levels and every year things can change on a dime. I’m very familiar with there being personal issues that are extremely important and that one can not be neutral on. I am not neutral on these issues, and were we having a discussion about those issues, there would be no neutrality from me on them precisely because I can not be neutral on them. But that does not mean that I turn every discussion on HN, even discussions related to political things into a discussion about my specific personal issues. The fact that you and I aren’t hashing those issues out right now is not a tactic endorsement of the status quo. And it would be ridiculous for me to use my power as a software developer and maintainer to start inserting messages about my stances on these issue into the software I maintain and distribute, and it would be especially ridiculous for me to start distributing malware along a trusted supply chain because of those issues. Asking that software be a neutral ground with respect to certain political topics or activities is not an endorsement of the status quo or a dismissal of your completely valid concerns. It’s a recognition that there is a time and a palace to discuss, debate or even fight about very important issues. But not every time and every place is the appropriate one. Or put another way, and taking out of the software realm, if neutrality is inherently political and some political things are too important to leave any place neutral, then what issues do you believe we should start militarizing the moon for? Is the human cost of this war sufficient for the US to start deploying military assets to the moon? Or even just militarizing (more so than it is for spy satellites) earth orbit and deploying kinetic weapons into space? Perhaps the US and EU should unilaterally take full control of the ISS and imprison the Russian cosmonauts onboard? Or is that plainly ridiculous and is there value in attempting to preserve as much neutrality within space as possible given the current situation? Perhaps it is worthy to not escalate political boundaries in certain areas even when the political item in question is of extreme importance.
eropple 5y ago
To be clear: this political stunt was stupid. Transcendentally stupid, if not actively evil; it was untargeted to the point of shocking irresponsibility and if the stories I've heard about the data destroyed by this are true, criminal charges are in my mind justly warranted. But I can believe that and also believe that these kinds of blanket claims are toxic, too. Because "politics" happens the second more than one person exists in a space. And neutrality is an inescapably political stance. Claims like these are, presumably, in good faith, but to make these claims you have to skirt the reality that "don't talk about it" functionally ends up being a tacit acceptance of the status quo. And that status quo has a lot of people downrange of it who the more comfortable among us (and I for one am very comfortable) may find much more palatable if they'd just shut up--but the world is more existential than discomfiting for them, and we should respect that. There are many cases where one's existence is a political question; much of America, for example, thinks the right to existence of LGBTQ folks is up for debate. When the fact of your existence is controversial, your existence is political--and it is rather difficult to criticize someone for acting as such. On the other hand, an evangelical Christian doesn't have to drop slurs in a package. They already have a world where people are beaten and killed for being gay, even with the prodigious successes of our LGBT siblings to date. They still have the world that they want--they're just not happy with the slope of the function. One of these things is not like the other.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  Thank you. I couldn’t put it better myself, speaking as someone whose existence is up for debate.
  - eropple 5y ago
    For sure. Without getting too high on the soao box, mine is not, and so I feel an obligation to remember that.
- syshum 5y ago
  >>much of America, for example, thinks the right to existence of LGBTQ folks is up for debate. I would love for you to expand upon that, why you believe that? I am not aware any wide spread opposition to the "existence" of LGBTQ people, I am aware of wide wide spread resistance to Speech Codes (enforced use pro-nouns), Sexual education to minors, Allowing children to transition under the age of 18, allowing children to transition with out the consent of the parents, and other topics around CHILDREN. Is that what you refer to when you state that the "existence" of LGBTQ people is under threat in the US?

eyelidlessness 5y ago

Defining neutral (or even claiming such a thing exists) is inherently a political claim. Even if what you want is the most politically uncharged space where it’s maximally available and accessible to the largest proportion of society who would benefit from and foster that… look how many qualifying words I needed for this sentence. Can you imagine any of them being specified in a way none of that potential set of people objects to? Part of the reason I can’t is… there are things I can’t be neutral about because lives depend on it, including my loved ones and my own in some cases. I don’t think this was the right way to put very real human cost into software as an agent of change or discussion, but I can think of ways it could be (because) I can think of dozens of other ways necessary social progress would have been impossible without people interjecting “neutral” which wasn’t. And if that feels too radical for you or HN, let’s not forget that this is a common tactic of combat (and the “political” subject is literally war). Railroads and landing strips aren’t instruments of war, they’re ostensibly neutral. But they’re widely regarded as conventional targets because they facilitate otherwise non-neutral activity. The same goes for any other infrastructure. Again I don’t think this was a helpful action. But I think it was an inevitable one, and I think hoping for neutrality in software is just naive.

tpmoney 5y ago
Great, there are things you can’t be neutral about. I get that. My own spouse’s day to day quality of life, access to medical care and even literal freedom are debated every year at the state and federal levels and every year things can change on a dime. I’m very familiar with there being personal issues that are extremely important and that one can not be neutral on. I am not neutral on these issues, and were we having a discussion about those issues, there would be no neutrality from me on them precisely because I can not be neutral on them. But that does not mean that I turn every discussion on HN, even discussions related to political things into a discussion about my specific personal issues. The fact that you and I aren’t hashing those issues out right now is not a tactic endorsement of the status quo. And it would be ridiculous for me to use my power as a software developer and maintainer to start inserting messages about my stances on these issue into the software I maintain and distribute, and it would be especially ridiculous for me to start distributing malware along a trusted supply chain because of those issues. Asking that software be a neutral ground with respect to certain political topics or activities is not an endorsement of the status quo or a dismissal of your completely valid concerns. It’s a recognition that there is a time and a palace to discuss, debate or even fight about very important issues. But not every time and every place is the appropriate one. Or put another way, and taking out of the software realm, if neutrality is inherently political and some political things are too important to leave any place neutral, then what issues do you believe we should start militarizing the moon for? Is the human cost of this war sufficient for the US to start deploying military assets to the moon? Or even just militarizing (more so than it is for spy satellites) earth orbit and deploying kinetic weapons into space? Perhaps the US and EU should unilaterally take full control of the ISS and imprison the Russian cosmonauts onboard? Or is that plainly ridiculous and is there value in attempting to preserve as much neutrality within space as possible given the current situation? Perhaps it is worthy to not escalate political boundaries in certain areas even when the political item in question is of extreme importance.

eropple 5y ago

To be clear: this political stunt was stupid. Transcendentally stupid, if not actively evil; it was untargeted to the point of shocking irresponsibility and if the stories I've heard about the data destroyed by this are true, criminal charges are in my mind justly warranted. But I can believe that and also believe that these kinds of blanket claims are toxic, too. Because "politics" happens the second more than one person exists in a space. And neutrality is an inescapably political stance. Claims like these are, presumably, in good faith, but to make these claims you have to skirt the reality that "don't talk about it" functionally ends up being a tacit acceptance of the status quo. And that status quo has a lot of people downrange of it who the more comfortable among us (and I for one am very comfortable) may find much more palatable if they'd just shut up--but the world is more existential than discomfiting for them, and we should respect that. There are many cases where one's existence is a political question; much of America, for example, thinks the right to existence of LGBTQ folks is up for debate. When the fact of your existence is controversial, your existence is political--and it is rather difficult to criticize someone for acting as such. On the other hand, an evangelical Christian doesn't have to drop slurs in a package. They already have a world where people are beaten and killed for being gay, even with the prodigious successes of our LGBT siblings to date. They still have the world that they want--they're just not happy with the slope of the function. One of these things is not like the other.

eyelidlessness 5y ago
Thank you. I couldn’t put it better myself, speaking as someone whose existence is up for debate.
- eropple 5y ago
  For sure. Without getting too high on the soao box, mine is not, and so I feel an obligation to remember that.
syshum 5y ago
>>much of America, for example, thinks the right to existence of LGBTQ folks is up for debate. I would love for you to expand upon that, why you believe that? I am not aware any wide spread opposition to the "existence" of LGBTQ people, I am aware of wide wide spread resistance to Speech Codes (enforced use pro-nouns), Sexual education to minors, Allowing children to transition under the age of 18, allowing children to transition with out the consent of the parents, and other topics around CHILDREN. Is that what you refer to when you state that the "existence" of LGBTQ people is under threat in the US?