My main goal in this conversation wasn’t to advocate harming anybody. I’m genuinely curious why software should be special. It’s weird! OTOH I see this same p

My main goal in this conversation wasn’t to advocate harming anybody. I’m genuinely curious why software should be special. It’s weird! OTOH I see this same pattern repeated over and over again in different communities. If you go to gaming forums, you will see people generally supportive of sanctions arguing that preventing Russians from paying for videogames is a borderline crime against humanity. They’ll say it’s unacceptable to bring politics into their little club. If you go to football forums, you’ll see Chelsea fans generally supportive of sanctions arguing that sanctioning Abramovich was a step too far (because it screws over their favourite team) On HN you’ll see people passionately arguing against ISPs pulling out of Russia (they can hardly get paid), or malware in what essentially amounts to business software (lets face it, regular people aren’t going to have their home computers wiped by the node-ipc silliness). Many people seem to be happy to support these things until it eventually hits too close to their own interests, then you begin to see all sort of mental gymnastics to justify how it should be different.