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Its common place these days for tech organizations to promote social and political issues. The issue for me here is - what if hypothetically the political viewp

Its common place these days for tech organizations to promote social and political issues. The issue for me here is - what if hypothetically the political viewpoint is misguided? What if this was 2003 and the statement said "Due to the newly found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we stand in solidarity with the American government for its war against terror"? I don't think a tech organization should be making such statements in their release notes, which is essentially telling people what should be thought of as right, or wrong, or how to think about a particular issue. To me its reflective of a potentially dangerous trend that everyone _must_ be an activist and have some kind of alignment. All I care about is the new and improved logic flow syntax of Rust.

celeritascelery 4y ago
I feel like this trend is starting to come full circle. We went through a time where companies and organizations felt like they needed to be political activists in all their docs and announcements. And for a while it felt like questioning the activism was questioning the validity of the cause. But it feels like more people are recognizing that politics doesn't need to pervade every part of our lives. It is okay for technical release notes to only be technical release notes, regardless of what current events are.
TechBro8615 4y ago
You don't need to look back to 2003; you can find a direct analogue of that war in the social discourse today.
aliqot 4y ago
Where I live, there's a Kony2012 guy still in town. I respect his resolve. I could let it get to me but he seems passionate so meh, let people do what makes them happy. I can skip the rhetoric if it bothers me.
vvillena 4y ago
Unlike Rust code, activism is an area where statements have a chance to be incorrect or misguided. And just like Rust code, you're welcome to review anything you read, and see if you like it or not. The whole point of activism is to bring issues to an audience that wasn't prepared to hear such statements at a given time: this is why some people get annoyed when they read Notepad++ release notes for the first time! Being "right" doesn't have anything to do with activism: there's lots of activism within, say, flat earthers, but that doesn't make Earth any less round. Still, in this particular point in time, stating support for women in Iran is probably the mildest form of activism anyone could push for.
hobofan 4y ago
> The issue for me here is - what if hypothetically the political viewpoint is misguided? Then you stay away from engaging with the underlying community that issues such statements (which might just be a smaller sub-community of the project's wider community). > All I care about is the new and improved logic flow syntax of Rust. And you are free to care only about that, use it as a purely technical product and just ignore any political statements (which shouldn't be too hard). --------- While I don't think every organization intends to have some kind of alignment, they ultimately will all have one, since people do, and organizations are made up of people. Sometime in the last week, there was an open source federated social network project posted on HN. They have a very political stance when it comes to their developer community, which causes many people to stay away from contributing to the project, to a level where I think it might be the project's long-term demise. While it's never a nice sight to see "wasted effort" like that, given the high level of transparency and contributors willingly joining and staying in the community, that seems like a decent mode of operating.

celeritascelery 4y ago

I feel like this trend is starting to come full circle. We went through a time where companies and organizations felt like they needed to be political activists in all their docs and announcements. And for a while it felt like questioning the activism was questioning the validity of the cause. But it feels like more people are recognizing that politics doesn't need to pervade every part of our lives. It is okay for technical release notes to only be technical release notes, regardless of what current events are.

TechBro8615 4y ago

You don't need to look back to 2003; you can find a direct analogue of that war in the social discourse today.

aliqot 4y ago

Where I live, there's a Kony2012 guy still in town. I respect his resolve. I could let it get to me but he seems passionate so meh, let people do what makes them happy. I can skip the rhetoric if it bothers me.

vvillena 4y ago

Unlike Rust code, activism is an area where statements have a chance to be incorrect or misguided. And just like Rust code, you're welcome to review anything you read, and see if you like it or not. The whole point of activism is to bring issues to an audience that wasn't prepared to hear such statements at a given time: this is why some people get annoyed when they read Notepad++ release notes for the first time! Being "right" doesn't have anything to do with activism: there's lots of activism within, say, flat earthers, but that doesn't make Earth any less round. Still, in this particular point in time, stating support for women in Iran is probably the mildest form of activism anyone could push for.

hobofan 4y ago

> The issue for me here is - what if hypothetically the political viewpoint is misguided? Then you stay away from engaging with the underlying community that issues such statements (which might just be a smaller sub-community of the project's wider community). > All I care about is the new and improved logic flow syntax of Rust. And you are free to care only about that, use it as a purely technical product and just ignore any political statements (which shouldn't be too hard). --------- While I don't think every organization intends to have some kind of alignment, they ultimately will all have one, since people do, and organizations are made up of people. Sometime in the last week, there was an open source federated social network project posted on HN. They have a very political stance when it comes to their developer community, which causes many people to stay away from contributing to the project, to a level where I think it might be the project's long-term demise. While it's never a nice sight to see "wasted effort" like that, given the high level of transparency and contributors willingly joining and staying in the community, that seems like a decent mode of operating.