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>It's fortunate that sometimes people refuse to build big tents and instead push for a better world. In general I prefer if people keep their politics out of I

>It's fortunate that sometimes people refuse to build big tents and instead push for a better world. In general I prefer if people keep their politics out of IT infrastructure. We don't all agree on what makes the world better and what makes it worse. That said, I don't have a problem with this particular project. It's absolutely fine to create a git hosting solution specifically for open source as open source is itself a very big tent spanning a wide range of ideologies and groups that are otherwise hostile towards each other. It is in fact commercial closed source software that is increasingly subject to political restrictions that are justified by supposedly making the world a better place.

rakoo 4y ago
You cannot remove politics from IT infrastructure. Politics is everywhere. Politics is deciding how we live together as a society; the very fact we're having this discussion is politics. It's the fable of being apolitical that is a mistake, because in doing so you are strengthening the status quo and prevent others from thinking about the situation and changing it.
- fauigerzigerk 4y ago
  I agree that nothing is completely free of politics. What I'm advocating is to tolerate a wider spectrum of political opinions regarding access to IT infrastructure than we may be willing to tolerate in other contexts. I believe that this stance can be justified on a technical level that is only very remotely linked to the main political ideologies of our time.
jraph 4y ago
> In general I prefer if people keep their politics out of IT infrastructure You need to make choices that will have tradeoffs anyway. Unless you find a consensual choice, which is very rare, you might be picking mainstream ones, which are not neutral. Neutrality does not exist. For instance, for any software you need to choose, it will be either proprietary or open source. Both have political implications.
- fauigerzigerk 4y ago
  I agree that some choices cannot be avoided, but others can and should be avoided. In my opinion, we should avoid linking the use of IT infrastructures to political issues such as systems of government, wars, climate change, gender identity, religion or anything else that is unrelated to the technical aspects of that infrastructure. Open source licences themselves are a good example of how I think it should be done. They do not impose any unnecessary political restrictions. They only impose specific rules related to source code. I think that's a good idea and we should apply this idea to other IT infrastructures as well.
  - jraph 4y ago
    What makes IT infrastructures special compared to anything else that we should avoid political matters? For me they are critical and omnipresent. So crucial, in fact, that they are somewhat at the center of political matters nowadays. They are probably a core part of many policies. And I believe the way they are done cannot avoid politics. Trying hard to project into myself into your perspective, I'm trying to compare them to roads, which are infrastructure too. You could say they should be neutral and let anybody use them without discrimination... ... but they are not neutral. The way they are built consume more or less energy, have various environmental implications, they more or less encourage usage of cars or trains or planes depending on how the network is organized, how they are maintained, which facilities are nearby roads… And many roads are not very usable without cars so they actually discriminate. I believe the same kind of things apply to IT infrastructure. Most choices will have political implications and therefore you'd actually be careful when designing them. Now, regardless of whether IT infrastructure can be kept neutral (which I don't think is possible), I actually think that we should not and that we'd better work hard to leverage, and design them the best we can to limit our environmental footprint (for instance).
    - fauigerzigerk 4y ago
      I already conceded that it is not possible to avoid all politics. There are political decisions to be made that are directly related to the infrastructures themselves, their functioning, their economics, their accessibility, the power structures they enable, etc. I did not mean to exclude these political aspects. What I meant very specifically is that access to IT infrastructures in the widest sense of the word (including source code) should not be restricted based on political opinions or fault lines. Going further, I would not even restrict access to criminals as long as the criminality is not related to the functioning of the infrastructure itself. I believe that such restrictions would threaten the infrastructures themselves, make them worse for everybody or at least cause unacceptable levels of collateral damage. I agree that absolute neutrality doesn't exist. But throwing out the whole concept of neutrality just because neutrality has its limits would be a bad idea. E.g., network neutrality has a very specific meaning. It doesn't mean that networks can be neutral in absolutely every way.
goodpoint 4y ago
So we can arbitrarily label whatever we dislike as "political" and then demand people to "their politics out of $thing"? That's not how it works. There are no neutral positions.
- fauigerzigerk 4y ago
  What I mean by "keep out" is that I don't want political opinions or fault lines to determine access to IT infrastructures. I worry that this is where we're headed, but as I said, hosting open source git repositories is not that and I have no problem with it whatsoever. I think we can and should be neutral with regard to _some_ distinctions in _some_ specific contexts. That's not the same as saying there is a neutral position in general.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    [flagged]
jwmcq 4y ago
> I prefer if people keep their politics out of IT infrastructure. I find it interesting that people only ever say this when talking about free software initiatives. Nobody moans about software getting 'political' when talking about closed-source companies enforcing intellectual property laws that were literally written by politicians.
- fauigerzigerk 4y ago
  > I prefer if people keep their politics out of IT infrastructure. >> I find it interesting that people only ever say this when talking about free software initiatives. Nobody moans about software getting 'political' when talking about closed-source companies enforcing intellectual property laws that were literally written by politicians. I'm sorry, but I find your extremely selective quoting offensive. You are distorting the meaning of my comment, in fact turning it into its exact opposite. You even left out the first two words of the sentence you are quoting just to make your point. I said "In general I prefer..." followed by two paragraphs justifying why I think that this general principle doesn't apply to open source and to this project in particular.
  - jwmcq 4y ago
    If your 'general principle' doesn't apply to the most important and popular software in the world (open source) then perhaps it is not very general, and not very principled.
    - fauigerzigerk 4y ago
      My general principle is that political opinions as well as political conflicts and fault lines should not determine access to IT infrastructures. Now, open source licences themselves as well as distribution platforms such as public git repositories guarantee access to some very important global IT infrastructures. Perhaps you can see why my general principle cannot apply to open source in the same way it applies to other things that fall under "their politics" - the rather sloppy term I originally used. It's the same reason why the principle of tolerance cannot apply to tolerance itself in the same way it applies elsewhere. I think principles are always contradictory in the absolute. They only make sense as directions along specific dimensions and can rarely be applied to themselves.
haleudo 4y ago
> In general I prefer if people keep their politics out of IT infrastructure. Fine, then go somewhere else and don't use Codeberg. Your criticism is part of bringing politics into this. It's about freedom and choice. You have the choice to go somewhere else, nobody is forcing you.
- fauigerzigerk 4y ago
  Quoting myself: "That said, I don't have a problem with this particular project. It's absolutely fine to create a git hosting solution specifically for open source..."

rakoo 4y ago

You cannot remove politics from IT infrastructure. Politics is everywhere. Politics is deciding how we live together as a society; the very fact we're having this discussion is politics. It's the fable of being apolitical that is a mistake, because in doing so you are strengthening the status quo and prevent others from thinking about the situation and changing it.

fauigerzigerk 4y ago
I agree that nothing is completely free of politics. What I'm advocating is to tolerate a wider spectrum of political opinions regarding access to IT infrastructure than we may be willing to tolerate in other contexts. I believe that this stance can be justified on a technical level that is only very remotely linked to the main political ideologies of our time.

jraph 4y ago

> In general I prefer if people keep their politics out of IT infrastructure You need to make choices that will have tradeoffs anyway. Unless you find a consensual choice, which is very rare, you might be picking mainstream ones, which are not neutral. Neutrality does not exist. For instance, for any software you need to choose, it will be either proprietary or open source. Both have political implications.

fauigerzigerk 4y ago
I agree that some choices cannot be avoided, but others can and should be avoided. In my opinion, we should avoid linking the use of IT infrastructures to political issues such as systems of government, wars, climate change, gender identity, religion or anything else that is unrelated to the technical aspects of that infrastructure. Open source licences themselves are a good example of how I think it should be done. They do not impose any unnecessary political restrictions. They only impose specific rules related to source code. I think that's a good idea and we should apply this idea to other IT infrastructures as well.
- jraph 4y ago
  What makes IT infrastructures special compared to anything else that we should avoid political matters? For me they are critical and omnipresent. So crucial, in fact, that they are somewhat at the center of political matters nowadays. They are probably a core part of many policies. And I believe the way they are done cannot avoid politics. Trying hard to project into myself into your perspective, I'm trying to compare them to roads, which are infrastructure too. You could say they should be neutral and let anybody use them without discrimination... ... but they are not neutral. The way they are built consume more or less energy, have various environmental implications, they more or less encourage usage of cars or trains or planes depending on how the network is organized, how they are maintained, which facilities are nearby roads… And many roads are not very usable without cars so they actually discriminate. I believe the same kind of things apply to IT infrastructure. Most choices will have political implications and therefore you'd actually be careful when designing them. Now, regardless of whether IT infrastructure can be kept neutral (which I don't think is possible), I actually think that we should not and that we'd better work hard to leverage, and design them the best we can to limit our environmental footprint (for instance).
  - fauigerzigerk 4y ago
    I already conceded that it is not possible to avoid all politics. There are political decisions to be made that are directly related to the infrastructures themselves, their functioning, their economics, their accessibility, the power structures they enable, etc. I did not mean to exclude these political aspects. What I meant very specifically is that access to IT infrastructures in the widest sense of the word (including source code) should not be restricted based on political opinions or fault lines. Going further, I would not even restrict access to criminals as long as the criminality is not related to the functioning of the infrastructure itself. I believe that such restrictions would threaten the infrastructures themselves, make them worse for everybody or at least cause unacceptable levels of collateral damage. I agree that absolute neutrality doesn't exist. But throwing out the whole concept of neutrality just because neutrality has its limits would be a bad idea. E.g., network neutrality has a very specific meaning. It doesn't mean that networks can be neutral in absolutely every way.

goodpoint 4y ago

So we can arbitrarily label whatever we dislike as "political" and then demand people to "their politics out of $thing"? That's not how it works. There are no neutral positions.

fauigerzigerk 4y ago
What I mean by "keep out" is that I don't want political opinions or fault lines to determine access to IT infrastructures. I worry that this is where we're headed, but as I said, hosting open source git repositories is not that and I have no problem with it whatsoever. I think we can and should be neutral with regard to _some_ distinctions in _some_ specific contexts. That's not the same as saying there is a neutral position in general.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  [flagged]

jwmcq 4y ago

> I prefer if people keep their politics out of IT infrastructure. I find it interesting that people only ever say this when talking about free software initiatives. Nobody moans about software getting 'political' when talking about closed-source companies enforcing intellectual property laws that were literally written by politicians.

fauigerzigerk 4y ago
> I prefer if people keep their politics out of IT infrastructure. >> I find it interesting that people only ever say this when talking about free software initiatives. Nobody moans about software getting 'political' when talking about closed-source companies enforcing intellectual property laws that were literally written by politicians. I'm sorry, but I find your extremely selective quoting offensive. You are distorting the meaning of my comment, in fact turning it into its exact opposite. You even left out the first two words of the sentence you are quoting just to make your point. I said "In general I prefer..." followed by two paragraphs justifying why I think that this general principle doesn't apply to open source and to this project in particular.
- jwmcq 4y ago
  If your 'general principle' doesn't apply to the most important and popular software in the world (open source) then perhaps it is not very general, and not very principled.
  - fauigerzigerk 4y ago
    My general principle is that political opinions as well as political conflicts and fault lines should not determine access to IT infrastructures. Now, open source licences themselves as well as distribution platforms such as public git repositories guarantee access to some very important global IT infrastructures. Perhaps you can see why my general principle cannot apply to open source in the same way it applies to other things that fall under "their politics" - the rather sloppy term I originally used. It's the same reason why the principle of tolerance cannot apply to tolerance itself in the same way it applies elsewhere. I think principles are always contradictory in the absolute. They only make sense as directions along specific dimensions and can rarely be applied to themselves.

haleudo 4y ago

> In general I prefer if people keep their politics out of IT infrastructure. Fine, then go somewhere else and don't use Codeberg. Your criticism is part of bringing politics into this. It's about freedom and choice. You have the choice to go somewhere else, nobody is forcing you.

fauigerzigerk 4y ago
Quoting myself: "That said, I don't have a problem with this particular project. It's absolutely fine to create a git hosting solution specifically for open source..."