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There is no ethics complication. That is an imaginary problem imagined by those who wish to force their politics on others. Open source should have no politics

by dayyan 1y ago

There is no ethics complication. That is an imaginary problem imagined by those who wish to force their politics on others. Open source should have no politics left or right.

throawayonthe 1y ago
this makes no sense and even on a basic level, do you not think open source/free software is about the ethics?
- zahlman 1y ago
  > do you not think open source/free software is about the ethics? It's not about trying to interfere with projects because you don't like the author's beliefs. > 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups > The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. > 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor > The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. This includes persons and fields that the author considers harmful or distasteful. And forking and redistributing are core rights granted by the license. Same thing with XLibre. There are, apparently, people out there who think that their decision to use something that was provided et gratis et libre should depend on the beliefs of the thing's creator, as if doing so should somehow endorse those beliefs or cause them to rub off on the user. I can't understand this line of thought, however. Quite frankly I don't think that even applies to paid proprietary software. My moral intuition doesn't allow for that kind of transfer of guilt, which seems to be what people mean nowadays when they talk about "complicity".
  - crote 1y ago
    Shouldn't the "no discrimination" part also apply to the community? How would you feel about a project with an official policy that pull requests from people with a certain skin color will not be accepted - is that still in the spirit of F/LOSS? If a specific maintainer in an otherwise friendly community refuses to merge pull requests from developers with a certain skin color, how should the community handle that? If the other maintainers fork the project and continue without that one toxic maintainer, are they following the spirit of F/LOSS, or are they suddenly "needlessly introducing politics" and "distracting from development"? If the latter, why would the actions of that one toxic maintainer not fall under the same? If you notice that your community is rapidly losing core members because they keep getting insulted by that one toxic maintainer, what do you propose one should do? Do you take action, or do you let the project die?
    - zahlman 1y ago
      > How would you feel about a project with an official policy that pull requests from people with a certain skin color will not be accepted - is that still in the spirit of F/LOSS? No, but this is irrelevant to any of the currently discussed situations. > If the other maintainers fork the project and continue without that one toxic maintainer, are they following the spirit of F/LOSS To have this argument requires accepting your framing around "toxic maintainers" which is probably not very productive. But of course forking projects to do your own thing is entirely in the spirit. Regardless, though, that is not what people are objecting to. For example, an XLibre project wiki was defaced with disparaging comments, including by Jordan Petridis (deeply involved with both GNOME and Xorg) (https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/issues/346#issuecomment-3037446441 https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/issues/346#issuecomment-...). This was highly unprofessional and XLibre should not have to deal with it regardless of what you think about the politics of anyone involved.
      - pessimizer 1y ago
        > No, but this is irrelevant to any of the currently discussed situations. It's somehow always relevant, because they all pretend to be speaking for black people, or that their situation is exactly as if they were black people. It's unbelievably grating to actual black people. And when black people say it to them, how they feel about actual black people comes out instantly. You see, we're symbols. We represent unfair suffering. Just like their parents who were trying to be rappers, their grandparents were trying to be "white n-----s" (because having to go to Vietnam made them black, you see), and their great-grandparents were talking in jazz talk (like Biden.) It did nothing for black people.
        zahlman 1y ago
        > It's somehow always relevant, because they all pretend to be speaking for black people, or that their situation is exactly as if they were black people. What does that have to do with the fancifully hypothetical "project with an official policy that pull requests from people with a certain skin color will not be accepted"? I legitimately can't understand what you're railing against. Who are "they" in this sentence? Why should I consider that "they" are doing what you describe? Give concrete examples, please.
Refreeze5224 1y ago
Absolutely not. DHH is someone I will never support, and I like knowing what projects he works on so that I can avoid them. Everything is political, whether we like it or not. Especially OSS. His views are not just differences in tax policy, I find them grotesque, and I am glad people are aware of who is behind Omarchy and Hyprland so they can make informed decisions about whether to use them or not.
- alberth 1y ago
  Would you mind elaborating, for those of us uninformed.
  - Refreeze5224 1y ago
    https://drewdevault.com/2025/09/24/2025-09-24-Cloudflare-and-fascists.html https://drewdevault.com/2025/09/24/2025-09-24-Cloudflare-and...
    - maratc 1y ago
      > US politics has been pretty fascist lately. It's gonna be a waste of time for anyone who doesn't already agree with this statement to continue past this first sentence.
      - httpsoverdns 1y ago
        It's never a waste of time to consider an alternative viewpoint.
        zahlman 1y ago
        It is when it's entirely redundant, i.e. when you've heard the same arguments countless times before and know that you're about to reject them again. You may notice that your sibling replies treat the "alternative viewpoint" in question as if it were objective fact, and show the same unwillingness. It's prudent to understand whose minds can actually be changed on issues like this.
brian-armstrong 1y ago
This is S-tier rage bait, I commend you.
- dayyan 1y ago
  Cognitive dissonance creates pain, pain creates anger.
  - brian-armstrong 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - tomhow 1y ago
      Please don't use patronising names against fellow community members on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
greekrich92 1y ago
This is like people suddenly getting mad at the band Rage Against the Machine for being political after listening to them for years
SanjayMehta 1y ago
Every proverb can be justified: in this case "looking a gift horse in the mouth." The guy's giving away tons of work freely, and people are whining about his views. Instead of complaining about the free download, maybe they should stop paying for his real products? (But that won't happen because they haven't bought anything off him.)

by dayyan 1y ago

There is no ethics complication. That is an imaginary problem imagined by those who wish to force their politics on others. Open source should have no politics left or right.

throawayonthe 1y ago

this makes no sense and even on a basic level, do you not think open source/free software is about the ethics?

zahlman 1y ago
> do you not think open source/free software is about the ethics? It's not about trying to interfere with projects because you don't like the author's beliefs. > 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups > The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. > 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor > The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. This includes persons and fields that the author considers harmful or distasteful. And forking and redistributing are core rights granted by the license. Same thing with XLibre. There are, apparently, people out there who think that their decision to use something that was provided et gratis et libre should depend on the beliefs of the thing's creator, as if doing so should somehow endorse those beliefs or cause them to rub off on the user. I can't understand this line of thought, however. Quite frankly I don't think that even applies to paid proprietary software. My moral intuition doesn't allow for that kind of transfer of guilt, which seems to be what people mean nowadays when they talk about "complicity".
- crote 1y ago
  Shouldn't the "no discrimination" part also apply to the community? How would you feel about a project with an official policy that pull requests from people with a certain skin color will not be accepted - is that still in the spirit of F/LOSS? If a specific maintainer in an otherwise friendly community refuses to merge pull requests from developers with a certain skin color, how should the community handle that? If the other maintainers fork the project and continue without that one toxic maintainer, are they following the spirit of F/LOSS, or are they suddenly "needlessly introducing politics" and "distracting from development"? If the latter, why would the actions of that one toxic maintainer not fall under the same? If you notice that your community is rapidly losing core members because they keep getting insulted by that one toxic maintainer, what do you propose one should do? Do you take action, or do you let the project die?
  - zahlman 1y ago
    > How would you feel about a project with an official policy that pull requests from people with a certain skin color will not be accepted - is that still in the spirit of F/LOSS? No, but this is irrelevant to any of the currently discussed situations. > If the other maintainers fork the project and continue without that one toxic maintainer, are they following the spirit of F/LOSS To have this argument requires accepting your framing around "toxic maintainers" which is probably not very productive. But of course forking projects to do your own thing is entirely in the spirit. Regardless, though, that is not what people are objecting to. For example, an XLibre project wiki was defaced with disparaging comments, including by Jordan Petridis (deeply involved with both GNOME and Xorg) (https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/issues/346#issuecomment-3037446441 https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/issues/346#issuecomment-...). This was highly unprofessional and XLibre should not have to deal with it regardless of what you think about the politics of anyone involved.
    - pessimizer 1y ago
      > No, but this is irrelevant to any of the currently discussed situations. It's somehow always relevant, because they all pretend to be speaking for black people, or that their situation is exactly as if they were black people. It's unbelievably grating to actual black people. And when black people say it to them, how they feel about actual black people comes out instantly. You see, we're symbols. We represent unfair suffering. Just like their parents who were trying to be rappers, their grandparents were trying to be "white n-----s" (because having to go to Vietnam made them black, you see), and their great-grandparents were talking in jazz talk (like Biden.) It did nothing for black people.
      - zahlman 1y ago
        > It's somehow always relevant, because they all pretend to be speaking for black people, or that their situation is exactly as if they were black people. What does that have to do with the fancifully hypothetical "project with an official policy that pull requests from people with a certain skin color will not be accepted"? I legitimately can't understand what you're railing against. Who are "they" in this sentence? Why should I consider that "they" are doing what you describe? Give concrete examples, please.

Refreeze5224 1y ago

Absolutely not. DHH is someone I will never support, and I like knowing what projects he works on so that I can avoid them. Everything is political, whether we like it or not. Especially OSS. His views are not just differences in tax policy, I find them grotesque, and I am glad people are aware of who is behind Omarchy and Hyprland so they can make informed decisions about whether to use them or not.

alberth 1y ago
Would you mind elaborating, for those of us uninformed.
- Refreeze5224 1y ago
  https://drewdevault.com/2025/09/24/2025-09-24-Cloudflare-and-fascists.html https://drewdevault.com/2025/09/24/2025-09-24-Cloudflare-and...
  - maratc 1y ago
    > US politics has been pretty fascist lately. It's gonna be a waste of time for anyone who doesn't already agree with this statement to continue past this first sentence.
    - httpsoverdns 1y ago
      It's never a waste of time to consider an alternative viewpoint.
      - zahlman 1y ago
        It is when it's entirely redundant, i.e. when you've heard the same arguments countless times before and know that you're about to reject them again. You may notice that your sibling replies treat the "alternative viewpoint" in question as if it were objective fact, and show the same unwillingness. It's prudent to understand whose minds can actually be changed on issues like this.

brian-armstrong 1y ago

This is S-tier rage bait, I commend you.

dayyan 1y ago
Cognitive dissonance creates pain, pain creates anger.
- brian-armstrong 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - tomhow 1y ago
    Please don't use patronising names against fellow community members on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

greekrich92 1y ago

This is like people suddenly getting mad at the band Rage Against the Machine for being political after listening to them for years

SanjayMehta 1y ago

Every proverb can be justified: in this case "looking a gift horse in the mouth." The guy's giving away tons of work freely, and people are whining about his views. Instead of complaining about the free download, maybe they should stop paying for his real products? (But that won't happen because they haven't bought anything off him.)