5 ms·

I lament the times when open source projects were open source software projects instead of political platforms for people who arrogantly think that their privat

I lament the times when open source projects were open source software projects instead of political platforms for people who arrogantly think that their private political opinion is important enough to overshadow the project they participate in. This will undoubtedly create tensions and will lead to fewer donations, thus having a negative impact on KDE.

basisword 4mo ago
Since when was someone's gender or sexuality a "political opinion"?
- chuckadams 4mo ago
  When it’s someone else’s and it’s different.
- Pay08 4mo ago
  Since antiquity.
graypegg 4mo ago
With all due respect: it is just a picture of a cute lizard. Thinking practically, having a male and female lizard is sort of inconvenient for a mascot, since leaving one out is a message in itself. Having a genderless mascot with art assets ready to go makes practical sense to me.
- mongol 4mo ago
  No it is not just a picture, it is also a descriptive text and specific emojis attached. I don't think anyone would have raised an eye if it was just for the picture.
- F3nd0 4mo ago
  The presented mascot is not genderless, but non-binary. The situation you describe has hardly improved with their introduction.
- adjfasn47573 4mo ago
  > since leaving one out is a message in itself Side question: why would having a male or female mascot be "a message in itself"? Why do people want to see a message, and especially a $currentDayPolitics one, in every single thing? A mascot can be a cute mascot without having to represent anything more than exactly that. Just as a random example: Let's say some OG founder of a project had a cute dog named Laila, and the project makes this dog its mascot. Why should that be a problem, AT ALL? And what's even worse, if you think this "everything has a message and we have to be super careful what the message is" thing through, the conclusion is: No project ever again can have a solely male or female mascot. Which is of course absurd. And this whole "we need to send the RIGHT message" thing falls apart with time anyway, because what the right message is, WILL change over time. You're not at the end of all human enlightenment.
  - retardsinoss 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 4mo ago
      We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait and unsubstantive comments. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. It will eventually get your main account banned as well.
  - graypegg 4mo ago
    I mean it's not a HUGE issue by any means, just sort of inconvenient. Like, most mascots aren't in gendered pairs normally (like your dog example!), you just have 1 option to represent the thing. People see Laila the dog and think "oh yeah, LailaOS". But given you have 2 mascots, with 1 being pretty ambiguous, but the other being dressed in a pink dress with bows, it does mean you probably want to use both when presenting KDE, just so you're not accidentally saying "this is the KDE event for men" or "this is the KDE event for women". If you made your mascot the AIGA bathroom symbols, you'd have the same issue. My thinking about the "right" message is just that... I don't think that's what they want to tell people right now, in our current time. Everyone can use KDE. It's not a historical impact sort of thing. Again, not a huge issue really. Just seems practical. Hopefully I'm getting that across. Sorry if I'm not.
- jl6 4mo ago
  They could have hung a Star of David pendant around its neck and it would still have been “just” a cute lizard, and surely only an anti-Semite would object to such neutral, normalizing messaging?
stusmall 4mo ago
Honestly, when was open source not political? Look at early GNU writing. The topics have change but it being political absolutely have not.
- thewebguyd 4mo ago
  Minor nitpick but s/open source/free software But yes, the free software movement is political, and the FSF is by all intents a political organization with a specific political goal and message. Politics is multifaceted, it doesn't purely relate to government either. Politics is how humans decide who gets what, when and how. You can't run a community or organization without politics.
  - stusmall 4mo ago
    That's a minor nitpick that probably worth making in this context. People often casually use free and open interchangeably, like the the person I responded to did. There are times when it does have a real semantic difference in meaning... but here? Not really. The thread is even about a free software project. I agree with the rest of what you say. Politics, governance and identity are unavoidable in any kind of community. It's just part of it and unavoidable. It's about dealing with it fairly, clearly and with respect.
voidfunc 4mo ago
I used to think this way but with the rise of fascism pretty much everywhere I think it's important to know what I am consuming and what they support now. Is it perfect? No. Does it piss some people off? Probably, and I don't care. Also it's a cute fucking lizard.
- retardsinoss 4mo ago
  [flagged]
steve1977 4mo ago
For many people open source is political.
mhurron 4mo ago
> open source software projects instead of political platforms OSS and FOSS movements themselves were political platforms, so this has never been true. Your problem is that you just have some issue with this one
enragedcacti 4mo ago
It's Pride Month and the organization is doing Pride things, its not that complicated. > This will undoubtedly create tensions and will lead to fewer donations, thus having a negative impact on KDE. "undoubtedly" is absurd here. Does KDE really have a stable of consistent transphobes donating? Do they outweigh additional donations from supporting the LGBTQ community? Regardless, if the only point of KDE were to make money it wouldn't be a non-profit. Extremely passionate people are often passionate about a lot of things beyond just what you want from them. KDE is a community project and that community loves and accepts non-binary people.
- retardsinoss 4mo ago
  [flagged]
- bloomingon 4mo ago
  [flagged]
sham1 4mo ago
The Free Software community has always been political. Where have you been? Introducing a non-binary mascot for KDE is no more or less political than for example Richard Stallman demanding that printer drivers should be free, back in the 1980s. And same way the use and preference of the term "open source" over "free software" -- or vice versa -- is also very political because it depends on if one wants to go with the described values or not necessarily want to stand behind them. The Free software community involves people, and with people come shared values and politics. That's kinda what "community" implies. And if we really want to go into it, given the circumstances of the invention of things like computers, the Internet, etc. it'd be very erroneous to asset that software in general has ever been value-free or non-political. Computing artillery trajectories is political just the same way as promotion of LGBTQ+ people, even if people get more upset about the latter rather than the more kinetic kinds of politics implied by howitzers et al.
- chekibreki 4mo ago
  Your comparison is dishonest and wrong. printer drivers are a piece of software, sexual orientation is completely disconnected from software or technology.
  - sham1 4mo ago
    This implies that the difference actually matters. In both cases there is a political goal behind the actions. Yes, printer driver software itself is very different from sexual and gender orientation, but wanting for the printer drivers to be free is a political statement and principle, and so is the uplift of LGBTQ+ people and celebrations of PRIDE month. Both are political despite being about distinct subject matters. You can disagree with the politics in question, but to say that FLOSS has no room for politics is itself a political position, leading you to a paradox!
    - chekibreki 4mo ago
      Yes, it matters. You can try to distract and do as much mental gymnastics as you want but everyone rational can clearly see that one thing is doing politics for software (free drivers, open source, no DRM, …) and the other is about virtue signaling about subjects that are completely unrelated. Btw, feel free to label me however you want (others did already), which shows that they have no arguments and resort to pidgeonholeing and name calling.
YorickPeterse 4mo ago
[flagged]
- F3nd0 4mo ago
  I think it’s a little different to simply have the mascot than it is to make their introduction an officially endorsed celebration of ‘pride month’ and have them ‘presiding over KDE’s 30th anniversary celebrations’. If something has a greater chance to ‘create tensions’, it’s probably the latter, for better or worse.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
scottlamb 4mo ago
I admit I might roll my eyes a bit if the first thing I ever learned about KDE were its mascot's pronouns. But... * That's not what's happening. The pronouns are mentioned in a social media post (presumably targeted at people already way into KDE) during pride month. This kind of wink to the LGBT community was in not that long ago even for the stodgiest corporate brands. You can easily ignore it if you don't care. In contrast, the website's landing page is primarily about the software. There's a (presumably temporary) banner at the top about the anniversary with the mascot; if you click through, it still doesn't mention pronouns AFAICT. It's not as if you have to go through a whole pronoun discovery cosplay to download the software. * Open source projects' priority is often building a community of contributors over seeking (often small by comparison) financial donations. I commend efforts to establish a welcoming community. To me this seems like a very gentle way of saying this is a community where LGBT folks are welcome and homophobic/transphobic behavior is not. And I'm a believer in the "paradox of tolerance"—you can't tolerate intolerant behavior and expect a tolerant (much less welcoming) community. * To the folks this is appealing to, and who perhaps are behind this decision, the current (US) political climate of intolerance feels almost inescapable. Even looking at this at in the most Machiavellian "how do I maximize the contributions I get without actually caring about humans" way, aligning with this community of folks who don't feel welcome in many other places, including a lot of excellent software developers, makes a lot of sense.

basisword 4mo ago

Since when was someone's gender or sexuality a "political opinion"?

chuckadams 4mo ago
When it’s someone else’s and it’s different.
Pay08 4mo ago
Since antiquity.

graypegg 4mo ago

With all due respect: it is just a picture of a cute lizard. Thinking practically, having a male and female lizard is sort of inconvenient for a mascot, since leaving one out is a message in itself. Having a genderless mascot with art assets ready to go makes practical sense to me.

mongol 4mo ago
No it is not just a picture, it is also a descriptive text and specific emojis attached. I don't think anyone would have raised an eye if it was just for the picture.
F3nd0 4mo ago
The presented mascot is not genderless, but non-binary. The situation you describe has hardly improved with their introduction.
adjfasn47573 4mo ago
> since leaving one out is a message in itself Side question: why would having a male or female mascot be "a message in itself"? Why do people want to see a message, and especially a $currentDayPolitics one, in every single thing? A mascot can be a cute mascot without having to represent anything more than exactly that. Just as a random example: Let's say some OG founder of a project had a cute dog named Laila, and the project makes this dog its mascot. Why should that be a problem, AT ALL? And what's even worse, if you think this "everything has a message and we have to be super careful what the message is" thing through, the conclusion is: No project ever again can have a solely male or female mascot. Which is of course absurd. And this whole "we need to send the RIGHT message" thing falls apart with time anyway, because what the right message is, WILL change over time. You're not at the end of all human enlightenment.
- retardsinoss 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 4mo ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait and unsubstantive comments. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. It will eventually get your main account banned as well.
- graypegg 4mo ago
  I mean it's not a HUGE issue by any means, just sort of inconvenient. Like, most mascots aren't in gendered pairs normally (like your dog example!), you just have 1 option to represent the thing. People see Laila the dog and think "oh yeah, LailaOS". But given you have 2 mascots, with 1 being pretty ambiguous, but the other being dressed in a pink dress with bows, it does mean you probably want to use both when presenting KDE, just so you're not accidentally saying "this is the KDE event for men" or "this is the KDE event for women". If you made your mascot the AIGA bathroom symbols, you'd have the same issue. My thinking about the "right" message is just that... I don't think that's what they want to tell people right now, in our current time. Everyone can use KDE. It's not a historical impact sort of thing. Again, not a huge issue really. Just seems practical. Hopefully I'm getting that across. Sorry if I'm not.
jl6 4mo ago
They could have hung a Star of David pendant around its neck and it would still have been “just” a cute lizard, and surely only an anti-Semite would object to such neutral, normalizing messaging?

stusmall 4mo ago

Honestly, when was open source not political? Look at early GNU writing. The topics have change but it being political absolutely have not.

thewebguyd 4mo ago
Minor nitpick but s/open source/free software But yes, the free software movement is political, and the FSF is by all intents a political organization with a specific political goal and message. Politics is multifaceted, it doesn't purely relate to government either. Politics is how humans decide who gets what, when and how. You can't run a community or organization without politics.
- stusmall 4mo ago
  That's a minor nitpick that probably worth making in this context. People often casually use free and open interchangeably, like the the person I responded to did. There are times when it does have a real semantic difference in meaning... but here? Not really. The thread is even about a free software project. I agree with the rest of what you say. Politics, governance and identity are unavoidable in any kind of community. It's just part of it and unavoidable. It's about dealing with it fairly, clearly and with respect.

voidfunc 4mo ago

I used to think this way but with the rise of fascism pretty much everywhere I think it's important to know what I am consuming and what they support now. Is it perfect? No. Does it piss some people off? Probably, and I don't care. Also it's a cute fucking lizard.

retardsinoss 4mo ago
[flagged]

steve1977 4mo ago

For many people open source is political.

mhurron 4mo ago

> open source software projects instead of political platforms OSS and FOSS movements themselves were political platforms, so this has never been true. Your problem is that you just have some issue with this one

enragedcacti 4mo ago

It's Pride Month and the organization is doing Pride things, its not that complicated. > This will undoubtedly create tensions and will lead to fewer donations, thus having a negative impact on KDE. "undoubtedly" is absurd here. Does KDE really have a stable of consistent transphobes donating? Do they outweigh additional donations from supporting the LGBTQ community? Regardless, if the only point of KDE were to make money it wouldn't be a non-profit. Extremely passionate people are often passionate about a lot of things beyond just what you want from them. KDE is a community project and that community loves and accepts non-binary people.

retardsinoss 4mo ago
[flagged]
bloomingon 4mo ago
[flagged]

sham1 4mo ago

The Free Software community has always been political. Where have you been? Introducing a non-binary mascot for KDE is no more or less political than for example Richard Stallman demanding that printer drivers should be free, back in the 1980s. And same way the use and preference of the term "open source" over "free software" -- or vice versa -- is also very political because it depends on if one wants to go with the described values or not necessarily want to stand behind them. The Free software community involves people, and with people come shared values and politics. That's kinda what "community" implies. And if we really want to go into it, given the circumstances of the invention of things like computers, the Internet, etc. it'd be very erroneous to asset that software in general has ever been value-free or non-political. Computing artillery trajectories is political just the same way as promotion of LGBTQ+ people, even if people get more upset about the latter rather than the more kinetic kinds of politics implied by howitzers et al.

chekibreki 4mo ago
Your comparison is dishonest and wrong. printer drivers are a piece of software, sexual orientation is completely disconnected from software or technology.
- sham1 4mo ago
  This implies that the difference actually matters. In both cases there is a political goal behind the actions. Yes, printer driver software itself is very different from sexual and gender orientation, but wanting for the printer drivers to be free is a political statement and principle, and so is the uplift of LGBTQ+ people and celebrations of PRIDE month. Both are political despite being about distinct subject matters. You can disagree with the politics in question, but to say that FLOSS has no room for politics is itself a political position, leading you to a paradox!
  - chekibreki 4mo ago
    Yes, it matters. You can try to distract and do as much mental gymnastics as you want but everyone rational can clearly see that one thing is doing politics for software (free drivers, open source, no DRM, …) and the other is about virtue signaling about subjects that are completely unrelated. Btw, feel free to label me however you want (others did already), which shows that they have no arguments and resort to pidgeonholeing and name calling.

YorickPeterse 4mo ago

[flagged]

F3nd0 4mo ago
I think it’s a little different to simply have the mascot than it is to make their introduction an officially endorsed celebration of ‘pride month’ and have them ‘presiding over KDE’s 30th anniversary celebrations’. If something has a greater chance to ‘create tensions’, it’s probably the latter, for better or worse.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

scottlamb 4mo ago

I admit I might roll my eyes a bit if the first thing I ever learned about KDE were its mascot's pronouns. But... * That's not what's happening. The pronouns are mentioned in a social media post (presumably targeted at people already way into KDE) during pride month. This kind of wink to the LGBT community was in not that long ago even for the stodgiest corporate brands. You can easily ignore it if you don't care. In contrast, the website's landing page is primarily about the software. There's a (presumably temporary) banner at the top about the anniversary with the mascot; if you click through, it still doesn't mention pronouns AFAICT. It's not as if you have to go through a whole pronoun discovery cosplay to download the software. * Open source projects' priority is often building a community of contributors over seeking (often small by comparison) financial donations. I commend efforts to establish a welcoming community. To me this seems like a very gentle way of saying this is a community where LGBT folks are welcome and homophobic/transphobic behavior is not. And I'm a believer in the "paradox of tolerance"—you can't tolerate intolerant behavior and expect a tolerant (much less welcoming) community. * To the folks this is appealing to, and who perhaps are behind this decision, the current (US) political climate of intolerance feels almost inescapable. Even looking at this at in the most Machiavellian "how do I maximize the contributions I get without actually caring about humans" way, aligning with this community of folks who don't feel welcome in many other places, including a lot of excellent software developers, makes a lot of sense.