3 ms·

First of all it would take too much time to find out all the authors of all the software that I routinely use, and then keep up with what their current views ar

First of all it would take too much time to find out all the authors of all the software that I routinely use, and then keep up with what their current views are on various topics. But I think the main reason is that most software has more than one author, and it would be unfair to judge the usefulness of that software based on the (non-technical) views of just one of its authors. Your reasoning would apply only for single-author software, and TBH I would consider those pet-projects anyway, and I don't think the original author would care much whether you use it or not. Edit: about gained knowledge: I think you could apply this if you compare multiple competing solutions, one deciding factor could be the author's thoughts on various topics. Just like how a company's attitude towards various topics might be influencing your purchasing decision: for example Nvidia doesn't support open-source drivers, hence I don't buy Nvidia when choosing a graphics card. But again for me those are all technical reasons, I wouldn't factor an author's/company's political views into that decision, unless it was something really horrible.

icebraining 12y ago
Your reasoning would apply only for single-author software But doesn't that fit SRC itself? But again for me those are all technical reasons, I wouldn't factor an author's/company's political views into that decision, unless it was something really horrible. Ah! But then you're not arguing whether it makes sense to factor the political views in the decision - what you're actually arguing is that ESR's views are not really horrible. But since pothibo supposedly considers them really horrible, it makes sense that (s)he would factor in those views, no?
- edwintorok 12y ago
  Maybe, although I don't think I made technical decisions based on unrelated events. The closest that comes to mind is as described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8602582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8602582 I did use ReiserFS in the past, and I did switch to something else but the reason was purely technical: XFS became quite good on a HDD, an ext4 very nice on an SSD, and also there didn't seem to be much development done upstream once the original author was gone.

icebraining 12y ago

Your reasoning would apply only for single-author software But doesn't that fit SRC itself? But again for me those are all technical reasons, I wouldn't factor an author's/company's political views into that decision, unless it was something really horrible. Ah! But then you're not arguing whether it makes sense to factor the political views in the decision - what you're actually arguing is that ESR's views are not really horrible. But since pothibo supposedly considers them really horrible, it makes sense that (s)he would factor in those views, no?

edwintorok 12y ago
Maybe, although I don't think I made technical decisions based on unrelated events. The closest that comes to mind is as described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8602582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8602582 I did use ReiserFS in the past, and I did switch to something else but the reason was purely technical: XFS became quite good on a HDD, an ext4 very nice on an SSD, and also there didn't seem to be much development done upstream once the original author was gone.