[fxbl0i]

I find it concerning that someone might think it's appropriate to add political messages to software projects. Imagine if some software developer added a "fuck Bernie Sanders!!!" remark to the README of a popular repo. Just my two cents.

[mmastrac]

Well if Bernie Sanders becomes a totalitarian dictator that starts suppressing democracy, I'll be more than happy to add "fuck Bernie Sanders" to all my repos.

[wesammikhail]

who defines what a totalitarian dictatorship is? you? Here is an example:

If you ask most christians (or minorities) in Syria what they think of Bashar´s leadership, they´d hail him as their christ and savior. Meanwhile, for us here in the west he´s a dictator and a murderer.

I am not justifying any actions or atrocities committed by such an actor. I am merely point to the fact that if you want to politicize an aspect of our lives, you need to at least have rigid and firm definitions. Otherwise, all you end up doing is giving ammunition to your opposition to do the same. Ex. I can add the same about Trump now into my repos and call him a fascist, or do the same thing when Obama was in office. Or heck, imagine having "LOCK HER UP" at the top of each ReadMe.

That cannot possibly be a healthy way of going about things.

[mmastrac]

I'm more that comfortable with my stance. You're invoking the slippery slope.

[BoorishBears]

That's not "the slippery slope", it's a valid point.

Yeesh not everything has to be a fallacy, and honestly if even if it had been he still had a point, a fallacy doesn't magically invalidate the argument being made.

[Teever]

I think its more like '9/11 Never Forget' than 'Fuck Bernie Sanders'

And who cares anyways. Its their repo. If you don't like it fork it.

[LyndsySimon]

There's a long tradition of political messaging in open source. Vi has "Help poor children in Uganda! type :help iccf<Enter> for information", for instance.

[awakeasleep]

Are you saying you think there should be restrictions on the ideological content of what people should be allowed to create?

[fxbl0i]

No, I said I believe it to be inappropriate to use your position in a public software project to push your politics. I didn't ask for "restrictions on ideological content". Believing something to be inappropriate doesn't mean I think it should be forbidden or restricted.

[X6S1x6Okd1st]

Why do you think that's inappropriate?

[fxbl0i]

Because a) politics is an extremely divisive topic which leads easily to flame wars and b) politics is completely unrelated to software development, so there's absolutely no reason to deal with a) in the context of software development.

[threatofrain]

Is it so controversial to say that technology is related to power and money? If you ignore it you're simply letting someone else take care of the matter for you. How should technology and power relate to the rest of society in a harmonious way? Not obvious, but you can always let someone else take care of the matter for you.

Do apps like WhatsApp or Facebook inherently have severe political considerations, even though they're primarily apps for communication and connecting people together?

[X6S1x6Okd1st]

Seems like a reasonable argument if the case we were talking about is a large software project that requires consensus building & collaboration, but it sounds like OP was talking about a personal project that is largely defunct. It seems like there are few stake holders that OP needs to satisfy.

Not all politics & software development are unrelated btw, there have certainly been political movements that would have targeted & tightly controlled software development if it was as big as it is now when that movement happened. Khmer Rouge comes to mind.

There are also explicitly political software development projects: Bitcoin, Tor, arguably GNU, the great firewall, stuxnet, whatever nation state actors are cooking up for mass social media manipulation etc

[LyndsySimon]

> politics is completely unrelated to software development

I strongly disagree.

I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and my politics/philosophy is one of the things that makes F/OSS so very attractive to me.

[wesammikhail]

concerning is an understatement. Politicizing every aspect of our lives can in no possible way end up in anything other than a disaster, especially considering the current apatite for politicians and activists to regulate every aspect of the internet.

[fxbl0i]

It's not only about that. We all have our political ideas and I don't want anybody to shove theirs up my butt while I am in github; if I want to read that kind of stuff I'll look at twitter or facebook, thanks.