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Ah, crikey. It's always tricky to defend a position against a well-reasoned critique, but I'll try ;) 1) I typed a few answers to this, but I'll simplify. No, it isn't OK. But (please, please understand this is sort of a devils advocate position) clearly it was OK for someone. That was my original point, although probably poorly made..I'm not a master armchair debater, but I think it's roughly about moral absolutism whereas Wikipedia tells me I was describing moral relativism. I subscribe to the view that the holocaust was intrinsically wrong, but if we had lost WWII, then clearly there would be nobody around to argue that case any more. It's wrong. Supporting or enacting parent-child separation at the border is wrong. But somebody - a percentage of somebodys - find it an acceptable trade off for border control. We are (I think, I pray, I hope) the majority for that opinion. We need to ensure we keep voicing it to keep it that way - that's all we've got right now. 2) I qualified this with the statement that - as I read the article - GitHub is fairly clear that this is not in accord with their values. I think their position in balancing their support of many policies they agree with (counter-terrorism, etc.) with a specific instance in which they don't reasonable. I find donating the profit from that deal to charities reasonable. I don't take that as an indicator that they are OK with this just because it's "democratic". Imagine a hypothetical alternative headline: "GitHub refuses to provide services to counterterrorism agency" (again, I'm not American) - despite what we as commentators think, the choice they face isn't 100% black and white. They can voice their disapproval; if ICE's actions become clearly, majorly more harmful than the value they provide, I hope they revisit this decision. If they have decided - for themselves - that they wish to not censure a government agency for a single (or couple) disagreeable policy, I can understand that. I might not do the same. But such is individual freedom. 3) Again, crikey. I don't know. Only once in my career have I been asked to do something I believed to be a violation of local laws. It never remotely approached the need to resign - Legal issued a clear edict on my side. But I would hope GitHub take the approach I would have wanted: if you choose to resign in good conscience, you serve the full notice period, with pay, and with goodwill. I understand this view is somewhat unpopular, but a company is a legal entity. It is entitled to its own view. That an individual might disagree is a serious issue, not to be belittled, but they cannot reasonably continue to work for a company with whose values they disagree with vehemently. Any issues about an individual's personal life position I find orthogonal to this: if that individual cannot leave because its their own livelihood at stake, I would personally judge that an understandably unpleasant compromise. But I honestly don't think it's the company's responsibility to cater for multiple - conflicting - political or ethical or moral views. :frustrated_shrug_emoji: everyone must take a stand on their moral positions, unless they reasonably can't. The rest of it seems to be a case of hoping that your particular moral view prevails during the march into the future with another few billion people to compare and contrast with. |