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by Uptrenda 267 days ago
Why do these useless Wrong Think police keep inserting themselves in open source projects? No one wants the drama they bring to their projects. People are just trying to build software... Open source is not a platform for forcing political and social views on people, and not wanting to be a part of that isn't equivalent to opposing it.

If you're out there crawling open source projects: looking to insert "acceptable usage guides", edit doc language to be Correct (tm), or ready to jump into essays on being persecuted, people should just start blocking these posters.
2 comments
Uptrenda 265 days ago
You know, I watched people fight over this post for hours. If you tracked positive and negative total upvotes it would look like a sine wave. I'm kind of surprised it was so contentious though because my experience of politics at startups is basically everyone either pretends to have the same opinion as the founders (if they're openly political) or politics is made outright taboo. I think politics is something that really does invite a lot of drama and being flawed creatures as we are, humans have trouble being objective.

Can you imagine if HN allowed politics. I think most of us here would hate it. RN, hacker news feels like this nice little oasis and even when major political events happened you could come here and it would always have gems. I just think we would be happier if that applied to open source, too. I've often wished to have a plugin that just filters all political stuff from my screen. I will probably develop it one day.

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II2II 267 days ago
I'm sorry, but I don't really buy into these arguments.

If open source communities stuck to technical matters, there would be little to no need for moderators to pass judgment on political or social views. Their primary role would be in conflict resolution over technical matters.

Unfortunately, people being people, political and social views will emerge. Also, people being people, any attempt by moderators to check these discussions will result in complaints, by one side or the other, about being silenced over "correct speak". It does not much matter which side of the social or political spectrum a person falls on.

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zahlman 267 days ago
> If open source communities stuck to technical matters, there would be little to no need for moderators to pass judgment on political or social views. Their primary role would be in conflict resolution over technical matters.

As far as I can tell, this all ultimately started because a fringe of activists (aligned with this group of moderators, and possibly including them) within the community decided they didn't like the political implications of where the project got its funding.

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fishmicrowaver 267 days ago
Lol these kids are like the HOA. Oh no you're resigning? Good riddance.
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TehCorwiz 267 days ago
No. HOAs were established to give cover to post civil rights redlining.
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zb3 267 days ago
Are you sure they would focus on technical matters if I did too? In a given community I can stick to technical matters, then on "my blog" I can write about my political positions.

There's one side that doesn't practically care about that, and then there's the other side that would want me not only removed from that community, cancelled, but even physically assaulted because apparently that's ok because I hold the "wrong" views so laws and human rights no longer apply.

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