[TobTobXX]

No, I think both, political and apolitical decisions can exist.

If you ban a project because its CI pipeline mines crypto and that ia a drain on your server, it is an apolitical argument.

If you ban a project because it drains recources because an AI agent is commutting multiple times a second, that is apolitical.

If you ban a project, because it hosts content that doesn't align with your ideals since it uses cryptocurrencies, that is clearly political.

Sure, there may be a small grey zone. But there are swaths of decicions that are clearly political/apolitical.

[inigyou]

Is the set of acceptable uses for shared infrastructure not a political question? What's different between mining crypto on a free CI server, letting my cows eat all the grass at the park, or dumping industrial waste into the river?

[iamnothere]

Most people distinguish practical questions from normative questions. Practical questions may have some small political component, but usually it’s not useful or constructive to consider them as political issues.

Some practical questions have an obvious political dimension, in which case it’s fair to consider that component, but people will often argue over whether the question is “political enough” to justify debate. To deal with this, you need processes to ensure that debate is contained but not overly restricted on this kind of issue.

Making every question political is a trick right out of the OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual. Whether to pay the hosting bill shouldn’t be a political question. Whether to change hosts may or may not be, depending on the reasoning.

[inigyou]

It's political as in it contains politics. Yes paying the hosting bill is political for at least three reasons (belief in the value of money and capitalism, belief that specific host should not be boycotted, belief the whole organisation agrees you get more value from the hosting than from keeping the money). That doesn't mean a political debate is needed every time it's time to pay it. It does mean that if someone says "hey this hosting provider is also hosting kiwifarms, should we really give them money?" a response of "paying the hosting isn't political" is incorrect.