61 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
61 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
**Warning: If you are not willing to listen to me talk about people who are
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obsessed over identity politics, stop reading this blog post now!**
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Today I'm going to say something I may come to regret in the future. Fuck it.
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This needs to be said. I may also lose more readers for this, or receive
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angry emails from people I dislike. That's not something that bothers me.
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I'm sure if you follow my blog you're well aware of the [petition against
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Richard Stallman](https://rms-open-letter.github.io/) that big technology
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companies signed. Big names like Mozilla, GNOME Foundation, LineageOS, OBS,
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Tor, X.org Foundation and even Creative Commons all signed this petition.
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Even some GNU/Linux channels like The Linux Experiment.
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This petition calls for the removal of the entire board of the FSF, and
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that of course includes Richard Stallman. Even the GNU project, which is
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Stallman's project.
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Whether or not you believe Richard Stallman is a good person is not something
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I care about in any way. I don't care about that, and I don't care about him
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as a person to be honest. But I value Richard Stallman's work more than
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I will ever value this petition or frankly anyone who signed this petition,
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because despite Stallman's possible ethical flaws, he is responsible for a lot
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of good free software, including the free software movement itself. This
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petition wants to shame Stallman over things that don't really matter all that
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much in the software space. When you develop or use software, the political
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views of the developer doesn't matter, the end product does. And for the most
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part, the software he has worked on is pretty good.
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This is just one example of the awful political activism which has slowly but
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surely taken over many free software projects, such as the Linux kernel and
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many other projects that people depend on. It's no longer about writing a good
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program but rather political activism and identity politics, which doesn't at
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all matter to the end user. The end user, the average normie just wants a
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program that doesn't suck and gets the job done. While saying politics should
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stay out of software entirely is a bit far fetched, considering free software
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(or even open source) is a movement, when you're actually writing a program
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it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if a contributor believes in X, Y or Z
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or is a part of group X, Y or Z. If the code is good, it's good. If it isn't,
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then it isn't.
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These people who are absolutely obsessed over politics are called SJWs, or "woke".
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In my experience, they may not admit it themselves, but usually they
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fall into this category. These people don't care about the software, they only
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care about making sure everyone involved in the project has (usually) liberal
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political views. If someone has different views, they will group together to
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shame that individual for their ideas, calling them a bunch of different names
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that I'm sure all of you have heard in the past even if the contribution the
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individual made is excellent and improves the project in a meaningful way. It's
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kind of difficult to avoid these people nowadays, and I am sure everyone who is
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reading this blog post has either come across one of these people, or are part
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of this group of people.
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Either way, if you are one of these people, you are free to contribute to
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my software repositories. Same for the complete opposite part of the spectrum.
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I value these contributions equally, because they both result in a better
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product. The activism should stay out of software, that's the important part.
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Whatever you do outside of my repositories is not my concern in any way.
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Do however know that I will say what I want, whether you like it or not.
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And regardless of Stallman's views on politics or any other individual,
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I value and support the software and the software development, no matter
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who contributes to it.
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