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posted by chromas on Wednesday September 12 2018, @03:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the No-sir,-I-don't-like-it dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

In our increasingly politicized world, it has become popular to chant "all software is political." Software builds the systems that free or constrain us, the thinking goes, and so we should withhold it from bad people. This is the thinking that has led Microsoft employees and others to decry contracts tech companies have with ICE (US Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement), insisting that their software only be sold to people they like.

[...] Over the years we as an open source community have experimented with all sorts of stupid ideas, like efforts to block anyone from using code for commercial purposes unless they pay. Each time, we've realized that as good a goal as it is for developers to get paid, for example, the destruction caused by closing off the code to uses we don't like ends up ruining the foundations upon which open source rests.

This is dramatically more important, however, when it comes to attempts to politicize open source software.

As developer Chris Cordle stated, "Nobody wins" and the "whole idea [undergirding open source] dies" ... "if an author arbitrarily picks and chooses who can and can't use it based on whoever Twittersphere is mad at this week." It doesn't matter if there is tremendous cause for that anger. Open source dies when it becomes politicized.

Source: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-politicizing-open-source-is-a-terrible-idea/


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  • (Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:00PM (1 child)

    by shortscreen (2252) on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:00PM (#733834) Journal

    I'm gonna say that politicizing a system is bad for the functioning of the system. It causes people to become more aware of the political issues and to expend energy picking a side and advancing that cause, all at the expense of getting work done.

    Getting more people fired up about politics is more likely to lead to political change. Which could be good, if one wants change. The problem is that change could be good or it could be bad.

    The biggest and best example (but not by ease of understanding) is the stock market. It is a system for making money. Perhaps it had other purposes as well, but these are neglected whenever the primary purpose of making money is in jeopardy. It has been very effective toward this goal. It is also apolitical. People take their pile of money, throw it on, and watch it grow. The vast majority do NOT care where the returns come from. Wars for profit, corporate welfare, austerity, usury, bailouts, cheap labor, doesn't matter. If it generates profits, people invest in it. But this is starting to change. If/when the whole thing comes crashing down, I'm sure that people will argue over whether it happened because of politicization or because of the negative externalities that had been ignored for so long.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:37PM (#733878)

    If/when the whole thing comes crashing down, I'm sure that people will argue over whether it happened because of politicization or because of the negative externalities that had been ignored for so long.

    When, not if. Maybe it will morph more gradually so as not to lead to massive death and destruction.

    They can argue all they want but politics is just aggregated human opinion on the state of reality so the politicization is driven by the ignored externalizations and vice versa. Back in the day is was politically proper to kill commies and promote unbridled growth at the expense of the environment.