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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: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:55PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:55PM (#733858)

    VLM, Very Lazy Manchild

    Get a grip you wacko, your projection gets old and your ignorance of reality is staggering. "... the recently dominant left"? Democrats have barely had any real dominance and they are no longer liberal really with their attempt to ride the center and get more votes. If the left was truly dominant we would have single payer health care. Instead we got the ACA which conservatives got all angry now that the new administration is chipping away at it, and perversely those same angry conservatives just HATE Obamacare.

    You are ignorant scum spreading lies and hate, but don't worry I won't try and abridge your freedoms.

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  • (Score: 2, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 13 2018, @12:17AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 13 2018, @12:17AM (#733920) Journal

    Dafuq you talking about? There is no "center" in the US. Or, if there is still a center, the D's work overtime trying to destroy it. In our R and D politics, D stands for "divisive" - as in, divide and conquer. The D's rely on identity politics, denying that we are all Americans. In fact, the D's are intent on importing people who are not Americans, for the express purpose of out-voting Americans.