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Why Politicizing Open Source is a Terrible Idea

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

MrPlow writes:

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 tangomargarine on Wednesday September 12 2018, @07:38PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday September 12 2018, @07:38PM (#733802)

    Right, it's just a tool, like a table saw.

    And when table saws are cutting peoples fingers off, the people designing the things don't just sit back and say "Read the manual; use a finger guard; it's not our fault it's just a tool" -- no, they go and invent technology that detects when the blade touches skin and destroys the blade rather than allowing it to harm someone.

    This is a disingenuous comparison. In the table saw example, you enhance the saw with guards for everyone; you don't release a new version of the saw and only sell it to people you like.

    In my mind the issue is actually, "Don't write software that can obviously be used for bad, instead of writing software that can obviously be used for bad and then try to limit who can use it."

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
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