Garrett builds web sites
When you include political messaging with your FOSS project, you make potential users have to consider if they want to "support" that messaging by using the product, you may get users of that project in legal trouble in some jurisdictions, and you may even attract state actor-level issues like what happened to Notepad++. I know it's mostly futile to ask, but consider just shipping your code without politics and leaving the political messaging for a personal blog or social network feed.
Feb 3 at 7:15amWeb
Show threadAlerta! Alerta!Feb 3

@Albright In FOSS you are free todo what you want. If you don't like my political opinion you are free to not use my tools.

That is what free speech is about.

Show threadDerick RethansFeb 3

@Albright No. This is such a bad take.

Open Source has *always* been political.

As a way to fight back to control over what you can run on your devices, by creating them as public goods.

And the movement also pushed back against software patterns, and now in more modern times against age gating, the erosion of private messaging (encryption), and reducing the reliance on big tech.

To illustrate, here is one of the first slides of the largest Open Source conference in Europe, #FOSDEM.

Show threadRichard "RichiH" HartmannFeb 3
@Albright @derickr the largest on Earth :)
Show threadErik Play2LearnFeb 3
@derickr @Albright This is a great take on the topic and well explained. A pity that it's stained by calling the previous post BS.
Show threadGarrett builds web sitesFeb 3

@derickr Oh, shit, someone put it in a slideshow deck? That must mean it's not up for debate then. Come on now - anyone can put anything on a slide.

Open source projects are products in the end. Do T-shirts have to be political? Do the stores that sell them or the factories that make them or the farmers that grew the cotton have to be political?

Even if you would say yes to that, it's still very easy for me to buy a T-shirt without political messaging.

Show threadpedro 🍉Feb 3
@Albright everything is political.
Show threadLycorisFeb 3
@Albright Open Source in itself is already a “political issue”. Open source standards for accessibility and privacy, which both are political issues. I do believe people like to use the term “political” as a buzzword meaning “a political stance I do not agree with” which in our times sadly means basic human rights for people who don’t fit the world view of conservative heterosexual men. Asking people to respect the basic bodily autonomy and basic human dignity of queer folks and POC should be a given. And I refuse to “respect” people who want to use services those same folks worked on for the sake of the community while refusing to just leave them be. I assume I do not have to point out the massive contributions of queer folks and POC within the open source community. A lot of them are very well known.
People who decide to not use a project because they are asked to not be an ass can kindly fuck off. I’d rather preserve the dignity of people contributing to the project and have less users.
Show threadJean-Michel DurandFeb 3

@Albright The time when we could afford not to be political is past (if it ever existed).
It's high time to choose sides or the choice will be made for you.

Also, I'm not clear on what legal troubles in some jurisdictions you are referring to. Most projects are backed up by a clear license that's generally enforceable everywhere.
And you always have the option not to use a project if it rubs you the wrong way.

Show threadGarrett builds web sitesFeb 3
@onegeekarmy Genericized example of the legal issue I'm referring to: Including a message like "Country A out of Land B! Land B has always been part of Country C!" If Country A forbids speech about Land B not being the territory of Country A, having that message tucked in a readme in a downloaded package becomes a danger for citizens of Country A.
Show threadErik Play2LearnFeb 3

@Albright What do you mean with Notepad++? The WinGUp highjacking? The target of that were specific IP ranges. From a short research on my side it doesn't look like it was related to Notepad++ or its devs political standings, but rather was focusing organizations that used Notepad++.

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/hijacked-incident-info-update/

Notepad++ Hijacked by State-Sponsored Hackers | Notepad++

Show threadGarrett builds web sitesFeb 3
@fallbackerik You say you don't think Notepad++ was involved while linking to an article on their site about the vulnerability affecting users of their project. I don't get it.
Show threadErik Play2LearnFeb 3
@Albright Good point. Yeah, I didn't mean that N++ was not involved. Sorry for the confusion. I meant, they were not the target, just the means to an end. And from the info I have, they haven't gotten into this mess because of their political views, but because the actual target organizations chose to deliver N++ to its users' computers.