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h

The notion that FOSS isn't political and/or shouldn't be political is completely absurd because the whole existence of FOSS is to achieve outcomes that many people who don't subscribe to FOSS philosophies are opposed to.
As such, if it's anything, FOSS can only be political.
Being anti-political is just a bizarre notion that can only emerge in supreme lack of education in cultures where having a political opinion is considered a bad thing because that can lead to negative economic consequences.

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James Smith 💾

@h oh god yes. “Open” is political statement. We just avoid saying that so that people don’t get scared off. But, that’s why I formed @somethingnew

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6gain
@floppy @h Fascinating subject. Definitely agree that FOSS embeds a political opinion. It then gets interesting when multiple opinions get presented - how does one value one opinion over another? eg an open source codebase vs a maintainer engaged in unethical activities. Does it make sense to consider software as just one end of an entire supply chain? Is that different to the code itself deliberately encoding a certain kind of behaviour? 🤔
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6gain
@floppy @h Also, there will always need to be some political/philosophical/moral compromise in that case - nothing is perfect and pure (and usable ;) - is that decision over how to compromise too complex for many? I'm not sure I can choose, other than gut instinct (but, now that I think about it, am facing it in many different ways).
h

@6gain @Floppy

Even in cases where ethical concerns aren't a top priority (say, you're just running an auto parts company and you don't really care that your upstream code is ethical) it would still be in your best interest to be able to trust your code, in case you're not building all your software from scratch, which is the most common case in business.

So it's not solely an ethical problem for individuals, there are many other concerns too, also in business.

Aug 31, 2018, 08:18 AM·Public
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