Was what the devs did great? No. Does the whole project need to be outcast/abandoned due to what language they use? No. There needs to be nuance with these issues. Open source does not owe individuals anything and that is why it is provided without warranty. On the flip side, individuals can choose not to use it.
We should be promoting open source software and not have infighting when open source software doesn’t have much mass market appeal to begin with.
Letting fascists loose on github doesn’t make open source software more appealing. Look at how much worse twitter is to be on after relaxing the moderation standards. Now imagine that for open source. We need to make sure open source is approachable to everyone and that means being careful with our language and not being dismissive when someone opens a PR to make the language more approachable to all
Absolutely this. Twitter-level toxicity coming out in this thread from outside instances is already a bad indicator of the kind of communities that are peripheral to open source.
Non-technical is not the same as political, not even close. I explicitly chose that term because it’s not considered subjective by anyone, but especially not by the people who think gender-neutrality is somehow NOT political. If you claim that it is, they just quip back with “a person’s right to exist is not a political issue but a human rights one”, which of course was never even the debate, they just twist things around to fit their narrative.
I explicitly chose that term because it’s not considered subjective by anyone, but especially not by the people who think gender-neutrality is somehow NOT political.
All words are subjective. “Non-technical” is not really the magic word you think it is. Could you clearly define it? I can’t personally.
We should be promoting open source software and not have infighting when open source software doesn’t have much mass market appeal to begin with.
Just as a side note, I want open source software / free software to have appeal because it is good for people. If the way the promote it to the masses is enabling awful people, I’m really not interested anymore.
The piece was definitely slanted.
Was what the devs did great? No. Does the whole project need to be outcast/abandoned due to what language they use? No. There needs to be nuance with these issues. Open source does not owe individuals anything and that is why it is provided without warranty. On the flip side, individuals can choose not to use it.
We should be promoting open source software and not have infighting when open source software doesn’t have much mass market appeal to begin with.
Letting fascists loose on github doesn’t make open source software more appealing. Look at how much worse twitter is to be on after relaxing the moderation standards. Now imagine that for open source. We need to make sure open source is approachable to everyone and that means being careful with our language and not being dismissive when someone opens a PR to make the language more approachable to all
Absolutely this. Twitter-level toxicity coming out in this thread from outside instances is already a bad indicator of the kind of communities that are peripheral to open source.
Non-technical discussion should just be banned.
That is literally the comment that started all of this. Prepare to be convicted and sentenced in the court of public opinion.
I am serious, the only comment by the dev in question was “This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics.”
Non-technical is not the same as political, not even close. I explicitly chose that term because it’s not considered subjective by anyone, but especially not by the people who think gender-neutrality is somehow NOT political. If you claim that it is, they just quip back with “a person’s right to exist is not a political issue but a human rights one”, which of course was never even the debate, they just twist things around to fit their narrative.
All words are subjective. “Non-technical” is not really the magic word you think it is. Could you clearly define it? I can’t personally.
Just as a side note, I want open source software / free software to have appeal because it is good for people. If the way the promote it to the masses is enabling awful people, I’m really not interested anymore.