> Do they think that democrats are more left leaning and thus supportive of open source than republicans?
Is this satire? I'm blown away otherwise.
No, this is not what they think, obviously.
The call is for developers to recognize the potential for abuse of the software they write, to use their means and their platforms to speak out against oppression, and to generally not be huge pieces of shit under the guise of purported software neutrality.
This post is extremely low quality. It lacks meaningful content, is basically just a "SJWs are ruining open source!" rant, and is poorly edited. I think this has no place on HN.
Look no further than Webpack shutting down their website and documentation then angrily dismissing POCs who are concerned they can't do their jobs. [1] In the same light, they shut down all of the incredibly respectful criticism they received, mostly centered around not having the website accessible after dismissing the message. [2]
Have we reached a point where open source will throw POC developers under the bus in order to score political virtue points?
It's a total trainwreck, and politics is used as a weapon in open source against political enemies through shut downs, egregious code of conduct policies and arbitrary enforcement actions.
When a company provides a service I expect them to continue doing so unless there's a case of "force majeure".
By all means support whatever causes you believe in, write a blog post, donate to the cause and (most importantly - which is what a lot of companies conveniently omit in the case of BLM) fix your own internal issues related to that cause.
But if you're going to degrade the service you promised to provide as some sort of "support" it is just bullshit virtue-signaling and it is actively hurting people including those that are part of the cause you're supporting.
This is an open-source project so there's no liability or warranty attached to it and we have no right to expect anything, but nevertheless I will definitely keep this in mind next time I have to pick a technology or library and will make sure to evaluate them not only on their technical merits but also on their propensity to such bullshit.
Exactly, they have no obligation to keep the docs and website accessible but are they really winning people over or bringing more awareness to this issue by preventing you from working?
It's obvious even they know their actions can't stand up to basic scrutiny, hence the immediate locking of the threads and even suspension of someone for daring to have the opinion that they shouldn't be doing it.
A dismissable banner for the cause that doesn't screw your users? Far less objectionable. It's baffling they went down that route, and it's emblematic of ideology clouding judgement.
Isn't webpack open source? I mean seriously, most devs I know aren't paying them a dime to use it...so stop complaining.
Use something else if you don't like it. Why does it matter how many people use webpack if their just an open source library providing a service to all devs for free?
Why does free and open source status exempt someone from criticism? They have the right to take actions to interfere with people's work for political reasons and I have the right to criticise those decisions.
If "free" was an excuse out of poor behavior then surely Google and Facebook are exempt from criticism about data collection practices because they provide free services.
Webpack's website and marketing clearly tries to get us to use it, so although it's open source, the author (and contributors) from the project have an interest in people using their software.
In this case, they kind of pulled a bait and switch. They encouraged everyone to use it and then are letting them down by preventing them from using it efficiently on the basis of their own political beliefs.
It wouldn't be a problem if the project was advertised at the start as one person's work that comes with no guarantee of maintenance, support and if the guy suddenly goes crazy (whether because of political beliefs or otherwise) he might take down the project.
This one on the other hand looks serious, has good marketing, corporate sponsors, etc so while you can't ask for more, you at least kind of expect a serious project relied upon by thousands to not degrade existing stuff on the basis of political beliefs.
It's fine if you want to decide how your project is used (even for political reasons) but the proper way to do so is via the license so potential users know what they're in for before they start using the library and will (usually) refrain from using the library if the license does not allow them. This on the other hand is just a bait and switch and has tons of collateral damage to parties unrelated to, or even part of the BLM movement.
These events are good for one thing though: expanding your own personal blacklist of companies, organizations, people etc. Like Sony being openly racist and tripling down on that.
Do people actively do this? My politics are so "off-center" that I'd starve to death in the street if I only associated with people and companies whom I agreed with politically.
How do you even keep track? If someone asked me the political stances of my closest colleagues or largest software partners I couldn't even tell you.
There was a time when companies were just companies and politically neutral. That was truly a good time. If they play this misguided game I think it's only fair to punish them. It's just baffling that even the giants do this - Coca Cola Germany or Siemens as examples.
Okay, I'll bite - when was this time? Because I can't think of any.
Consider how many companies were not politically neutral on the issue of worker's rights and unionization. Or neutral on employing members of the Communist party.
Well newspaper companies are kind of special, no? They very often have vocal and official slants.
But I think it's questionable if beverage or kitchen appliance companies should align themselves with a political party. That will by definition alienate some customers. And historically I have a hard time of seeing this prior to the last 10 or so years.
While I agree on the BLM issue I do not see an issue in the use of the term 'SJW' given that the term does describe an actual phenomenon which is found in the Oxford dictionary. You might not agree with the interpretation - while it initially was used as a badge of honour by people who described themselves as such the term has taken on a more negative connotation in the last years - but that does not preclude others from using it nor does it imply that those people should not be taken seriously. Debate them on the merit of their position instead, either you or they may be enlightened.
"open source" started in the 1990s, not as "an attempt to escape the clutches of proprietary and monopolistic companies like Microsoft and Apple" but as a way to make the source code part of the free software movement more palatable in proprietary and monopolistic companies like Microsoft and Apple.
And the GNU project started in 1983, before Microsoft or Apple had anything like their current influence. Apple didn't ship the first Macintosh until 1984, for example, and the Apple ][ opened computing domains far unlike the walled gardens outside of microcomputing.
If you go into open source to make the world a better place, then that's a political statement. Which might also explain why some open source programmers consider that open source development might not be the only way to make the world a better place.
There are of course other reasons that people go into open source. My statement is that there's no clear and obvious separation between the two.
I think a lot of people read "political" as a synonym of "Partisan" and use that as a filter (or maybe excuse?) to not engage meaningfully with the content of the discussion.
Any activity related to changing or reinforcing the balance of power in a society is a political action as is any effort to prevent injustice. Free software is a movement to give more power to users and so is, by definition, a political movement
Hoping this is satire or somer sort of joke....but otherwise,
Popular open source developers are using their platforms to advocate against oppression. This should be encouraged, not discourage - regardless of what your political leanings are.
Would you be just as upset if they wrote #AllLivesMatter? Probably not.
This post is using open source as a thinly veiled guise to rant about "SJW"s (the use of that term alone should disqualify it). This shouldn't be on HN.
> open source developers are using their platforms to advocate against oppression. This should be encouraged, not discourage - regardless of what your political leanings are.
What one person calls 'oppression' is another person's freedom. A drug-free society/the 'war on drugs' versus freedom of choice. Second amendment activists versus gun control. Freedom of expression versus various laws which either forbid or mandate the use of certain types of expression.
"All lives matter" is divisive because "black lives matter" is a statement that black lives are largely devalued and forgotten in a system of institutionalized racism. "Black lives matter" leaves off the implied "too": "black lives matter, too."
> "WTF is the impulse behind changing #BlackLivesMatter to #AllLivesMatter. Do you crash strangers' funerals shouting I TOO HAVE FELT LOSS" - @arthur_affect on Twitter
Well, yes? That is, the phrase "all lives matter" seems like it's often used as a way to take control away from the discussion about largely devalued and forgotten black lives.
Who controls the discussion is not of importance, what is important is the subject matter - it is the search for the truth which should 'control the discussion'. In the case of BLM versus ALM the truth varies from location to location and from time to time. Systemic racism was a matter of fact in the first half of the previous century in the USA. This is not the case now in the largest part of the country, nor is it true in most parts of Europe. In other words, had BLM been around in the 1950's they would have been 'in control of the discussion' as they would have had the truth on their side. Nowadays this is not the case, those claims of 'systemic racism' are unfounded and easily refuted. Even a tragic death-by-abusive-police-conduct like this does not change the fact that systemic racism as held forth by groups like BLM is something of the past, not of the present. There are racist individuals, some of those may be in positions of power where they can effect racist policies over a limited amount of people but this is the exception, not the rule. When held to the light those racist policies tend to be struck down by the force of law. The policemen involved in the death of George Floyd now are in custody and will be tried, either for homicide or manslaughter.
So, yes, All Lives Matter. Black lives just as much as other lives.
By the way, Wikipedia is not exactly the best place to start looking for absolute truth around politically contentious issues. One of its founders has spoken out on the way the project dropped the original NPOV policy [1] and replaced it with something which purports to achieve the same goals but falls far from that. Judging from the examples he holds forth I assume that he leans more towards the conservative end of the political spectrum so those who lean towards what used to be called the progressive end might want to dismiss what he says outright. That would be just the wrong thing to do if what you're after is a repository of knowledge which is free from political bias - or at least as free as it can be given the fact that those articles are still written by human beings.
My observation is that "All Lives Matter" is not infrequently used as a derailing technique, to change the subject away from the subject matter that "Black Lives Matter" focuses on.
As such, your "what is important is the subject matter" is an incorrect analysis, as there are multiple matters.
> Systemic racism was a matter of fact in the first half of the previous century in the USA. This is not the case now in the largest part of the country, nor is it true in most parts of Europe.
Please present your evidence. The evidence I've seen from multiple sources, including personal observations, accounts of others, and scholarly research, says otherwise.
Your statement "matter of fact in the first half of the previous century in the USA" understates the legal racism until Civil Rights Act of 1964 - closer to 2/3rds of the 1900s than 1/2.
Part of the systemic racism we see now is a consequence of the laws then, such as redlining and lack of access to what was then "white suburbia", which meant that blacks could not build up anywhere near the same equity that current white Baby Boomers have - equity being one of the main forms of wealth in older people.
So even without specific laws, there's still the effects of legal racism.
> Wikipedia is not exactly the best place to start looking for absolute truth around politically contentious issues.
Shurg. Sure. There's is no single best place for anything. Perhaps you can recommend a better source for how smitty1e might better understand the objects to the term "All Lives Matter" rather than some inside-Wikipedia discussion which sounds more like derailing than something which is important is the subject matter?
For me, my comment should be interpreted as"I have checked this source, the information appears correct to me, and it explains the issues better than I can do in the time I care to write about this topic."
> This is not the case now in the largest part of the country, nor is it true in most parts of Europe. In other words, had BLM been around in the 1950's they would have been 'in control of the discussion' as they would have had the truth on their side. Nowadays this is not the case, those claims of 'systemic racism' are unfounded and easily refuted. [...] There are racist individuals, some of those may be in positions of power where they can effect racist policies over a limited amount of people but this is the exception, not the rule.
I strongly disagree with this premise. It's the claims that "systemic racism is dead" that are unfounded and easily refuted.
Where do you see systemic racism in current society? Do mind that 'systemic racism' has a specific meaning, it is racism expressed in the practice of social and political institutions. The only obvious example of systemic racism I can think of at the moment is the policy of certain academic institutions which demand higher grade averages from Asian students to be accepted compared to other groups but that is not what most people think of when hearing this term. There are individuals who are racist and some of those may be in a position to spread their racist ideas by way of their position in limited parts of society - e.g. a racist sheriff or prosecutor - but that is not the same as institutional/systemic racism.
"Black unemployment rate is consistently twice that of whites" [0] -- "One common explanation, as William A. Darity Jr. of Duke University told Salon in 2011, is that blacks are “the last to be hired in a good economy, and when there’s a downturn, they’re the first to be released.” A 2010 article testing that “last hired, first fired” hypothesis against panel data from the Current Population Survey (from which the unemployment rate is derived) found considerable support for the “first fired” part but not for the “last hired” part: Blacks are in fact disproportionately likely to lose their jobs as the business cycle weakens"
"African-Americans With College Degrees Are Twice As Likely to Be Unemployed as Other Graduates" [1] -- "Schmitt pointed to a series of studies that have in recent years found that when trained sets of black and white testers with identical resumes are sent on interviews, white men with recent criminal histories are far more likely to receive calls back than black men with no criminal record at all."
"DiTomaso says the study, like other research, challenges the assumption that opportunity is available to all Americans who equip themselves with the right skills. Private-sector labor data reported to the federal government shows little change in the share of management and executive-level jobs held by racial and ethnic minorities since the 1980s, she said. In fact, in industries that offer workers the best wages, the share of white men in these jobs has actually grown.
The researchers behind the center's study of black college graduate employment patterns emphasized the role that the recession has played in dampening every worker's employment prospects. But they concluded that the long-term unemployment crisis among black college graduates ultimately could not be explained without accounting for continuing discrimination against black applicants."
"Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination" [2] -- " We perform a field experiment to measure racial discrimination in the labor market. We respond with fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perception of race, each resume is assigned either a very African American sounding name or a very White sounding name. The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume. For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase. Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect does not differ by race. The amount of discrimination is uniform across occupations and industries. Federal contractors and employers who list Equal Opportunity Employer' in their ad discriminate as much as other employers. We find little evidence that our results are driven by employers inferring something other than race, such as social class, from the names. These results suggest that racial discrimination is still a prominent feature of the labor market."
"Study: ‘African-American Names’ 16% Less Likely to Be Approved for Airbnb Rentals" [3]
"Black Preschoolers Far More Likely To Be Suspended" [4] -- "Here's what the education data show: kids who are suspended or expelled from school are more likely to drop out, and those dropouts are more likely to end up with criminal records. In many places, school discipline pushes kids directly into the juvenile justice system. Take just one example: a school fight can end in an arrest for assault.
Education and civil rights groups have dubbed this phenomenon the "school-to-prison pipeline." There are big racial differences in how school discipline is meted out: students of color are much more likely to be suspended or expelled that white students, even when the infractions are the same.
A new government study on discipline in the nation's public schools shows just how very early that gap is present. According to the report, black children make up 18 percent of preschoolers, but make up nearly half of all out-of-school suspensions. (We're talking mostly four-year-olds, people.)"
"CIVIL RIGHTS DATA COLLECTIONData Snapshot: School Discipline" [5] -- "Disproportionately high suspension/expulsion rates for students of color", "Disproportionate suspensions of girls of color",
"The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children" [6] -- "The social category “children” defines a group of individuals who are perceived to be distinct, with essential characteristics including innocence and the need for protection (Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2000). The present research examined whether Black boys are given the protections of childhood equally to their peers.We tested 3 hypotheses: (a) that Black boys are seen as less “childlike” than their White peers, (b) that the characteristics associated with childhood will be applied less when thinking specifically about Black boys relative to White boys, and (c) that these trends would be exacerbated in contexts where Black males are dehumanized by associating them (implicitly) with apes (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008). Weexpected, derivative of these 3 principal hypotheses, that individuals would perceive Black boys as being moreresponsible for their actions and as being more appropriate targets for police violence. We find support forthese hypotheses across 4 studies using laboratory, field, and translational (mixed laboratory/field) methods.We find converging evidence that Black boys are seen as older and less innocent and that they prompt a lessessential conception of childhood than do their White same-age peers. Further, our findings demonstrate that the Black/ape association predicted actual racial disparities in police violence toward children. These datarepresent the first attitude/behavior matching of its kind in a policing context. Taken together, this researchsuggests that dehumanization is a uniquely dangerous intergroup attitude, that intergroup perception of children is underexplored, and that both topics should be research priorities."
"Black Crime Rates: What Happens When Numbers Aren’t Neutral" [7] -- "(1) If a black person and a white person each commit a crime, the black person is more likely to be arrested. This is due in part to the fact that black people are more heavily policed.", "(2) When black people are arrested for a crime, they are convicted more often than white people arrested for the same crime.", "(3) When black people are convicted of a crime, they are more likely to be sentenced to incarceration compared to whites convicted of the same crime."
"Data Show Racial Disparity in Crack Sentencing" [8] -- "Speaking on the House floor last week, California Republican Rep. Dan Lungren acknowledged the potential racial effects of the old sentencing structure. "Certainly, one of the sad i...
"Demographic Differences in Sentencing" [9] -- " Black male offenders continued to receive longer sentences than similarly situated White male offenders. Black male offenders received sentences on average 19.1 percent longer than similarly situated White male offenders during the Post-Report period (fiscal years 2012-2016), as they had for the prior four periods studied. The differences in sentence length remained relatively unchanged compared to the Post-Gall period.", " Violence in an offender’s criminal history does not appear to account for any of the demographic differences in sentencing. Black male offenders received sentences on average 20.4 percent longer than similarly situated White male offenders, accounting for violence in an offender’s past in fiscal year 2016, the only year for which such data is available. This figure is almost the same as the 20.7 percent difference without accounting for past violence. Thus, violence in an offender’s criminal history does not appear to contribute to the sentence imposed to any extent beyond its contribution to the offender’s criminal history score determined under the sentencing guidelines."
" New HUD Report Shows Continued Discrimination Against People of Color" [10] -- "People of color looking for homes are told about and shown fewer homes and apartments than their white counterparts."
"Police harassment affects half of black youth, one-third of whites, study says" [11] -- "Ever since a Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman for the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, a 17 year-old walking home from a convenience store, criticism of unfair treatment of people of color by police has been a near-constant headline.
But the issue is hardly new to young black Americans, over 50 percent of whom reported knowing a victim of police harassment or violence in 2009, well before Michael Brown or Freddy Gray were household names throughout the country."
"You really can get pulled over for driving while black, federal statistics show" [12] -- "The Justice Department statistics, based on the Police-Public Contact Survey, show that "relatively more black drivers (12.8%) than white (9.8%) and Hispanic (10.4%) drivers were pulled over in a traffic stop during their most recent contact with police." Or, to frame it another way: A black driver is about 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than a white driver, or about 23 percent more likely than a Hispanic driver. "Driving while black" is, indeed, a measurable phenomenon."
"‘Walking while black’ can be dangerous too, study finds" [13] -- "Sadly, it seems, “walking while black” can have dangerous consequences.
That’s because a recent study suggests motorists are less likely to stop for an African American pedestrian in a crosswalk. A black pedestrian’s wait time at the curb was about 32 percent longer than a white person’s. Black pedestrians were about twice as likely as white pedestrians to be passed by multiple vehicles.
The small but provocative study — conducted by researchers at Portland State University in Oregon and the University of Arizona — suggests that biases just outside people’s conscious awareness can make them less likely to yield to minority pedestrians. And that could put those pedestrians at risk, said Kimberly B. Kahn, an assistant professor of social psychology at Portland State University."
If you'd like, we can discuss gerrymandering, voter ID laws, and other forms of disenfranchisement of minorities, which prevents any meaningful change to systemic racism.
Its divisive because it attempts to dismiss as invalid the notion that one racial group suffers a disproportionate targeting by police. It denies that racism is a problem or at best equates the problems faced by police to the problems created by police violence toward black people. When you say all lives matter, you're basically looking at these millions of people who are working toward making the world less hostile toward black people and saying "you're stupid, you're the racists."
Honestly FOSS should stay away from all kinds of politics.
FOSS reaches beyond borders and many people just dont really care about certain events that happen in your country (or cant really form an educated opinion about the matter).
This reminds me of the Notepad++ Free Uyghur edition.
Either way FOSS is a security risk and this hidden cost should be taken into account.
Why is this not flagged? No need to read after “support for democratic party initiatives like BLM” to get the idea. Is HN becoming a conspiracy theories subreddit?
Hope this person rereads his BS piece and feel ashamed and appalled by his profound stupidity as we are reading it.
The user could be China's secret service. The Pentagon with a new mind control hack. You can't be apolitical, sorry. You have to stand for somethind and Open Source stands for equal access rights. Yes you can have no opinion in other matters excepting "equal access rights" but it's getting harder and harder to do so.
I'd rephrase that as 'free software should not do any politics which goes outside of the specific issues which it was created to influence', i.e. issues around copyright law, freedom of expression and related areas. Software licences should be free of politics other than those mentioned areas, both to avoid weakening the licence as well as to avoid fractioning the free software landscape into political factions. Free software developers are of course free to do politics but it should be made clear that any political expression outside the mentioned areas is done on a personal note and does not represent the project - something which can be hard to do for 1-person projects.
The author is complaining about the twitter accounts of open source contributors. Should they withhold their views on justice because it offends some of their followers?
Yes, weakening free licenses with constraints aligned to individual causes is problematic but that doesn't mean we should ignore all other issues of justice outside of those related to ownership and control. If anything, we need more conversations about the increasing inequalities and injustices caused by technology and the role we play within that. How can we do that without having "political" discussions in public? Why shouldn't entire open source communities have these discussions collectively?
40 comments
[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 89.2 ms ] threadIs this satire? I'm blown away otherwise.
No, this is not what they think, obviously.
The call is for developers to recognize the potential for abuse of the software they write, to use their means and their platforms to speak out against oppression, and to generally not be huge pieces of shit under the guise of purported software neutrality.
This post is extremely low quality. It lacks meaningful content, is basically just a "SJWs are ruining open source!" rant, and is poorly edited. I think this has no place on HN.
[1] https://github.com/webpack/webpack.js.org/issues/3765
[2] https://github.com/webpack/webpack.js.org/issues/3762
Have we reached a point where open source will throw POC developers under the bus in order to score political virtue points?
It's a total trainwreck, and politics is used as a weapon in open source against political enemies through shut downs, egregious code of conduct policies and arbitrary enforcement actions.
By all means support whatever causes you believe in, write a blog post, donate to the cause and (most importantly - which is what a lot of companies conveniently omit in the case of BLM) fix your own internal issues related to that cause.
But if you're going to degrade the service you promised to provide as some sort of "support" it is just bullshit virtue-signaling and it is actively hurting people including those that are part of the cause you're supporting.
This is an open-source project so there's no liability or warranty attached to it and we have no right to expect anything, but nevertheless I will definitely keep this in mind next time I have to pick a technology or library and will make sure to evaluate them not only on their technical merits but also on their propensity to such bullshit.
It's obvious even they know their actions can't stand up to basic scrutiny, hence the immediate locking of the threads and even suspension of someone for daring to have the opinion that they shouldn't be doing it.
A dismissable banner for the cause that doesn't screw your users? Far less objectionable. It's baffling they went down that route, and it's emblematic of ideology clouding judgement.
Use something else if you don't like it. Why does it matter how many people use webpack if their just an open source library providing a service to all devs for free?
If "free" was an excuse out of poor behavior then surely Google and Facebook are exempt from criticism about data collection practices because they provide free services.
In this case, they kind of pulled a bait and switch. They encouraged everyone to use it and then are letting them down by preventing them from using it efficiently on the basis of their own political beliefs.
It wouldn't be a problem if the project was advertised at the start as one person's work that comes with no guarantee of maintenance, support and if the guy suddenly goes crazy (whether because of political beliefs or otherwise) he might take down the project.
This one on the other hand looks serious, has good marketing, corporate sponsors, etc so while you can't ask for more, you at least kind of expect a serious project relied upon by thousands to not degrade existing stuff on the basis of political beliefs.
It's fine if you want to decide how your project is used (even for political reasons) but the proper way to do so is via the license so potential users know what they're in for before they start using the library and will (usually) refrain from using the library if the license does not allow them. This on the other hand is just a bait and switch and has tons of collateral damage to parties unrelated to, or even part of the BLM movement.
How do you even keep track? If someone asked me the political stances of my closest colleagues or largest software partners I couldn't even tell you.
Consider how many companies were not politically neutral on the issue of worker's rights and unionization. Or neutral on employing members of the Communist party.
Or, quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_newspapers - "The Republican party was especially effective in building a network of newspapers in major cities to broadcast its statements and editorialize in its favor."
That certainly sounds like the newspaper companies of the early 1800s weren't politically neutral.
But I think it's questionable if beverage or kitchen appliance companies should align themselves with a political party. That will by definition alienate some customers. And historically I have a hard time of seeing this prior to the last 10 or so years.
I seemed to have missed this controversy - what are you talking about with beverage companies aligning themselves with a political party?
In any case, Coors seems like an appropriate historical example, what with the Coors family involvement in CO and conservative politics, and the long boycott against Coors - https://www.cpr.org/2014/10/03/the-coors-boycott-when-a-beer...
"open source" started in the 1990s, not as "an attempt to escape the clutches of proprietary and monopolistic companies like Microsoft and Apple" but as a way to make the source code part of the free software movement more palatable in proprietary and monopolistic companies like Microsoft and Apple.
And the GNU project started in 1983, before Microsoft or Apple had anything like their current influence. Apple didn't ship the first Macintosh until 1984, for example, and the Apple ][ opened computing domains far unlike the walled gardens outside of microcomputing.
If you go into open source to make the world a better place, then that's a political statement. Which might also explain why some open source programmers consider that open source development might not be the only way to make the world a better place.
There are of course other reasons that people go into open source. My statement is that there's no clear and obvious separation between the two.
Any activity related to changing or reinforcing the balance of power in a society is a political action as is any effort to prevent injustice. Free software is a movement to give more power to users and so is, by definition, a political movement
> fmad89: DOCS LIVES MATTER!
Once it's alive, it's immortal on web archives. e.g.
https://web.archive.org
https://archive.is
Popular open source developers are using their platforms to advocate against oppression. This should be encouraged, not discourage - regardless of what your political leanings are.
Would you be just as upset if they wrote #AllLivesMatter? Probably not.
This post is using open source as a thinly veiled guise to rant about "SJW"s (the use of that term alone should disqualify it). This shouldn't be on HN.
What one person calls 'oppression' is another person's freedom. A drug-free society/the 'war on drugs' versus freedom of choice. Second amendment activists versus gun control. Freedom of expression versus various laws which either forbid or mandate the use of certain types of expression.
"How is 'all lives matter' divisive in any way?"
The response was "Oh, well, you know."
No, really, I don't. "All" seems like an inclusive quantifier.
The best understanding I can reach is that many of the arguments in circulation these days are NOT rational in nature.
> "WTF is the impulse behind changing #BlackLivesMatter to #AllLivesMatter. Do you crash strangers' funerals shouting I TOO HAVE FELT LOSS" - @arthur_affect on Twitter
If you want an explanation better than "Oh well, you know", you might start with the criticism section of its Wikipedia entry, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Lives_Matter#Criticism .
So, yes, All Lives Matter. Black lives just as much as other lives.
By the way, Wikipedia is not exactly the best place to start looking for absolute truth around politically contentious issues. One of its founders has spoken out on the way the project dropped the original NPOV policy [1] and replaced it with something which purports to achieve the same goals but falls far from that. Judging from the examples he holds forth I assume that he leans more towards the conservative end of the political spectrum so those who lean towards what used to be called the progressive end might want to dismiss what he says outright. That would be just the wrong thing to do if what you're after is a repository of knowledge which is free from political bias - or at least as free as it can be given the fact that those articles are still written by human beings.
[1] https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
As such, your "what is important is the subject matter" is an incorrect analysis, as there are multiple matters.
> Systemic racism was a matter of fact in the first half of the previous century in the USA. This is not the case now in the largest part of the country, nor is it true in most parts of Europe.
Please present your evidence. The evidence I've seen from multiple sources, including personal observations, accounts of others, and scholarly research, says otherwise.
Your statement "matter of fact in the first half of the previous century in the USA" understates the legal racism until Civil Rights Act of 1964 - closer to 2/3rds of the 1900s than 1/2.
Part of the systemic racism we see now is a consequence of the laws then, such as redlining and lack of access to what was then "white suburbia", which meant that blacks could not build up anywhere near the same equity that current white Baby Boomers have - equity being one of the main forms of wealth in older people.
So even without specific laws, there's still the effects of legal racism.
> Wikipedia is not exactly the best place to start looking for absolute truth around politically contentious issues.
Shurg. Sure. There's is no single best place for anything. Perhaps you can recommend a better source for how smitty1e might better understand the objects to the term "All Lives Matter" rather than some inside-Wikipedia discussion which sounds more like derailing than something which is important is the subject matter?
For me, my comment should be interpreted as"I have checked this source, the information appears correct to me, and it explains the issues better than I can do in the time I care to write about this topic."
I strongly disagree with this premise. It's the claims that "systemic racism is dead" that are unfounded and easily refuted.
"African-Americans With College Degrees Are Twice As Likely to Be Unemployed as Other Graduates" [1] -- "Schmitt pointed to a series of studies that have in recent years found that when trained sets of black and white testers with identical resumes are sent on interviews, white men with recent criminal histories are far more likely to receive calls back than black men with no criminal record at all."
"DiTomaso says the study, like other research, challenges the assumption that opportunity is available to all Americans who equip themselves with the right skills. Private-sector labor data reported to the federal government shows little change in the share of management and executive-level jobs held by racial and ethnic minorities since the 1980s, she said. In fact, in industries that offer workers the best wages, the share of white men in these jobs has actually grown.
The researchers behind the center's study of black college graduate employment patterns emphasized the role that the recession has played in dampening every worker's employment prospects. But they concluded that the long-term unemployment crisis among black college graduates ultimately could not be explained without accounting for continuing discrimination against black applicants."
"Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination" [2] -- " We perform a field experiment to measure racial discrimination in the labor market. We respond with fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perception of race, each resume is assigned either a very African American sounding name or a very White sounding name. The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume. For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase. Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect does not differ by race. The amount of discrimination is uniform across occupations and industries. Federal contractors and employers who list Equal Opportunity Employer' in their ad discriminate as much as other employers. We find little evidence that our results are driven by employers inferring something other than race, such as social class, from the names. These results suggest that racial discrimination is still a prominent feature of the labor market."
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/21/through-goo...
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/african...
[2] htt...
"Black Preschoolers Far More Likely To Be Suspended" [4] -- "Here's what the education data show: kids who are suspended or expelled from school are more likely to drop out, and those dropouts are more likely to end up with criminal records. In many places, school discipline pushes kids directly into the juvenile justice system. Take just one example: a school fight can end in an arrest for assault.
Education and civil rights groups have dubbed this phenomenon the "school-to-prison pipeline." There are big racial differences in how school discipline is meted out: students of color are much more likely to be suspended or expelled that white students, even when the infractions are the same.
A new government study on discipline in the nation's public schools shows just how very early that gap is present. According to the report, black children make up 18 percent of preschoolers, but make up nearly half of all out-of-school suspensions. (We're talking mostly four-year-olds, people.)"
"CIVIL RIGHTS DATA COLLECTIONData Snapshot: School Discipline" [5] -- "Disproportionately high suspension/expulsion rates for students of color", "Disproportionate suspensions of girls of color",
"The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children" [6] -- "The social category “children” defines a group of individuals who are perceived to be distinct, with essential characteristics including innocence and the need for protection (Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2000). The present research examined whether Black boys are given the protections of childhood equally to their peers.We tested 3 hypotheses: (a) that Black boys are seen as less “childlike” than their White peers, (b) that the characteristics associated with childhood will be applied less when thinking specifically about Black boys relative to White boys, and (c) that these trends would be exacerbated in contexts where Black males are dehumanized by associating them (implicitly) with apes (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008). Weexpected, derivative of these 3 principal hypotheses, that individuals would perceive Black boys as being moreresponsible for their actions and as being more appropriate targets for police violence. We find support forthese hypotheses across 4 studies using laboratory, field, and translational (mixed laboratory/field) methods.We find converging evidence that Black boys are seen as older and less innocent and that they prompt a lessessential conception of childhood than do their White same-age peers. Further, our findings demonstrate that the Black/ape association predicted actual racial disparities in police violence toward children. These datarepresent the first attitude/behavior matching of its kind in a policing context. Taken together, this researchsuggests that dehumanization is a uniquely dangerous intergroup attitude, that intergroup perception of children is underexplored, and that both topics should be research priorities."
"Black Crime Rates: What Happens When Numbers Aren’t Neutral" [7] -- "(1) If a black person and a white person each commit a crime, the black person is more likely to be arrested. This is due in part to the fact that black people are more heavily policed.", "(2) When black people are arrested for a crime, they are convicted more often than white people arrested for the same crime.", "(3) When black people are convicted of a crime, they are more likely to be sentenced to incarceration compared to whites convicted of the same crime."
"Data Show Racial Disparity in Crack Sentencing" [8] -- "Speaking on the House floor last week, California Republican Rep. Dan Lungren acknowledged the potential racial effects of the old sentencing structure. "Certainly, one of the sad i...
" New HUD Report Shows Continued Discrimination Against People of Color" [10] -- "People of color looking for homes are told about and shown fewer homes and apartments than their white counterparts."
"Police harassment affects half of black youth, one-third of whites, study says" [11] -- "Ever since a Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman for the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, a 17 year-old walking home from a convenience store, criticism of unfair treatment of people of color by police has been a near-constant headline.
But the issue is hardly new to young black Americans, over 50 percent of whom reported knowing a victim of police harassment or violence in 2009, well before Michael Brown or Freddy Gray were household names throughout the country."
"You really can get pulled over for driving while black, federal statistics show" [12] -- "The Justice Department statistics, based on the Police-Public Contact Survey, show that "relatively more black drivers (12.8%) than white (9.8%) and Hispanic (10.4%) drivers were pulled over in a traffic stop during their most recent contact with police." Or, to frame it another way: A black driver is about 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than a white driver, or about 23 percent more likely than a Hispanic driver. "Driving while black" is, indeed, a measurable phenomenon."
"‘Walking while black’ can be dangerous too, study finds" [13] -- "Sadly, it seems, “walking while black” can have dangerous consequences.
That’s because a recent study suggests motorists are less likely to stop for an African American pedestrian in a crosswalk. A black pedestrian’s wait time at the curb was about 32 percent longer than a white person’s. Black pedestrians were about twice as likely as white pedestrians to be passed by multiple vehicles.
The small but provocative study — conducted by researchers at Portland State University in Oregon and the University of Arizona — suggests that biases just outside people’s conscious awareness can make them less likely to yield to minority pedestrians. And that could put those pedestrians at risk, said Kimberly B. Kahn, an assistant professor of social psychology at Portland State University."
If you'd like, we can discuss gerrymandering, voter ID laws, and other forms of disenfranchisement of minorities, which prevents any meaningful change to systemic racism.
[9] https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/demographic-d...
[10] testbot123 ↗ Links are below, with excerpts in case you don't have time to read the massive volumes of text produced by the government, NGOs, and journalists.
Sorry it's out of order.
This reminds me of the Notepad++ Free Uyghur edition.
Either way FOSS is a security risk and this hidden cost should be taken into account.
Hope this person rereads his BS piece and feel ashamed and appalled by his profound stupidity as we are reading it.
Yes, weakening free licenses with constraints aligned to individual causes is problematic but that doesn't mean we should ignore all other issues of justice outside of those related to ownership and control. If anything, we need more conversations about the increasing inequalities and injustices caused by technology and the role we play within that. How can we do that without having "political" discussions in public? Why shouldn't entire open source communities have these discussions collectively?