He's right though. GNU is not Unix but it's also not a judge or an investigator. In practice, should GNU investigate the labour conditions of any code it receives? Should GNU rely on external investigators / activist groups for that? How are these group politically aligned and how are they reliable? How easy is to allege slavery conditions to control which code GNU merges?
On one hand, other industries, after much controversy, do in fact now vet their sources and are expected to ethically source materials. But the goalposts can always move, like the article says: "Someone’s terrorist is another one’s freedom fighter."
Almost all technology, including anything with IC chips/silicon or batteries, technically has their raw materials sourced from forced/child labor in the first place, so we could argue nobody has room to throw stones at all, but for some reason that doesn't seem to be as important an issue for people as e.g. who a Linux-focused laptop manufacturer (Framework) accepts donation money from. Why is that the line? And who gets to say where this line ever is?
On the other hand, historically tech has tried to stick to the tech, and not play judge or investigator as you say, but people will try to cancel you for that too (Ladybird Browser). People don't want to involve politics although sometimes it seems inevitable.
Toughts: GNU's stance is the right one. They (politically) decided that their code decisions should not be politically motivated. Nobody is forced to use GNU, so whoever is not ok with that can not use GNU software.
I don't think there can be an objective "right" option, and I don't think it's possible to completely remove political motivations from code contributions, especially when people even define "political" differently.
As soon as any change is made that affects how other people use the program (like say, a menu option), that will be inherently political to someone.
He's right though. GNU is not Unix but it's also not a judge or an investigator. In practice, should GNU investigate the labour conditions of any code it receives? Should GNU rely on external investigators / activist groups for that? How are these group politically aligned and how are they reliable? How easy is to allege slavery conditions to control which code GNU merges?
I'm on the fence about it.
On one hand, other industries, after much controversy, do in fact now vet their sources and are expected to ethically source materials. But the goalposts can always move, like the article says: "Someone’s terrorist is another one’s freedom fighter."
Almost all technology, including anything with IC chips/silicon or batteries, technically has their raw materials sourced from forced/child labor in the first place, so we could argue nobody has room to throw stones at all, but for some reason that doesn't seem to be as important an issue for people as e.g. who a Linux-focused laptop manufacturer (Framework) accepts donation money from. Why is that the line? And who gets to say where this line ever is?
On the other hand, historically tech has tried to stick to the tech, and not play judge or investigator as you say, but people will try to cancel you for that too (Ladybird Browser). People don't want to involve politics although sometimes it seems inevitable.
Thoughts?
Toughts: GNU's stance is the right one. They (politically) decided that their code decisions should not be politically motivated. Nobody is forced to use GNU, so whoever is not ok with that can not use GNU software.
I don't think there can be an objective "right" option, and I don't think it's possible to completely remove political motivations from code contributions, especially when people even define "political" differently.
As soon as any change is made that affects how other people use the program (like say, a menu option), that will be inherently political to someone.