this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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I have a lot of issues with the letter, but it’s hard to deny that certain demographics get better opportunities to have the free time & will to contribute. Does that mean you force other demographics in or not? I’m still on the fence as it the upsides have some drawbacks, but discussions should be had--especially by those other demographics & folks better educated on the topic than myself.
It was a defense contractor I believe. I’m not pro-autonomous drones or anything, but it seems odd to hone in on a single sector. Defense makes obvious tools for killing in the form of weapons, but we wouldn’t have GPS or the internet, etc. without research from the sector either (also see dual-use technology). It’s easy to criticize the military industrial complex, but we have just as many non-military corporations & industries absolutely putting their profits above folks & the environment which is just as destructive--just not as immediate/obvious. If you start kicking out all unethical sponsors, you’re gonna end up with no sponsors under our current capitalist system that doesn’t put any value into or reward being ‘ethical’ or even giving the correct value for labor.
Considering the Internet, GPS and weather satellites, three widely utilised and ubiquitous global services rose out of DARPA, whilst I'm not American, taking issue with investment in a Linux distro is closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.
Wait until these people figure out where computers came from.
I think it is a bit of column A & a bit of column B in the case of defense as we’ve seen other cases of sections of the Nix community vehemently protest certain folks by employer for some political reason or other. But I was more riffing off the parent comment + developer communites in general than the letter specifically as well see this sort of callouts. For instance adjacently, at first blush I could get down with Hippocratic License but you can see how some of these things a really too muddy to be able to exclude entire industries over. It’s tough to handle the introduction of politics into a community, yet often you almost have to at a certain community scale.