I respect your strong ethics and sticking to them, but saying they people support genocide for using software hosted on GitHub is an extreme position.
Do you drive a car or fly a plane? Then you must have no red lines against climate change.
Comment on Leaving GitHub. Music server alternatives?
FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 1 day agoI don’t know if you read the articles I linked or not, but there is a stark lack of empathy in replies like this: full of self interest, void of humanity.
Devs are free to choose other platforms. They don’t face death or famine for doing so. Oppressed people cannot choose their oppressors. If genocide isn’t a red line for you then you have no red lines.
chaospatterns@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
And I appreciate the respectful response. “Support” means “contributes to” when I use it. My car does contribute to climate change. The thing is, GitHub is a choice. For some people, driving isn’t a choice due to lack of public transport and distance to work. However if I use my car when there is plentiful public services (but I just like to hear my music at full volume in my car), then that is a choice.
So if I’m driving when I have better options, then my actions do support climate change, and I do so knowingly.
ar1@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
That’s exactly why I replied. I think you are an upright citizen and you and many others know full well how evil Microsoft is. But the most regrettable thing to do will be to start with a noble cause and end up doing harm to people who you should help and protect.
I am not going to drill into anything political here as it is not the right board. But please think about this - helping developers to move away from Microsoft is punishing the evil; Boycotting projects that are hosted on GitHub, in hope of dealing damage to the evil, is not actually doing it. You are punishing open source developers who are contributing to a free world, and not punishing the evil.
Just like in my original reply, there are many things you can do. Codeberg is doing it by providing a better alternative to developers; Richard Stallman started GNU project and provided a big collection of useful software and libraries to help people move away and fight proprietary tools, not just slapping people who used proprietary software; Even if you help just one more open source project to host on Codeberg, people will be able to find one more project on the Codeberg and can choose not to go to GitHub for that…
FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Thanks for the response. I also feel that open source projects contribute to a better world, but I think we sometimes have a puritanical view of ourselves. We do not make a better world by supporting Microsoft while they enable a genocide. We do the opposite. Using even their free stuff is support. If genocide isn’t a red line for them, then they have no red lines, and I become very uninterested in their games
I also agree that it’s important to be effective. Richard Stallman et al can do what they do, but I’m not one of those people. Just a consumer. It’s important that we exercise the few rights we have (while we still have them).
I’ve been an open source advocate for years. Helped many people migrate to Linux in my free time, submitted as many well formed bug reports as I could and remained available for follow up requests and further debugging.
The thing is: none of this matters if we’re willing to sit on our hands while people die. Our repositories are not so precious. We shouldn’t let our love of software replace our love of humanity.
fatalicus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
But why are you asking here though? Considering Lemmy is developed on github?
FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I’ll be looking into Lemmy alternatives too.