> I don't see any incompatibility between free software and any political ideology.
My point (now edited into the comment) was that political activism has been intertwined with free software for a long time. Just think about the absurdity someone complaining about leftist politics at Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation. This intertwining isn't some new thing, and it shouldn't be surprising.
> I don't see any incompatibility between free software and any political ideology.
But for many of the original strong advocates for free software, there was an enormous link between larger political issues and free software.
You can argue that those links aren't fundamentally necessary or have eroded over time, but to deny them is an anti-historical understanding of the free/open source software movement.
> then the organization would lose credibility and support from a lot of people. If the Mozilla CEO wants to do that, then fine, we'll find another organization to support and to look up to.
Open source wasn't always so mainstream. My money is that the people who have been around for decades aren't fased by these sorts of threats.
>political activism has been intertwined with free software for a long time.
Only in the sense of privacy and civil freedoms e.g free speech, copyright. Not in the sense of capitalism/socialism, collectivism/individualism, more taxes/less taxes. In this case, Mozilla supported an organization that is openly against capitalism. I would have applauded Mozilla if they'd supported an organization in favor of free speech, privacy, freedom of information, etc. But that wasn't the case. Capitalism is a gray area for the free software community: some support it, others fight against it.
The difference is back then it was OK to be political about American politics because it only affected Americans. Now technology touches every part of the world and information travels in seconds via social media.
There are a lot of software developers I used to respect and followed on Twitter whom I stopped following because I got sick of their American politics tweets. I'm sure it's the same dynamics with American celebrities tweeting about Donald Trump. Most of the world don't care about Donald Trump nor want to hear about some privileged rich Americans complaining about their politics.
They havre their own shit to worry about and don't have time to be force-fed all the American political propaganda.
I can understand individuals being political, but if you're an organization like Mozilla, you have a clear goal, and that is NOT left politics. They should aspire to be as neutral as they can.
Neutrality is not something anyone should ever aspire to. It is something you do when it is otherwise correct, not something you set out to do. To do otherwise is contradictory and absurd.
My point (now edited into the comment) was that political activism has been intertwined with free software for a long time. Just think about the absurdity someone complaining about leftist politics at Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation. This intertwining isn't some new thing, and it shouldn't be surprising.
> I don't see any incompatibility between free software and any political ideology.
But for many of the original strong advocates for free software, there was an enormous link between larger political issues and free software.
You can argue that those links aren't fundamentally necessary or have eroded over time, but to deny them is an anti-historical understanding of the free/open source software movement.
> then the organization would lose credibility and support from a lot of people. If the Mozilla CEO wants to do that, then fine, we'll find another organization to support and to look up to.
Open source wasn't always so mainstream. My money is that the people who have been around for decades aren't fased by these sorts of threats.