<div class="header-image"></div> <table class="table-header"> <thead> <tr> <th colspan="2"></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>2024-07-06</td> <td style="text-align: right;"><a href="About.md" class="internal-link">About</a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> # Love the Art, Not the Artist; Choose the Software, Not the Developer  ### Software is Apolitical More and more, I've been seeing online, groups of people who decide to, for whatever reason, vilify and boycott software because the individual or company that develops it doesn't perfectly align with their own political opinions. There's many examples of this, but I'd like to highlight one recent post in particular, as I really like this guy and have been listening to him for years (over a decade, in fact):  He's talking about the recently announced [Ladybird Browser project](https://ladybird.org/). The ladybird project is an important one, and deserves its own post, but the TLDR is that the browser is being coded from scratch, *including* the browser engine. This means that, when complete, it will not rely on any other company, and is trying to do this entirely without ad-generated funding. This is huge because *all* the major browsers out there right now (Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Opera, Edge, Libre Wolf, etc.) either use Google's Chromium engine, or are using Mozilla's engine, which gets 95% of it's funding from Google ad-dollars. This would set it aside as the only one not somehow tied to Google. But I want to focus on the above image, the Mastodon post by Joe Ressington. As I said, I really like Joe. He did a show called Linux Luddites that I listened to very regularly, along with other tech-centred podcasts over a decade ago and I've listened to many other shows he's been involved with, including shows he does today, such as Late Night Linux, as he mentioned in the post. I vehemently disagree with him on this stance. I think focusing on the code and project, while staying apolitical, is something that is severely lacking these days, and I wish more projects would return to this general rule of thumb. It really wasn't very long ago that this general rule was the norm. How staying apolitical became associated with the "far/alt right" I'll never know. Is it no longer possible to just stay out of politics? I personally can't stand politics. Not any more. Any political discussion I see now is like watching 4 year olds have temper-tantrums. But I digress. I disagree with Joe on this. And I kind of resent him associating apolitical people with the alt-right, as I, myself, prefer to be apolitical these days. But, and this is a huge **BUT**, it's just one disagreement. There is so much more upon which we *do* agree. Should I stop listening to his shows because of this one disagreement? Of course not. I'm not a 4 year old who has temper-tantrums. And besides, I've been listening to him for 10 years. I obviously find great enjoyment in listening to his podcasts. Why would I deprive myself of that enjoyment because of one opinion he holds that I find asinine? We disagree on something. So what? I hold this same view in regard to all sorts of things: musicians, movies, actors, artists, comedians... the list goes on. Let's talk about art for a moment: Caravaggio was a short-tempered, violent man. He was verbally abusive to servants and waiters, throwing food back at them for it not being prepared to his liking. He regularly assaulted people with his words, his fists, and his sword. Eventually he had to [flee Rome to avoid persecution for murder](https://www.biography.com/artists/caravaggio-italian-painter-criminal-murderer). Gauguin regularly used [teenage girls as models and sexual targets](https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-art-divided-gauguins-legacy). He even married a 14 year old girl who had 2 children by him. Should I refuse to enjoy some of the world's greatest art because of this? Is it some sort of moral faux pas to enjoy [Martinique Landscape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin#/media/File:Martinique_Landscape_Paul_Gauguin,_1887.jpg) or [The Musicians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio#/media/File:Caravaggio_-_I_Musici.jpg)? Reasonable people would say that's silly. And these were pretty awful men! Surely if I can enjoy the art of Caravaggio, I can enjoy the podcasts of Joe Ressington. So even though Joe would rather ignore this very important project, I won't ingnore Joe. Even if he continues to [call his coworkers cunts](https://web.archive.org/web/20200409161547/https://twitter.com/JoeRessington/status/1248282904729395203).  This goes both ways, I should add, with some software developers and companies requesting that certain users stop using their software, some politely and some not. I spoke some time ago about past [controversies surrounding Linux Mint](https://lmno.lol/candidapples/linux-mint-and-handling-controversies). One of these controversies was regarding a forum post by Clem Lefebvre, the founder of Linux Mint:  So this was a polite one. For the purpose of this writing, I'll ignore that it was fully 15 years ago that this was posted. At the time, I didn't really know anything at all about this seemingly endless conflict. So I didn't have a side to take, really. I've since learned more, but honestly, not enough to share a knowledgeable opinion. But what if I was so moved by what happened on 10/7 last year that I found myself solidly on the side of Israel in this conflict? Should I stop using Linux Mint because that's what Clem has asked? First, I'm on the side of the *vast* majority of [people commenting about Clem's post](https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1146796), that personal politics should stay out of coding projects. (I wonder if Joe thought, at the time, that all these people were alt/far right? Does he think this now?) The project itself and the opinions of the coders, developers and project leaders are two entirely separate things. I don't have a problem with these same people discussing whatever politics they like when it's not connected to the project, but associating a project with any political stance is, in my opinion, a mistake. But this doesn't answer the question: If my political stance is not shared by Clem, and he has asked me to stop using Mint because of this, is there *any good reason* why I should respect his wishes? Is there a good reason why I should stop using Mint to ensure my own integrity stays intact? Well, no. To both questions. I love Linux Mint. Aside from my distro-hopping years, it's been my go-to distribution since I began using Linux 15 years ago. There's a couple of others that I could probably move to quite comfortably (MX Linux, for one), but really, why should I? First, if I apply my own logic to myself, that code is apolitical, then so is Mint. Just because Clem has made his stance in an inappropriate fashion, that doesn't mean it should reflect anything on Mint itself. It doesn't even follow that every one on the Mint team has the same politics. There are others there, I'm sure (at least back in 2009), that don't have any more of an opinion on the subject than I do. They're just interested in coding. So if I believe that politics should have nothing to do with a project, then I should choose software that's right for me *without regard for the politics of the coder*, however foolishly that coder has made his own political views known. And second, why should Clem have any say at all about whether or not I use Linux Mint? He's the lead developer, yes, but this is a Free and Open Source project. There's an understanding that when you write software under a FOSS licence that anyone can use it. The developers have no more say in who uses their software than authors have a say in who reads their books, or borrows them from libraries. I'm not going to deprive myself from using my favourite distribution just because of one dude acting like a bit of a douchebag. (And let's face it: he probably had a little too much to drink at the pub, saw a news report or something, and rashly made the post. It did not take long for him to delete it. I think that can be forgiven). And yes, all this happened 15 years ago, but if it happened *yesterday* I would say the same thing. In fact, Red Hat is currently under some pretty severe scrutiny because of a [lawsuit over racist hiring policies](https://wraltechwire.com/2024/07/01/missouri-ag-lawsuit-against-ibm-is-important-step-in-harpooning-the-whale-of-corporate-racism-2/). Yikes! Now this is obviously a lot worse than a 15 year-old forum post asking people to take sides in a war on the other side of the world. Would I tell anyone who loves Fedora to abandon it because of this? Of course not. Just because Red Hat and IBM are a bit racist, that doesn't mean anyone using their products is also racist! By that logic, [anyone driving a Volkswagen is a literal Nazi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen)! I want to finish here by saying that there are, of course, some times when it is absolutely appropriate to avoid software coming from a particular company. I avoid Google like the plague. I will buy a Pixel, mind you, but I will never use their software. That Pixel has Graphene installed on it. I wish a Pixel wasn't necessary for this, but as of now, it is. This isn't because of horrible politics or hiring practices or how Google, as a company, is run. I simply don't trust their software. They spy and harvest people's data and personal lives as if they own it. I believe they are major contributors to the social unrest from which the world suffers today, by algorithmically influencing huge swathes of people. I think that if, somehow, everyone were to stop using their, and a few other companies' software, the world would slowly settle back into some semblance of normality again. But if this can't happen, at the very least, I can keep myself from being under this algorithmic influence. And I can do so by choosing to use something else. So a browser that is completely independent from Google is extraordinarily important to me. Now, I will say that maybe my reasoning isn't sound here. It makes sense to me, but I could be completely off. Everyone, of course, does have the choice to use, or boycott, whatever software they deem appropriate. But for myself, quality, and what software *does* will always be far more important than the person who coded it, or their personal politics.