Re: [ox-en] Nazi in Debian Alert
- From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
- Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 09:04:38 -0500 (EST)
On Tue, 24 Feb 2004, Martin Hardie wrote:
the point is the allleged apolitical nature of floss .. well thats what I am
thinking about ... and how it fits nicely with the neo lib view of the world
being beyond politics
For me the problem is more practical than that. On the whole, if you
introduce political discussions into a group that only knows one another
on-line and is trying to carry out a particular task like 'write a
program', the group tends to get sidetracked at best and break up at
worst; the task doesn't get achieved (doesn't even have to be real
politics, even vi versus emacs). So to avoid this you end up with a
lot of informal rules about 'no politics here'. This isn't that different
from pubs I know which have a mix of Irish people and have an informal
rule banning discussion of religion: it causes arguments in an
inappropriate context, it's not that there aren't real religious
differences or appropriate places to talk about them.
So given that free software groups have evolved these (usually unwritten)
rules which work to keep politics at arms length, how can you go about
re-introducing it - but WITHOUT stopping the work from getting done? Or
should you even try to? Is the 'alleged apolitical nature' an ideological
reflection of the practical need, or is it a part of the essence of floss?
Where are the boundaries?
Graham
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