Counterpoint: is Stallman not an activist, one who many of the same people panning this license change would claim to support?
> Members of the free software movement believe that all users of software should have the freedoms listed in The Free Software Definition. Many of them hold that it is immoral to prohibit or prevent people from exercising these freedoms and that these freedoms are required to create a decent society where software users can help each other, and to have control over their computers.
Choosing an open source license itself has political implications and moral reasoning behind it, at least historically. People complaining about getting politics and morality "into software" honestly just look uninformed. It was already there, you just happened to perceive it as a neutral stance.
The project uses the MIT license, which is Open Source not Copyleft, it has nothing to do with the personal beliefs of Stallman, it uses a license that Stallman does not endorse.
There are also many examples like the Linux kernel that do use a GNU license yet don't buy into Stallman's belief system.
> It was already there, you just happened to perceive it as a neutral stance.
How is me making my code public to anyone regardless of beliefs a political act? What is political in your mind?
> People complaining about getting politics and morality "into software" honestly just look uninformed.
You would need to prove your claim that "politics was already in software" before you get to call everyone who disagrees with you "uninformed". It's also not nice to attack the people making the arguments instead of attacking their arguments.
My point was that ideologically and morally motivated software licenses are already well established in the software ecosystem. This is not new. Whenever someone posts a link about Emacs do you see people saying "it would be hilarious if someone forked this and banned Stallman from using their software"?
I used the word politics, I was not talking about ideology or morality, I was referring to politics specifically.
> My point was that ideologically and morally motivated software licenses are already well established in the software ecosystem.
I don't recall saying that we never had ideologically or morally motivated licenses, best example is JSLint license, which prohibits you from using the software for "evil".
> This is not new.
You are refuting something I have never claimed.
This was my main point: "Mixing software with politics never ends well in a democracy."
If you want to debate it, I would appreciate if you could stick to what I actually wrote without changing its original meaning.
Because if you read the post, the author is clearly making this change on moral grounds, that are only incidentally political to folks who choose to reduce it to that (like you did). Specific immoral actions are named, not political ideologies. The change is not to protest “ICE under conservative leadership.”
It’s apparent by now that to many folks, it’s unbelievable that “ICE should not rip toddlers from their families and put them in camps” is something that could be dismissed as just a political opinion valid as any other (and could you please not bring it up by the way because it’s rude to talk about politics).
> Members of the free software movement believe that all users of software should have the freedoms listed in The Free Software Definition. Many of them hold that it is immoral to prohibit or prevent people from exercising these freedoms and that these freedoms are required to create a decent society where software users can help each other, and to have control over their computers.
Choosing an open source license itself has political implications and moral reasoning behind it, at least historically. People complaining about getting politics and morality "into software" honestly just look uninformed. It was already there, you just happened to perceive it as a neutral stance.