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0 pointspolairscience1y ago0 comments

While I agree that a community needs to focus on its central goal (developing the rust programming language in this case), I think I have a very good litmus test for what you think "apolitical" means:

Let's say Lynn were a rust developer and felt as though the the tone of the community and the discussion of her work made her feel unwelcome. Let's say Lynn spoke out against that. Would you entertain that conversation? I imagine that is not too far from what happened at IBM when Lynn was fired. When is it "allowed" to be political in your mind?

Intentionally addressing the ability of marginalized people to be a part of a community, in my mind, is precisely apolitical. If it's clear that anyone is welcome then you don't really need to talk about politics, do you.

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IncreasePosts1y ago

In that example, it seems politics were already allowed, if people were saying things to make Hypothetical Lynn uncomfortable.

Presumably that kind of talk was about transgender issues and not some technical topic about rust which would make her uncomfortable.

So, in that circumstance, it seems only fair that if a person can express their political opinion, so can another person.

But,maybe the leader of the project should have shutdown whatever was making Hypothetical Lynn uncomfortable before she was forced to mount a response to it?

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