For me, this is one of the more profound take-aways from the article. This piece is very thought provoking.
• The KDE project (to create a nice graphical desktop environment based on the X windowing system) was initially formed around using the Qt library for graphical user interface widgets. The Qt library had, at the time, a somewhat friendly but distinctly non-free license. The first wave of developers on KDE, therefore, were developers who considered proprietary software and/or sketchy licensed to be A-OK.¹ This will probably forever define the development practices of the KDE project.
• The Go language is, by many accounts, a very nice programming language. But it was started, and still run, by Google people, for Google purposes, and with Google backing. This means that the first wave of developers were and are those developers who think it’s perfectly fine to work at Google, or to work with Google to further Google’s goals. People who don’t like Google will of course have stayed away from the Go project at the outset, and so the developer elite of the Go project will probably always reflect Google values and priorities.
1. Those developers who did not agree went on to start Gnome, which is in fact the very reason Gnome was started.
The KDE project is very focused on software freedom and does not consider proprietary software A-OK. This is written in the https://manifesto.kde.org/
I'm fascinated by the power of positioning of the creators of the project and how easily that can go wrong. That has long fascinated me and this is an incredibly powerful example summed up in a nutshell in the paragraph I quoted, which is a rare thing to see.
Sorting the wheat from the chaff is a challenge. Trying to not throw the baby out with the bathwater is a challenge.
There's a difference between letting people express themselves and ratifying hate to fuel more outrage. Doing that is throwing the justice baby out with the bathwater -- also because it's more viral and you make more money and get more political power that way.
It can be hard to find your own voice. It is necessary to have a little latitude when trying to do so.
It gets vastly more complicated when you are trying to do that in some kind of group setting. It easily goes bad places.
Maybe, but then somebody has to make that call and get it right. Who's going to do that? You? The mob?
Giving all ideas the same platform and letting it sort itself out isn't the worst strategy humanity has come up with. You might even call it democratic.
And I don't remember refusing to judge something being the same as ratifying it, I thought that was tolerance. But I guess you're either with us, or against us - there can be no other option. /s
If letting a few people talk about hate is magically going to convince a large majority, either that's condescending or we're fucked as a species.