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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

I think that's a bad faith interpretation.

It's more like a pressure cooker company saying "We build kitchen tools. We don't care who buys them. We will not spend any resources vetting customers to make sure they won't blow up a marathon with our product. Yes, even neo nazis are allowed to buy our product even though we executives disagree with them politically/morally/etc."

That's an entirely reasonable stance.

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That's definitely a position worth considering, but I don't think it relates to the reasons behind this change. For one, the straw-man argument you put forward relies on the seller not knowing the customer's intention with their product. Given the timing, I think it's absolute reasonable to assume why they put forward this change (though I'd be happy to be told otherwise). An appliance seller can reasonably deduce that their pressure cooker will reasonably be used for cooking if there's no evidence to the contrary. If a neo-nazi recently featured on the news for blowing up some people with a pressure cooker turns up at your pressure-cooker store asking to buy a pressure cooker and you knowingly sell them a pressure cooker, yes, you are absolutely complicit if they blow up some people. Similarly, if a government organisation, recently in the news for putting children in cages, wants to buy or license your software, it's reasonable to assume that they're going to use your software to directly or indirectly further their goals, which may or may not include caging children. Washing your hands of it, in a pull-request, is a moral and ethical choice, as much as they wish it wasn't.

And it's one other people and companies will factor in while doing business with them. To their good fortune and their bad.

So where do I go to buy kitchen tools from a company that does spend resources on vetting their customers' morals?

Not exactly the same, but have you looked into Penzeys Spices?

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