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Comment by fodkodrasz | Hacker News Reader

What is the point? Getting some goodwill of non-paying users (aka. freeloaders), while (maybe) alienating paying users? I get that it is a project that uses lots of volunteer work, but you won't pay your hosting fees and buildfarms from latest rust helloworld-webservice flake contributions from the programmers-socks wearing community.

Sidenote: the foundation of current computing is built on DoD money.

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> Getting some goodwill of non-paying users

I think you'll find they'll loose goodwill from some other non-paying folks. There are many people who code and use this technology who are pro-military. They may not speak up in the same circles as those who are against this but they exist. I'm only pointing this out to showcase the market is more diverse than people often realize.

also there is a silent majority, who does not have a special stance on lots of topics, just thinks like live and let live, and these kind of signalling are always a bad news for them (regardless of anti- or pro-something), as these useless drama-acts signal further polarization of the world, which often signal that some political takeover has happened in organizations which are not inherently political. This often signals a loss of focus for projects. (think GNU for example)

Yeah, political statement and stances taken in venues/spaces that are not appropriate are not good IMO. We need less of that.

Accepting sponsorship money from a company that designs and manufactures killing machines is a political statement, though. It is impossible to avoid political stances and live in the real world.

> There are many people who code and use this technology who are pro-military

But are they pro-US military or they might be pro-other countries military?

Large defense contractors are almost never exclusive to one country. For instance, the F35 is being procured by 17 different NATO and non-NATO countries. Similarly, Anduril has a number of European customers.

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