> On the other hand, what you are proposing is that we should boycott the software because of the personal views of the people creating it
I don't agree with "boycott" as a framing.
None of us have infinite time to contribute to open source projects – so we all have to pick and choose which projects to get involved in.
How do you decide? There are many relevant factors – interests, technical factors, career prospects, among many others – but the community is also an issue. If the culture of the community around an open source project puts you off, that's going to discourage you from getting involved in it.
The stuff I hear about the developers of Lemmy (and Mastodon too) – that they are dominated by people who are very political and hard-left – it doesn't make it sound like a welcoming community for someone who doesn't share those politics. Why bother getting involved when there are other projects with a culture I'd experience as more welcoming? That's not a "boycott", that's just rational decision-making. And if enough other people feel the same way, those projects will suffer for it – and maybe, at some point, someone will create a less political fork, and some people who are put-off by the culture of those projects might be willing to contribute to that fork instead.
I don't agree with "boycott" as a framing.
None of us have infinite time to contribute to open source projects – so we all have to pick and choose which projects to get involved in.
How do you decide? There are many relevant factors – interests, technical factors, career prospects, among many others – but the community is also an issue. If the culture of the community around an open source project puts you off, that's going to discourage you from getting involved in it.
The stuff I hear about the developers of Lemmy (and Mastodon too) – that they are dominated by people who are very political and hard-left – it doesn't make it sound like a welcoming community for someone who doesn't share those politics. Why bother getting involved when there are other projects with a culture I'd experience as more welcoming? That's not a "boycott", that's just rational decision-making. And if enough other people feel the same way, those projects will suffer for it – and maybe, at some point, someone will create a less political fork, and some people who are put-off by the culture of those projects might be willing to contribute to that fork instead.