He is pretty much openly admitting he has right wing views and it is influencing his social media and project policy.
“Punch Nazis” is literally the only use of the phrase “punch [group]” in modern culture. Redacting specifically Nazi from the statement to make it seem like it is a general statement used, which suggests that is is note broad violent rhetoric, is a very often used dogwhistle by Nazis (and is being used daily by the extreme right wing, at this point satisfying nearly every academic hallmark of fascism, american government).
It is also relevant to note that during the project startup, someone simply suggested a 10 minute search and replace change to use more neutral language and he responded “your personal politics have no place here” even though that is not necessarily political.
Again, the only people that get that offended and snappy with something as benign as using a single different pronoun are the people who support taking basic rights away from human beings. I have never met another type person who cares at all.
The real question is, if a terrible person creates something (potentially) good and let’s their own politics create arguments and stir up drama, but just use the guise of “oh it’s because I want to be apolitical”, is it worth giving money and support to that person. How can you trust someone to always make a “free as in freedom browser” when they literally support (hypothetically) authoritarianism, mass surveillance, and taking rights away in real life? That is the antithesis of the project’s mission.
Also, life is inherently political. There is a group of people literally wanting to kidnap, torture, enslave, kill, and/or remove any rights from another large group of people. Ignoring those problems and welcoming those people with open arms gives them the chance to spread those hateful and violent views, as evidenced by their rapid growth by creating safe spaces for them on the internet.
It is a sad reality, but throughout much of human history, there has been a large groups of people don’t have the luxury to “avoid talking about politics” and “making things political” because they were literally getting enslaved and/or killed by it. And that is happening today still, visibly and publically.
This is the best comment of the thread.
So many people are nitpicking his post or criticizing the platform that he shares it on (let’s me honest, linkedIN has a much wider impact than the fediverse if something “goes corporate viral”). People deserve to be compensated for their work.
We shouldn’t be mad at the devs trying to make a living, even those who have different views about what open source is. We should be banding together against the companies who’s entire business model is based on theft and abuse. New anti-AI licenses specifically, techniques to poison AI data baked into every repo, class action lawsuits against companies, etc…
Once Universal Basic Income gets implemented and you don’t need to be paid directly for your work to survive, then we bicker incessantly about the finer points of the real definition of open source.