[Cuis-dev] Politics of Smalltalk

[Phil B]

The Smalltalk community is among the *least* political of any tech
community I've seen.  Even things like copyright which are the subject of
endless debate in other communities is only barely acknowledged  (to the
extent that it's generally disliked that they have to deal with it.)  Codes
of Conduct?  Nope, people just generally try to be nice to each other.  I
think a lot of that comes from Alan and Dan's leadership in the early days
of both Smalltalk and Squeak and the type of people that gravitated toward
them... they had a mission, but it wasn't political at all.  If I had to
describe the average Smalltalker, 'idealist' comes to mind.

On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 2:47 PM Philip Bernhart via Cuis-dev <
cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st> wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> today I had a quiet annoying "debate" with someone I know
> on the internet. XKCD for reference for the feeling of it:
> https://xkcd.com/386.
>
> So I always wondered what the political statements and movements
> were in Smalltalk or even Cuis Smalltalk. Squeak, Pharo and Cuis
> did chose the very political MIT License as their License of choice.
>
> Smalltalk was financed partially from the ARPA, so actually quiet
> political, right? When you consider that you can't escape making
> in some way political relevant decisions, then does that mean
> automatically that the Smalltalk community "thinks" it's good that
> their "open source" code is used within weapon systems. Maybe even
> in the context of Kapital to mess up finance systems or indirectly
> by using within Lam Research for producing circuits which could be
> used in war drones, etc.
>
> Most of us I would think are spending their time toying around with
> Smalltalk, not considering every aspect of how we indirectly affect
> other people around the globe with our "naive" mind of just liking
> what we are doing.
>
>
> So what do you think, should we spend more time on that side?
> Philip
>
>
> PS: I got some popcorn here and I'm resting in a comfy chair.
> PPS: The current Yerba Mate infusion also adds to it.
> --
> Cuis-dev mailing list
> Cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st
> https://lists.cuis.st/mailman/listinfo/cuis-dev
>
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