Don't rush to falsely flag people by political orientations.

Summary: One emergent tactic for discrediting the Free Software Movement is to interject people into some perceived politics that in turn mischaracterise the issues; we need to push back against that

THE ONE thing that keeps happening in IRC is, very malicious trolls like those who don't even use GNU/Linux or those who attack the founders of GNU and Linux based on defamatory statements or political misframings (this was done by numerous people including but not limited to Matthew J Garrett, the Coke Fly doing bios) resort to "politics" -- typically but not always US politics -- e.g. calling people "Republican" or "nazi" (those labels are used against people who strongly reject both).

"Tech issues seldom limit themselves to one political wing."Some years ago I pointed out that SPAMnil kept calling me "Trump" -- a person whose character, politics and business antics I reject strongly. No sane person would wrongly assume that I ever sympathised with Donald Trump in any way.

Tech issues seldom limit themselves to one political wing. Both major parties in the US, for instance, claim to value free speech and free press. In practice, however, both viciously attack those things. They just do that in slightly different ways (the salient points or rhetoric).

When it comes to Free software, Right to Repair and so on we also cannot see much different between those two parties. One common tactic we've observed is to misframe someone's frustration or disappointment with Joe Biden as a veiled "support" of Trump (or vice versa). As if those two are polar opposites and no other options (or views) exist.

So the bottom line is, quit trying to leverage highly divisive and corrosive political "splits" to seed discord in Free software communities. People sometimes don't agree about availability of source code; but that's not a political statement. Keep politics where it belongs: low-grade TV networks run by oligarchs who ensure neither party taxes the rich and the general population fights inwards (e.g. sexism) and downwards (poor-shaming, immigrant-blaming), not upwards (class war). ⬆