This is the problem with choosing platform for moral — instead of practical — reasons.
Platforms that are known for making moral judgments will likely keep making moral judgments in the future. Eventually, they'll make a judgment that you heavily disagree with.
This is why communities founded on ideology tend to shatter, while those founded on a shared goal tend to survive. Linus doesn't care whether you're a GPU expert at AMD, a 16-year-old in Nairobi, or a nazi with a swastika tattooed on your arm. He cares about the quality of your kernel patches.
He does have some choice words for you if you're Russian, though:
> As to sending me a revert patch — please use whatever mush you call brains. I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be ‘supporting’ Russian aggression?
(from https://therecord.media/linus-torvalds-russian-linux-kernel-...)
I think this shows that there is a blurry line between moral and practical judgment, and that the type of judgment might not even matter in the way you think. Sure, this episode may have been started by OFAC sanctioning various Russian companies, but Linus is happy to invoke more personal moral terms; and ultimately whether it's practical or moral doesn't matter, a bunch of Russian folks found themselves without a commit bit seemingly at random and the same could happen to anyone regardless of a particular platform's or company's judgment.
his personal stance did not lead to anybody being excluded though.
You are saying this like pursuing profit above anything else is not a moral judgment one can heavily disagree with.
Pursuing profit is not a moral judgement.
It's at best neutral, and at worst considered to be immoral.
Nobody says "I need to make a billion dollars because of my morals".
Is Linux really about "profit before all else?" That seems like a moral judgement that many would disagree with.
No; they aren’t making a judgement. They’re just describing a relationship between the nature of a platform and its likely future behaviour.
Perfectly summarised. Also recently saw so many people moving from GitHub to Codeberg because of anti-US and sovereign European tech movement and I wonder now which platform they are going to move again
They need to self host if they want sovereignty. This thing about relying on an external service and demanding total privacy and control is irrational.
I think this would be a good time for another European alternative to present itself. Outside the US, but more pragmatic than Codeberg.