The possibility of software being a personal, creative, expressive endeavor (which often includes politics), something I believed in back when I was in university twenty years ago, is a feeling that's receded deeply into the past. That might be as much about me as it is about the world, but I miss it.
I think that different people want different things. It seems to me like these days the idea of software being a personal expression is in vogue more than not, but there are always going to be those who want that and those who don't.
That said, if software is a personal creative expression, one must be prepared for the possibility that some people aren't going to like what one has to say. Often when the politics angle comes up with Notepad++, people will say "it's his software project, he has the right to put in political messages if he wants" as if that somehow compels people to be ok with the political messages. The author certainly has the right to use Notepad++ as a platform for his political opinions, and I would never dream of saying otherwise. I don't want him to go to jail, or get fired by his employer, or anything like that. But I similarly have the right to decide that I don't want to see his political opinions and use another piece of software. You pick up both ends of the stick, as the old saying says.
On their blog I guess? Not in my text editor, that's for sure. I'm busy trying to get work done; I neither have time for nor want to hear about the author's opinions on current events.
Imagine the result if everybody took to this mindset. Look at everything that's on your desk right now, and what percent of it was made in e.g. China. Imagine if they decided to just start jamming political slogans onto everything. Or for something closer to home, surgeons and anesthesiologists are largely conservative. [1] Imagine if they started signaling their politics. Many people, ironically often those most predisposed to try to make their own political views highly visible, do a poor job of tolerating the views of others. This sort of behavior would just cause complete chaos and disorder and make everybody even more pissed off at each other than they already are.
And political signaling can also make you look bad even to the audience that might ideologically agree with you. For instance notepad++ takes a position on essentially every big controversial US geopolitical issue, but they are conspicuously silent on the Gaza issue. If they hadn't taken on any political positions, this isn't an issue. But when they take a position on every divisive issue, suddenly their not taking a position on one like this effectively is taking a position, but it's one that (for once) they don't want to say.
A few cosmetic names for patch versions and political banners on websites seems pretty mild. I was a constant user of Notepad++ for more than a decade (until moving my last computer to Linux a few months ago), and never had any idea that they did any of the messaging listed on their Wikipedia.
If anything, I could stand for most things to be just a bit more political than them. Most things are way more political than that.
What non-political things would you say are "way" more political than what they're doing? What I mean by non-political is that you kind of expect this sort of nonsense in the media or whatever, but not a text editor. They also have their schtick in the documentation, and at times have included it as 'easter eggs' in the program itself.
It's already made the software a target for hacking amongst other things. Taking positions that resonate with perhaps half the people in 15% of the world, and piss off a sizable chunk of people in the remaining 85% of the world is not a great idea. And, from my perspective, it's not just about self defense - but why do you even want to do that?
I hold some fringe views relative to many on here at least, and I don't make any secret of it either - but imagine by username was like 'IllegalImmigrantsAreIllegal' or something. It'd be like 'oh cool, I see you're 13.' I see this as something along the same lines. If the topic comes up, it comes up, but making it a part of your identity is childish and antagonistic.
I guess this is true in a professional context - you don't want your user's or company's data somehow becoming compromised because of your choice of text editor.
But, at the same time, that's exactly the sort of thinking that's killed off that feeling I'm sentimental for. As a free human being, I don't want to live in fear of expressing my political views; and as someone who wants to view the software I make as a form of art or expression, I don't want to be afraid to express my political views through my software either. Should a writer avoid being political for fear of becoming a target? For fear of their books or readers becoming a target?
There's another reason to avoid agitating massive numbers of people, beyond fear. It's just not a reasonable thing to do. Like what do you really accomplish? There was that one guy who's mind was somehow changed by a random slogan. Unfortunately, he changed to the other side after seeing their even catchier slogan (it had italics!) a few days later.
You're not changing people's minds and you're simultaneously agitating both many of those who disagree with you as well as plenty who are neutral or even agree with you, as seeing politics shoved somewhere it doesn't belong is something many people do not appreciate, regardless of how those politics may or may not align with their own.
I remember a few years back there was an update where it would actually type the political message when you created a new text document. I abandoned it ever since.
The creator is also very selective about the type of politics he supports.
> The creator is also very selective about the type of politics he supports.
Why would someone express political messages without being selective? It’s understandable not wanting overt politics in your software, but this line is odd.
