@ariadne in literally no other industry would slave labour be an acceptable part of the goods pipeline, irrespective of its legal status. No company or industry would proudly and publicly say they purchase raw materials produced through slave labour. It's completely insane.

@ariadne "Our answer must be YES" has such maniac energy it''s such a whacky take.

here in germany just recently many companies used labour camps to build all products in all factories
it's a dark chapter and i can't imagine someone saying "our answer must be YES because the forced labour jews and political opponents who are slaved to death build the same toaster just fine"

@ariadne a terrible answer for a terrible question

@ariadne if someone lives in a region where child marriage is legal and records their wedding night, am I permitted to have a sad wank over that?

Our answer would have to be yes.

We don't make the rules ✋️😔🤚

@ariadne wtf!

@ariadne What rock are they living under where this is hypothetical? People have been aware of slavery or exploitation in the supply chains of western corporations for decades, and it is generally considered ethically sound to protest, find alternatives, and force them to change their supply chains.

I mean really 'ethically speaking, AI is okay because who among us doesn't rock a snazzy blood diamond watch or some fresh Air Forces made in North Korea?'

@ariadne Color me unsurprised. There's a number of people there who IMO have excellent ideas about software specifically but who're otherwise anywhere from unpleasant to downright vile people who should be shunned.

Myself, I'd have to consider it unethical to accept it regardless of whether it was legal or allowed by the rules, since it's creation was unethical.

@ariadne i mean i see the point :p

not like not using products from such labour will auto magically change evil laws

@ariadne
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-11/msg00126.html

The response came from Eli Zaretskii, one GNU maintainer, who is an asshole. A zealot with a narrow minded view of the ethics that should be employed for emacs development, prizing above all else the avoidance of community fracture, even at the cost of basic morals. He doesn't speak for all.

@ariadne Yikes. I honestly can't think of a more introductory ethics principle than "Legal =/= Ethical"

Literally. Walk in, sit down, "okay, class..." and that's the exact thing you'd start with.

@ariadne That is par for the course, just like the paragraph after:

> Any other answer is a first step towards splitting our community along
the many lines of political and ideological divides

The implication that answering yes to slave labor for the benefit of GNU would expectedly be unquestionable and unanimously agreeable is baffling, but also very much expected from GNU.

Still, people better not start calling them a death cult, what next? Acknowledge the fact that they put the project above everything and everyone else? Worship a single man as their prophet? Claiming that they would be willing to sacrifice humanity to save some crumbling software? Crazy talk. Conspiracy theory. It is heretic to have such thoughts about pillars of FOSS. To question GNU is akin to question the entire temple.

And yet, in a hypothetical example: if they found out one of 8 billion people has magic blood that can be used in a ritual to elevate any GNU project to never before achieved potential, and they knew that person is not RMS, would they kill 8 billion people to find the right one? Their answer must be YES.

@ariadne I recall a friend that submitted a bug patch to a project. They wanted him to agree to the "code of conduct" before accepting it. He refused. Why should he agree to be bound by anything? He found the bug, made the patch and gave it to the community under public domain. The "community" would not accept the fix.

This sounds like a more extreme version of this. While obviously I don't agree with slavery, code is code and does not and should not care about the life of the contributor.

@ariadne

WTAF!

Would love to find out who the moronic c**t is, that penned that utter fucking horseshit.

@ariadne
Given that North Korea exists, the idea of software being produced by forced labour is far from hypothetical, I would say.