
Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work - devilcius
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/16/gitlab_employees_gagged/
======
anm89
I personally think this is awesome. I don't wan't some git hosting startup to
be the arbiter of morality for society. The engineers, designers, and PMs
shouldn't have an outsized voice in society because they have a specialized
useful skillset and ended up on a successful product.

If these users are breaking laws, then put them out of business via the courts
and sieze the assets (the repos in this case) via legal means. Otherwise why
would I wan't gitlab to have anything to do with this process?

The tech unicorns screwed themselves over BIG TIME, the second they stopped
claiming they were just infrastructure and platforms and got into content
moderation. They will now forever be a pawn of whoever has some power and has
some agenda. It's an obviously unwinnable game for everyone involved besides
maybe some politicians.

I don't want this to become a Joe Rogan debate but Naval Ravikant got this
exactly right on his Rogan Interview:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHkcs3kG44&t=3661](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHkcs3kG44&t=3661)

~~~
neonate
Wow, that is such a clear analysis that someone should transcribe it. Here's
the main part of what Naval says:

"If Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been smart about this, they would not
have picked sides. They would have said "We're publishers. Whatever goes
through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down.
Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it." It's like the phone
company. If I call you up and I say something horrible to you on the phone,
the phone company doesn't get in trouble. But the moment they started taking
stuff down that wasn't illegal because somebody screamed, they basically lost
their right to be viewed as a carrier. And now all of a sudden they've taken
on a liability. They're sliding down this slippery slope into ruin, where the
left wants them to take down the right, the right wants them to take down the
left, and now they have no more friends, they have no allies. Traditionally
the libertarian-leaning Republicans and Democrats would have stood up in
principle for the common carriers, but now they won't. So my guess is, as soon
as Congress (this day is coming if not already here...)... the day is coming
when the politicians realize that these social media platforms are picking the
next president, the next congressman. They're literally picking, and they have
the power to pick, so they will be controlled by the government."

~~~
Mvandenbergh
The problem with at least Facebook and Twitter (and possibly Google) in this
analysis is that their attention-grabbing model requires them to analyse and
interfere with the data which is coming through their systems. The only way
not to do that would be for FB timelines and Twitter feeds to be strictly
sequential feeds which at some point in the past they may have been but they
are not now.

Once you start basing your business model on selectively making some content
more visible, you have already crossed a rubicon between a strictly neutral
common carrier and a publisher.

(There is an error in the quote where they use publisher when they mean common
carrier, a publisher is precisely an organisation that does have full
editorial control of what they put out which is the opposite of what they
intend from the rest of the quote.

~~~
jyrkesh
Exactly. At face value, I'm firmly in favor of what Ravikant was saying, but
even the simple example of a spam filter proves how it's impossible in
practice: without basic spam filtering, something like Twitter would be
absolutely unusable in the face of endless crypto and malware spam. At some
level, Twitter/FB/et al have to do SOMETHING to shape/filter the volume of
traffic they receive.

~~~
rayiner
I don't think calls to regulate Twitter/FB would get much traction if all they
were doing was spam filtering. To see it from a different direction: imagine
the shit show that would happen if Google started "moderating" gmail content,
even though it currently does very aggressive spam filtering.

~~~
yters
Google does censor my email to some extent. It send a number of conservative
emails straight to spam.

~~~
Spooky23
Political emails tend to get tagged as spam in general. I have someone close
to me who is involved in local Democratic Party and progressive organizations.
When you go to an event or donate money (say an award banquet), they share
your name and spam the crap out of you. A lot of that mail gets tagged as spam
as a result.

Conservative outlets work similarly, but they seem to have bigger online
operations and are hard to get out of. My in laws get barraged with this
stuff, and a mail provider like GMail or Microsoft gets a lot of spam signals
from it I’m sure.

~~~
mlang23
Political emails _are_ spam. No matter from which direction they come from. So
tagging them as spam seems just the right thing to do.

~~~
Errancer
Political emails often are spam but not all of them. I subscribed to few
newsletters from various political parties and I don't want google to block
them from me.

------
ProfessorLayton
Without trying to be inflammatory in any manner, I will say that it takes a
certain level of privilege to say one shouldn’t discuss politics at work.

If you disagree I’m happy to discuss this viewpoint rather than being
downvoted to oblivion.

Lots of issues are deemed “political”, but imagine you fall into one of the
marginalized groups:

— lgbt: Don’t discuss the possibility about being fired for your sexuality
because it’s too political.

— Women in tech: Nope, let’s not go there, too political.

— Underrepresented minorities in tech: Sorry it’s a pipeline problem, don’t
bring politics into this.

— Education: Too political to discuss the fact that schools are trying to
balance their admissions in the face of very uneven opportunities amongst
their applicants. Never mind the fact that school admissions were never fair
to begin with.

We can’t improve without discussion, and it’s unfortunate that these type of
issues are so divisive.

Again, If you disagree I’d love to understand your viewpoint as to why.

~~~
legostormtroopr
> We can’t improve without discussion, and it’s unfortunate that these type of
> issues are so divisive.

Except Cancel Culture is making it that these can't be discussed without
complete agreement.

Take for example, "Women in Tech", personally I don't see underrepresentation
of women in tech as a problem that can be or should be 'solved'. For the
better part of 15 years, there has been a massive movement to encourage women
in STEM. There are hundreds of Women in Tech meetups, scholarships, Womens
only courses... yet the numbers have barely budged in more than 10 years.
Personally, it looks like in aggregate it will be difficult to get 50/50
representation of women and men in tech. To make it clear, we should
definitely support everyone who is in tech, and make it an inclusive
environment, but the continued push for 50/50 isn't going to happen so perhaps
its not worth the huge money sink it is.

At the last place I worked that opinion was flat out branded "sexist", and if
you didn't vocally agree with every women in tech initiative people asked why.

So I would say the ability to speak openly about politics was shut down long
ago, and not by the people you think.

~~~
snowwrestler
When people go and talk to women who started out in the tech pipeline but
left, many say that the reasons they left are that they felt unwelcome in some
way: they were harassed, under-valued, talked over, stalked, underpaid, etc.

Too many women choose to leave not because they didn't like the work, but
because they didn't like all the bullshit they were implicitly asked to put up
with, in order to do the work.

If very few women expressed these sentiments; if the tech workforce pipeline
was a safe and fulfilling place for everyone, then at that point, I think it's
fair to question whether 50/50 should be the goal. But we're not nearly at
that point, and IMO it is counterproductive to talk like we are. For now, the
numbers imbalance is a simple and obvious way to measure and talk about the
cultural factors that exclude women (or certain ethnicities, or backgrounds)
from equal participation in this industry.

One reason 50/50 makes a fine straw goal is that there is no obvious reason
that men should be more successful than women in the tech industry. It's not
like the NFL, where well-understood human sexual dimorphism is relevant. Women
were heavily involved in the early days of computing and built some of the
early foundations of the field, like the first compiler.

~~~
overgard
I've heard this hypothesis a lot, but there's something that bothers me about
it.

If you've ever been passionate about something, something that's hard and
takes a lot of effort and practice to become good at, would you really let
microaggressions stop you from doing that thing? I mean, being a programmer is
not exactly a high status thing for white males either. If I tell people I'm a
programmer, I generally am competing with the perception that I am socially
awkward. People assume I'm like some Big Bang Theory character until I prove
otherwise. I don't _like_ that stereotype, but it never stopped me from
learning to code, or even was a thought that crossed my mind.

Also, how many other industries are or have been actively hostile towards
women and still have plenty of females in it? Show business is an obvious
example.

I'm not saying that things can't or shouldn't be improved, but I feel like the
argument that goes "well the nerds are making women uncomfortable" is just a
cartoon with very little evidence other than anecdotes.

~~~
blintz
I think “microagressions” is a bit of an understatement. Also not sure that
being stereotyped as “socially awkward” is comparable to experiencing or even
just witnessing sexual harassment.

Women in tech report more mistreatment than in many other male-dominated
industries. See: [https://www.axios.com/tech-sexual-harassment-women-
silicon-v...](https://www.axios.com/tech-sexual-harassment-women-silicon-
valley-1fa55b9c-2997-49cc-a869-d3cb7334a543.html)

~~~
overgard
All I see in that link is a VERY vague assertion that some women have received
“unwanted physical contact”, which doesnt really mean anything without
specifics. That could mean something creepy, or it could mean someone tapping
them on the shoulder, or a saleswomans obnoxious insistence on high fiving all
the time. And then some persons quoted opinion.

~~~
wolfd
If someone touched me in any physical way at work I'd say it would be
unwanted. It's pretty reasonable to not want other people to touch you, no
matter the specific "kind" of touch it is.

~~~
homonculus1
Every now and then my boss gives me an overly-friendly shoulder pat. It really
annoys me, I guess I'm a victim of physical harassment. Should I leave the
industry over that?

~~~
maxerickson
What would you do if you had 8 bosses in a row all do the same thing?

------
vowelless
I am glad Dang changed the title as the original one was unnecessarily
inflammatory.

I don’t understand why it’s encouraged (in some companies) to discuss politics
at work in a way that leads to internal issues. Purely from a commercial
stance, team cohesion has a positive impact on people and product. Why do
anything to disturb that?

> Such a declaration could run afoul of legal boundaries in some
> circumstances. While workers have no constitutional speech protection in the
> context of their employment, federal labor law requires that employees be
> allowed to discuss the terms and conditions of their employment and possible
> unlawful conduct like harassment, discrimination, and safety violations.

This seems like a false dichotomy. There is a difference between being amoral
and illegal.

The nazi example they gave is also quite egregious. America has sanctions. If
the public wants corporations to not interact with certain countries, they can
ask their legislators to fascilitate passing of sanctions (like we have today
against Syria, making it illegal to provide services to them).

Being held to a political moral standard is tricky if you are not in the
mainline political stance. That would make me quite uncomfortable. I go to
work to support myself and my family. Don’t make that hard for me to do due to
politics.

~~~
Nullabillity
> I don’t understand why it’s encouraged (in some companies) to discuss
> politics at work in a way that leads to internal issues. Purely from a
> commercial stance, team cohesion has a positive impact on people and
> product. Why do anything to disturb that?

The health of the democracy is far more important than your company's profit
margin. And besides, enforcing silence is still a political move that strongly
favours the opinions that the power structures imply with their actions.

~~~
jlawson
The health of democracy requires that individuals be able to speak their mind
and advocate their beliefs.

This doesn't work if their livelihood is controlled by a group of hyper-
intolerant political totalitarians.

What GitHub is doing is giving individuals rooms to breathe, think, and live.
It's preventing the rule of the intolerant minority, the forced homogenization
of thought and suppression of dissent. We banned these things from the
government long ago; this is a good step towards reducing the power of non-
governmental power centers in corporations to coerce speech and thought of
people around them.

As a free-thinking person this would make me much more likely to want to work
for GH. At a place like Google I know I'd have to be deeply closeted as others
flagrantly denigrate my identity and ideas around me. Here at least everyone
can be closeted together, and live in a pluralistic way with different beliefs
alongside each other.

This is how we suppress constant political conflict. You just aren't allowed
to go after people for who they are or what they believe; we accept
differences. And reducing political speech at work helps with that.

~~~
lovich
>It's preventing the rule of the intolerant minority...

If a majority want to discuss politics and political change, isn't this just
an intolerant majority enforcing their politics on everyone?

Unless someone is the type of person who would never advocate for any change
no matter what happened to them, from being made King to being made a slave,
then they aren't actually apolitical. Everyone who doesn't want to discuss
politics or thinks they aren't political are just saying that the current
political status quo fits their views.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Politics isn't an atomic unit. It's perfectly normal - and arguably the
_default state_ \- to be apolitical on many if not most issues.

~~~
lovich
The default state is still a state, its not a null option. You wouldn't be
apolitical if the current politics said your parents had to be executed when
they hit 50 and your children had to be turned over to the state so they could
best determine their use, would you?

That's a hyperbolic statement, but the intent is to show that being
"apolitical" about current politics has no distinction between agreeing with
the current politics. If you start telling people they can't discuss their
politics because "we want to be uninvolved in politics" what you are really
saying is, "My politics are in charge and the status quo. Your opinion needs
to be silenced"

~~~
TeMPOraL
Your hyperbolical example notwithstanding, I disagree. Being apolitical isn't
about promoting status quo, it's about being indifferent to the status quo
_and the whole space of adjacent options_.

If I'm apolitical about issue X, it doesn't mean I'm a happy supporter of
current state of X. It means I don't care whether it stays the way it is, or
changes to any of the possible alternative states that are within the Overton
window around X.

To use a clarifying analogy: if there's a C++ project in the company, and
somebody asks me for the opinion about whether to rewrite it in Java, and I
say "I don't care, I'm indifferent about this issue", it doesn't mean I
support the project staying as is. It means literally what I said - go ahead
and rewrite it in Java, or Python, or COBOL. Whatever, I just don't care. This
is what being apolitical about an issue means.

And back to politics - I have a right to care or not care about whatever I
please. You can try to convince me to care about some thing you care about,
but you have no right to _force_ me to care, and trying to do it makes me only
want to oppose you out of spite. The "apolitical means just supporting status
quo" meme is essentially a manipulative attempt at forcing people to care
about something they don't, a rehash of the old "if you're not with us, you're
against us".

~~~
lovich
>If I'm apolitical about issue X, it doesn't mean I'm a happy supporter of
current state of X. It means I don't care whether it stays the way it is, or
changes to any of the possible alternative states that are within the Overton
window around X.

You don't have to be a happy supporter. You can be an extremely unhappy
supporter if you still think the status quo is better than other options.

Saying "I don't care", is just an opinion and doesn't affect anyone. Saying "I
don't care, so nobody else is allowed to talk about the subject" is implying
that your world view and opinions supercede others. If you were in a group
that agreed on a mechanism for deciding what could be talked about, then it
would make sense for everyone in that group to follow the decision. That's not
whats happening though. The people who are okay with the status quo are
telling the unhappy people to be quiet, because it makes the currently okay
people feel uncomfortable.

Why would anyone who disagrees with the status quo stop talking about it
solely because other people didn't like it?

~~~
TeMPOraL
The situation is different. People who are apolitical on a topic tend to stay
away from discussions on the topic, but do not actively prevent others from
having those discussions. Except some of those who are into politics like to
have this discussion _everywhere, all the time_. At work, at school, at
church, at the bar, everywhere. Left unchecked, this makes loudest, most
emotional people infect every aspect of everyone's lives with discussion on
their pet topic. That's why apolitical people fight to have "safe spaces" like
the workplace, where everyone is actually supposed to be working, and not
constantly getting derailed into politics by someone with an axe to grind.

You have the picture of the battleground completely wrong on this. It's not
apolitical people shutting down oppressed minorities. It's a minority of
people with an opinion on a topic fighting it out with a different minority
with a different opinion on the subject, and both sides try to recruit
followers to their side from the larger population of people indifferent to
the issue, using the "if you're not with us you're against us" argument.
Whereas what the larger population wants to say to both groups is, "fight it
out among yourself and leave as alone, and for the love of everything that's
holy, _mind the collateral damage_ ".

(See also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21276788](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21276788)
for another take on how a political side feels to both those who disagree with
it and those who just want to be left alone.)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I think this sounds very reasonable for the kind of tool that is being
produced.

Joel Spolsky has a great article on Big Macs vs Naked Chef

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/01/18/big-macs-vs-the-
na...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/01/18/big-macs-vs-the-naked-chef/)

In there, he talks about bespoke development vs mass market products, using
McDonald's Big Macs vs a chef.

I think this provides a reasonable framework for approaching the present
controversy.

For example, if McDonald's sold a Big Mac to <villain>, no one would bat an
eye. However, if a chef went to work for <villain> there would be questions.

In the same way, if you are making a mass-market, generally useful tool,
nobody should be excluded from using your tool. However, if you are doing
custom, hi-touch development, then it might be more justified to screen your
clients more.

I think Gitlab falls more into the mass-market, generally useful tool.

~~~
archi42
I think that the point is McDonalds doesn't empower $villain to do $badstuff
(that is, unless he is literally starving - in which case it would be inhumane
to not give him food). However, technology empowers us to do things that would
not be possible without it.

Sometimes, a company can not choose who uses their tools - e.g. if it is open
source, you can hardly prevent $villain from using it. This is similar to a
hammer: If $villain buys a hammer at a hardware store, the hardware store is
not to blame if $villain smites people (unless maybe $villain is known to be
villainous, but that's not the point right now).

On the other hand, if a known $villain comes to you, and asks you to help him
commit $atrocities: You can make the decision not to help.

(So, to put it short: I think your analogy is bad).

~~~
ajhurliman
I think the analogy still stands if the goods/service is a commodity. It's not
like $evil_corp will just forego using version control if GitLab doesn't offer
it; there are tons of version control offerings.

The interesting spot is where you're selling off-the-shelf goods/ services
that nobody else can provide. I would say that it's morally wrong to provide
those services in that case since it's directly attributable to you that
$villain did $bad_thing because of your offering, even though you had little
personal involvement in the interaction.

~~~
archi42
So if $villain goes to the hardware store, says he needs a good hammer since
$villain is feeling like hitting $someone with it - then the hardware store
should sell a hammer? After all, $villain may go to the competing hardware
store and get a hammer there, or even build his own hammer.

~~~
LeonB
If $villain has outright said he’s going to do that with it, then the
$salesperson might still sell the $hammer if their personal safety is
endangered. But they should also notify the $police so that $someone can be
warned and $villain can be apprehended.

I think this $scenario is outside the $effective area of the $metaphor.

------
dang
This is a divisive topic, but the story seems to pass the interesting-new-
phenomenon test
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)).
If you comment, note this guideline: " _Comments should get more thoughtful
and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "

We've changed the title in accordance with the site guidelines, but if anyone
can suggest a better (i.e. more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it
again. Edit: I took "won't exclude customers on moral grounds" out of the
title above, since they apparently no longer have that policy.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21275311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21275311)

~~~
falcolas
I don't normally agree with such editorial changes, but this one is really
bad. Thanks.

~~~
cbhl
Just to confirm, "this one" in your comment refers to the original article's
title being "really bad"? (As opposed to the editorialized title.)

~~~
eindiran
I think "this one" refers to the original article's title being really bad:
"Blood money is fine with us, says GitLab: Vetting non-evil customers is 'time
consuming, potentially distracting'"

~~~
Wohlf
Wow, glad they changed it, that is cringe inducing bad.

~~~
toby-
It's _The Register_. They're known for 'silly' headlines; it's their gimmick.

~~~
Udik
Let's talk about how immoral it is to write headlines designed to spark
controversy and outrage. Those who do so are disrupting our collective ability
to discuss rationally about things- and they do it for profit- all the while
posing as guardians of morality.

~~~
GordonS
The Register's headlines have _always_ been tongue in cheek, a dig at tabloids
if anything.

Not sure where you are from, but maybe this kind of humour doesn't translate
well to the US?

~~~
Udik
I'm sorry, I don't know the Register, so I might be misinterpreting the
headline. And I see that many others on their homepage are similarly
exaggerated.

However, unfortunately at this point I'm so used to headlines misrepresenting
basic facts or taking quotes out of context to sell a political point or
generate controversy, that the headline seemed perfectly plausible- my general
point still stands, even if it doesn't apply to this particular case.

~~~
GordonS
I can understand that if you're not familiar with them, but The Register
literally predates click-bait - they've been doing satirical headlines for
_decades_.

------
kemenaran
Technical professions are generally held responsible for what they enable.
Biology: researchers can't do anything they want on plants, animals or humans.
Medicine: doctors are expected to follow strict guidelines with their
patients. Even engineering: implementing a cheating system for diesel tests
will (rightfully) get engineers into trouble.

But software engineering seem to have a pass on how the things we build is
actually used.

Dark patterns, facial recognition, mass surveillance? Just some code, a nice
puzzle. It's like the profession as a whole feels only distantly connected to
what they actually do.

I welcome the trend of developers taking more moral responsibility for their
work. I want more ethics courses, more difficult questions, more uneasiness
about what we do with our code, and what we enable. Not to be sure we build
the right thing, but at least to be less wrong–and, sometimes, to know when we
clearly build the wrong thing. I want us to be accountable; like other
technical professions in the world.

And if in the workplace, the place where the majority of software in the world
is usually produced, we can't have these discussions, what use will it be?

~~~
darawk
> Technical professions are generally hold responsible for what they enable.
> Biology: researchers can't do anything they want on plants, animals or
> humans. Medicine: doctors are expected to follow strict guidelines with
> their patients. Even engineering: implementing a cheating system for diesel
> tests will (rightfully) get engineers into trouble.

Biology researchers are held responsible for what they _do_. Not usually what
they _enable_. The examples you gave are biology researchers themselves doing
something. The relevant analogy would be if we held the inventors of CRISPR
responsible for some future super-virus engineered using it.

~~~
sorryitstrue
I like you analogy if in your story, the inventors of CRISPR can exert some
sort of power or control over the actors who are engineering a super-virus and
thus make a moral decision to do so or not

~~~
buboard
In science, the only kind of control you can have is keep the research secret
, or not do the research at all. Both are worse options

------
eric_b
I personally have no problem with them making this decision. I wish more
companies would take stands like this. At least it's honest. Unlike the NBA
and every other company with value statements they honor only when convenient
or advantageous.

Look, if you morally object to this, then don't use GitLab. If you think
businesses should be held to a higher ethical standard than they are
currently, get active with local or even national politics. Start a letter
writing campaign to your elected officials. Do something productive.

You know what isn't productive? Getting outraged on Twitter or Hacker News,
making emotional outbursts of regurgitated sound bites and platitudes.

~~~
pdonis
_> If you think businesses should be held to a higher ethical standard than
they are currently, get active with local or even national politics. Start a
letter writing campaign to your elected officials. Do something productive._

I would say the productive thing to do would be to start your own business
that holds itself to a higher ethical standard, and then out-compete the other
businesses.

~~~
sgarman
Sadly sometimes I think having lower ethical standards gives an edge during
competition.

~~~
pdonis
_> sometimes I think having lower ethical standards gives an edge during
competition_

Which means people aren't willing to enforce higher ethical standards as
customers. So is the problem the companies, or the customers?

------
sytse
Someone at GitLab just made a suggestion to change the wording of the policy
that I merged [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/merge_requests/...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/merge_requests/32614/diffs)

~~~
repolfx
That merge appears to change the policy in ways that render this discussion
largely irrelevant (given the current subject line).

It used to say:

 _We do not currently exclude anyone from being a customer based on moral
/value grounds._

followed by a list of reasons why not. It now says:

 _In some circumstances, we may opt to not work with particular organizations,
but we assess those on a case-by-case basis. Some reasons we may choose not to
work with certain entities include, but are not limited to ... Making
derogatory statements ... Encouraging violence or discrimination against
protected groups._

~~~
cbuchanan
We're a team that moves quickly and is receptive to ideas and opinions. I'm
very proud of that.

~~~
repolfx
It looks from the outside like the opposite - you changed the policy
explicitly so you can refuse to deal with organisations whose ideas and
opinions you're not receptive to.

Worse, it looks like you just reversed direction because the Register made fun
of you. You went from being willing to work with all organisations to
reserving the right to drop any organisation on a whim. I wonder, what does
Gitlab believe exactly?

You aren't the CEO but apparently the actual CEO lets you set global sales
policy, so perhaps you can illustrate with some examples how your new-new
policy will work.

I ask because the edited policy looks more like a personal speech code than
something designed for companies. Do software development organisations
routinely " _encourage violence towards protected groups_ "? They don't, in my
experience. So which organisations did you have in mind when writing it? Who
exactly will you refuse to do business with now who would have been served
before? You list some categorisations that look quite vague and state it's not
a full list.

For example, in recent times certain political factions have argued that
immigration control is violence against protected groups: can you clarify if
you do/would sell Gitlab to ICE?

~~~
williamchia
GitLabber here, one of our core values is iteration and our mission statement
is "Everyone can contribute"
[https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration)

Honestly, you could submit and merege request to our handbook to change global
sales policy and tag our CEO to review and merge if he agrees :) Admittedly,
this is a unique way to run a company. Other companies are limited by only
getting ideas from a small group of people that are directors and executives.
At GitLab we understand that good ideas can come from anywhere and we embrace
that.

~~~
repolfx
I get where you're trying to go with this, but a core value of 'iteration'
just means you don't have any values. Any value you may claim to have can be
'iterated' at any time into the polar opposite, which makes any statement of
what GitLab believes as a group to be worthless. You should accept that your
organisation stands for nothing. It's not so bad. Most people work for such
firms.

Ultimately the values of a company must come from the CEO, as he is the only
person who can enforce them. Your CEO can and does decide what the policy is,
the fact that he uses PRs to do so is a distraction. But it appears he either
doesn't know what he believes or his beliefs are so weak that criticism from
some random journalist or marketing woman is sufficient to change them
completely.

We currently use GitHub. Microsoft isn't perfect but its position on selling
to customers is pretty well established: they sell to anyone who uses
computers, and always have. Satya Nadella does not reverse his companies
policies because someone filed a pull request. This is reassuring. I don't
want to ever be in a situation where Chrissie Buchanan, a blog writer of no
importance at all, gets to influence our business relationships because who
the hell knows when she might decide that her personal "values" don't include
doing business with us? What even are her values? She refuses to explain when
asked: just more evidence GitLab makes it up as it goes along.

I have nothing against your software. Other than the fact you're a distributed
company and make a GitHub competitor, I didn't know much or have any opinions
about you before this incident. But frankly this looks astonishingly
unprofessional. Businesses want certainty and you give none.

------
Smithalicious
Good, this makes me glad to be using Gitlab. Gives me confidence that I can
rely on them even if I ever get into hot water politically. I also think that
it's good to assert that yes, it's fine for a git host to just host people's
repositories and not have to be in charge of making moral judgements. We have
other tools for judging morality; things so immoral that society shouldn't
allow them should be handled by the law, and things that individuals do not
morally agree with should be boycotted by those individuals.

~~~
bluntfang
>Gives me confidence that I can rely on them even if I ever get into hot water
politically.

Rely on them for what, exactly? What makes you think they would bend for you
and not this other political entity that has you in hot water?

~~~
amiga-workbench
>Rely on them for what, exactly?

It's nice to know they're not going to cave to a gaggle of Twitter blue
checkmarks.

------
cbuchanan
For those who are a little confused about the no politics at work thing...

If you read the policy we link to about politics, we mention people talking
politics during coffee chats, 1-on-1s, etc, but as a general rule we don't
lead with those topics.

We focus on inclusion, and we have been very successful at that by respecting
others and making work a collaborative, judgment free place. As someone who
sometimes has the minority opinion I have absolutely loved this policy, and I
feel closer and more accepted by my colleagues as a result.

I'm very proud to work at GitLab.

~~~
bluntfang
what marketing firm do you work for? Oh you're literally the content marketer
for gitlab lol (as per your comment history). you're literally getting paid to
say this.

~~~
codezero
That doesn’t make it untrue or any less valuable.

~~~
bluntfang
I believe the context of his employment and role completely strips the value
from the statements.

~~~
codezero
Fair point. I disagree. I’ve worked with plenty of sincere and reasonable
marketers. None of them have shilled publicly under their own name when they
weren’t sincere. Startups are on the above average side of hard working and
thoughtful people, in my experience. If you want to shit on marketers, go
ahead.

------
aaomidi
FYI: If you say you don't care about politics and you ban political speech in
your workspace - that on its own is a political statement that you're fine
with the status quo.

~~~
sbarzowski
Not necessarily. You may just think that the costs of the discourse outweigh
the benefits in some specific context.

~~~
Analemma_
The costs outweigh the benefits _to you_ , probably because the status quo is
pretty favorable to you. This may not hold for other people, except now
they're gagged from doing anything about it.

~~~
the8472
They're not gagged, they can still engage in political activity, just not on
company time.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
And not _against others at the same company_.

~~~
luckylion
No, that doesn't follow from "not _at_ work". You can engage in political
activism outside work, even if somebody from the same company is active on the
other side. Both of you are asked to not turn work into the battle ground
however.

------
buboard
Gitlab might have noticed that people have gotten weary of the Cancel culture
and are taking a distance. Good insight.

Good thing that gitlab is fully remote because a) there is no possible way to
reconcile the viewpoints of people who live in very different parts of the
workd, and b) they can survive when inevitably they will become shunned from
SF.

It's also smart PR to get some controversial open source projects in their
platform

------
dvt
GitLab are being hypocritical[1][2]. Let's not pretend the "women in tech" and
LGBT movements aren't political. Frankly, I think more women in tech and LGBT
representation are probably good things, but GitLab is being profoundly
disingenuous with their guidelines.

To clarify my point: if you open the gates to the marketplace of ideas, make
sure it's an actual _marketplace_.

[1] [https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2018/10/08/stem-gems-give-
girl...](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2018/10/08/stem-gems-give-girls-role-
models/)

[2] [https://shop.gitlab.com/products/womens-rainbow-
shirt](https://shop.gitlab.com/products/womens-rainbow-shirt)

~~~
dang
Those are great questions. But please omit the flamebait. (Edit: dvt kindly
took the flamebait out—see below.)

If flames take over, only the people who enjoy flaming will remain in the
debate. That's a strict loss for thread quality, which is one reason for the
guideline I asked everyone to remember above: " _Comments should get more
thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
Kenji
Oh no, someone dares to question the left-authoritarian talking points. Better
shut that discussion down.

~~~
dang
I assumed the writer was posting from the opposite ideological position. But
frankly, we don't care or even much look at that. When your job is to do the
same thing over and over, after a few hundred thousand times you tend to see
only the relevant bits in the mask.

~~~
Kenji
The thing is: It's flame-bait simply because it's a sentiment that is so
prevalent here. It's flame bait because there is a breed of people who lose
their shit over it, and that breed is a large fraction of the visitors of this
website. There is nothing remotely controversial in what _dvt_ said. Nobody
would bat an eye about it at my workplace, for example. You have to be aware
of the monoculture here.

~~~
dang
It was flamebait because it originally included " _Oh is that not political
either? It must be nice having the spinal rigidity of a mollusk._ " dvt was
thoughtful enough to edit it above.

------
malvosenior
I'm sure everyone who has to earn a living to support their family will
appreciate this move. Nothing is worse than politics at work, where you may
lose your paycheck if you don't align with the correct factions.

~~~
onion2k
While everyone does have to earn a living and it's fair to think that's very
important, if you believe your employer is doing something wrong and yet don't
either speak up or look for a new job you're effectively condoning your
employers actions. That isn't particularly admirable and your peers would be
right to tell you as much.

~~~
the8472
There is only a very limited number of hills that most people are willing to
die on. So saying that they're condoning something doesn't actually tell us
all that much, it means that they're tolerating something that they might find
disagreeable, even deeply disagreeable. One can also say North Korean citizens
are condoning their government, do we think badly of them for it?

------
ergothus
I have a pet theory that we (that is, the culture I'm familiar with, so I
don't really know how widespread it is, but at least the white U.S.) have
spent too long saying "don't discuss politics, sex, religion, and politics".

We literally have no practice handling differences regarding the very items
people are passionate about.

The answer isn't to get into massive drama-filled flame wars, nor to drive
people with minority opinions into hiding, but at the same time I don't think
continuing the "enforced silence until it's considered common knowledge" is
the right way to handle it.

See another comment pointing out that issues like gender equality, cognitive
diversity, and workplace rights regardless of sexual preferences are ALL
"political", but also directly impact the workplace. How do we decide
workplace issues if not at the workplace?

~~~
Karunamon
> _We literally have no practice handling differences regarding the very items
> people are passionate about._

Looking at it from the employer side, that passion is precisely why these
policies are being enacted.

Were I employing someone, I'm required to not have a hostile work environment,
which includes certain jokes (because people may be offended), and now
includes politics (because people may be offended), and people being offended
means I can get sued.

The safest thing I can do, that any company can do, is say "check your
politics at the door" and then fire anyone who does it anyways.

It's a garbage solution for the reasons you bring up, but unless we change how
those regulations are set up, it's the option that many will take.

~~~
ergothus
IANAL, but I don't think a hostile work environment means "no one ever says
something that is offensive", but rather an environment where that is normal
and accepted. If we learn how to be more adult in our conversations, which
includes:

* Trying not to offend

* Being open to accepting that we have

* Try not to repeat

* Accepting that others will make mistakes and can change their ways

...then we're not hostile. (But again, IANAL)

Given that being "non-political" is inherently not possible (see above posts
regarding the inevitability of political issues affecting the workplace to
enter the workplace), the above points may be hard, but are the more plausible
option.

That doesn't mean ALL politics has to enter the office, but firing anyone that
doesn't "check their politics at the door" just won't work.

And regardless of office rules, we as society need to learn these skills
SOMEWHERE, because we've made it a social rule not to discuss these topics
anywhere people might disagree. We're coming up on a few holidays, and I
expect the "can't we just have a peaceful dinner and not discuss these
stressful topics" to start making the annual rounds.

It's not regulations, it's society, and society isn't going away so we need to
adjust it.

~~~
DATACOMMANDER
Yes, but...actually try to put yourself in an employer’s shoes.

------
secretdark
What I find most amazing is less the politics aspect and more the
moral/ethical issue. For a company to have an explicit stated policy of
_actively_ never taking into account the moral/ethical impact of their work is
just... astounding.

It is difficult to imagine a more inhuman and bloodless statement.

~~~
umvi
I think that's a bad faith interpretation.

It's more like a pressure cooker company saying "We build kitchen tools. We
don't care who buys them. We will not spend any resources vetting customers to
make sure they won't blow up a marathon with our product. Yes, even neo nazis
are allowed to buy our product even though we executives disagree with them
politically/morally/etc."

That's an entirely reasonable stance.

~~~
shadowgovt
And it's one other people and companies will factor in while doing business
with them. To their good fortune and their bad.

~~~
pdonis
So where do I go to buy kitchen tools from a company that _does_ spend
resources on vetting their customers' morals?

~~~
shadowgovt
Not exactly the same, but have you looked into Penzeys Spices?

------
baalimago
Reminds me of Peter Handke's recent Nobel prize in literature, where the
committee were/are heavily criticized for judging only by literature, and not
by Handke's political viewpoints.

Maybe politics doesn't need to be involved in every single part of society,
only the political aspects of it.

~~~
g_sch
I tend to think of everything in life as political in some way. After all,
politics is the fundamental question of how power is distributed in the world.
However, even if you don't subscribe to this view, I would argue that work and
the workplace are one of the _more_ political spaces.

I agree that it isn't easy to be political in the workplace, and it is often
better to keep your head down. But think about all the posts here on HN about
workplace issues: compensation, toxic bosses, dubious or unethical product and
design choices...and so on. All of these things are political because they
involve people exercising their power on others, and other people organizing
to take that power back.

~~~
galaxyLogic
Yes politics is about all of us. Trying to limit speech in the office to the
football game last night is like saying we prefer our employees to avoid
intellectual subjects in their discussions.

Politics is about what is WRONG and what is RIGHT. It is about ETHICS. Saying
you can not discuss politics is saying you can not talk about what is wrong
and what is right.

The logo of Gitlab should now be the 3 monkeys; See no Evil, Hear no Evil,
Speak (about) no Evil.

------
lkrubner
There was a long stretch during the early days of the Internet when it seemed
possible that tech was going to have a uniquely positive impact on the world.
Certainly in the 1980s and 1990s, it was possible to think that tech was going
to help people overcome the past, and move towards a world of greater
understanding. These last 10 years have brought many disappointments. It is
frustrating that these tech companies refuse to do the right thing. Over and
over again, when we might hope they will take the ethical path, their response
is something like "Don't talk about politics at work" which is the corporate
way of saying that they've decided to duck their ethical obligations. Very
frustrating.

------
bArray
> Blood money is fine with us, says GitLab: Vetting non-evil

> customers is 'time consuming, potentially distracting'

If that isn't a divisive title, I don't know what is. This should be labelled
as an opinion piece.

> Code-hosting biz also bans staff from talking politics at

> work

Good, it's the work place - it's for work. Some freedoms are restricted whilst
at work, for example at home I can walk around naked - that doesn't tend to do
down so well at work.

> It was proposed to clarify that GitLab is committed to

> doing business with "customers with values that are

> incompatible with our own values."

This seems like a no-brainer, the article literally lists a bunch of examples
where companies that get politically activate have their efforts backfire. I
commend GitLab for this.

------
sonotathrowaway
"If your values aren't used to inform who you're doing business with, why do
you bother pretending to have values at all? This [merge request] demonstrates
that you don't have any values except 'we want to make money, and it doesn't
matter who gets hurt.'"

It sounds a lot like GitLab has a set of values that it doesn’t feel
comfortable openly championing, so it just lies.

~~~
buboard
that black or white thinking sounds fallacious

~~~
sonotathrowaway
Which part is black/white thinking - the belief that values need to inform
your actions?

~~~
buboard
"why do you bother pretending to have values at all?"

plus how does one go from "dont discuss politics at work" to "they have no
values at all"?

~~~
sonotathrowaway
By performing work that contradicts their professed values? How is it
fallacious to call values pretend if they don’t actually inform any decision
made?

~~~
buboard
they said they ll do business with customers that are incompatible with their
values. That doesnt sound like an absolute amoral acceptance. its instead a
statement that they won't be restricted to 100%-ethically-equivalent
companies. You 're stretching the argument to absurd proportions

~~~
sonotathrowaway
The consequence of being guided by your values is that you intentionally
forfeit opportunities to enable things that are contrary to your values. Even
with the championing of today’s moral relativism, I struggle to understand how
that is an ‘absurd’ result.

------
oneepic
O/T: the "Blood Money" part of the article title is why I hate news media in
general. Sensationalizing, editorializing headlines marked as "news" and not
just opinion.

~~~
mprev
I'm not defending it but The Register is, avowedly, aiming to be the tabloid
of tech news.

------
legostormtroopr
Good to see that the very non-controversial opinion of “be neutral at work and
treat customers equally” is being used to compare GitHub to IBM during Nazi
Germany.

Why can’t GitHub just provide code version control systems without concerning
itself with _who_ is writing code?

Given the recent implosion of StackOverflow, less politics in tech is probably
a good thing.

~~~
rubbingalcohol
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted but no comments addressing the
points you raised.

Can anyone provide an example of Nazi code being hosted on Gitlab? It might be
nice to justify what otherwise looks like an absurd comparison made by this
article. What would nazi code even look like? Or is "nazi" in this case just a
catch-all for wrongthink?

~~~
Hamuko
What if for example the People's Republic of China was hosting its code on
Gitlab? This is a state that has "re-education camps" (interment camps) for a
specific group of people and it reported to be engaging in organ harvesting.

I don't find it too hard to draw parallels between Nazi Germany and China at
the moment.

~~~
rubbingalcohol
I asked for an example and you're still arguing hypotheticals. And the PRC
would not host its code on Gitlab, that's not even a realistic comparison.

So far the only pattern I see is people making up hypothetical situations and
using them to claim Gitlab is complicit in enabling human rights violations.
But last I checked free speech is a human right!

~~~
Hamuko
You quite literally asked "What would nazi code even look like?" and I
replied.

------
jswizzy
When was it ever okay to discuss politics at work?

~~~
Rebelgecko
Maybe it's a SV thing? I saw some of the documents from a recent lawsuit
against Google and was pretty astounded by the sorts of things that people
were willing to not only say but actually put into writing where anyone on
their intranet could see (things along the lines of "I won't let anyone on my
team if they have political belief X or voted for Y")

~~~
saas_sam
It's 100% a SV thing. It is assumed that everyone working for a SV company is
on the left and hates anything on the right. Voice dissent at your own peril.

~~~
fipar
I suppose it is also assumed that everyone working for a SV company is on the
left, except when it comes to wealth distribution? :) (this reply is not
against you, I hope it does not come out that way)

------
im3w1l
Selling screws to anyone who asks is one thing. Coming onsite to help build a
sturdy black ops detention facility is another.

Which one will gitlab be doing?

------
merpnderp
The same people mad at ICE are fine doing business with China. Gitlab is
making the right move, as the people who all of a sudden are pretending to
become ethical, are mostly just posturing for their friends, otherwise ICE
would be far down their list of business concerns.

------
mychael
I hope more tech companies follow their lead. Politics in the workplace is
paralyzing to productivity and as a customer, I don't want platforms to be our
morality police.

------
spicyramen
I really like the idea that as engineers, our speciality is not politics but
creating technology for a company in order to maximize revenue by following
the existing law. It was surprising for me coming to America that employees
have the option to discuss politics (I come from South America) where my
limited working experience there was if you are not happy with who the company
is conducting business you either quit or build your own company. In Bay Area
people come from different country, religion, social class and school to name
a few. There's an intrinsic bias about what is a valid customer or not. Help
ICE to detect faces, if ICE is doing it based on existing laws and it's an
important contract for the future of your company, why not? There are
decisions that should be discussed in the realm of legality, morality and
business but makes sense to keep opinions outside work. Me as a right
conservative can barely discuss topics like pronouns, Trump mistakes and
achievements, religion without being tagged as a caveman. Good

------
programminggeek
Now that people in the western world have largely abandoned churches for their
attitudes toward "sin" and morality, they replaced churches with corporations,
media companies, and governments to dictate what is sinful in society.

Once people realize what they've done will they reject corporations, media,
and government? If so, where will they turn to?

I suspect that the need for parental moralization of behavior at some tribal
level is a group survival mechanism that we can't get rid of.

Regardless of whether it is the church, government, news media, social media,
or some corporate policy, it all seems to end up the same from where I sit.
Yet, in replacing faith with consumerism or corporatism or governmentism, it
seems many people have lost a great deal of hope along the way (see the
current mental health crisis for evidence).

It seems people were happier when they left this sort of moral policing to the
church/temple/whatever at least they had hope in something positive to keep
them going.

------
boomlinde
I worked at a company where they tried to apply a "no political discussion"
policy in response to (justified) moral uneasiness with the direction of the
company. Because work that has any social bearing has a political element by
definition, it seems extremely counter productive.

Of course, by saying this they didn't mean that there shouldn't be political
discussion. They were just using vague and overgeneralized language to say
that there shouldn't be political discussion that they didn't like.

That said, I think it's a good move from Gitlab to say that they'll sell to
anyone they legally can sell to. We shouldn't rely on corporations to make
moral choices, because between that and making more money, they most likely
won't. We should instead have airtight regulation and unions that make sure
that morally reprehensible choices lead to less money.

------
ineedasername
There's really two mandates to workers here:

1: _Don 't discuss politics at work._ This seems reasonable, when the
discussion has a good chance of getting heated and making it more difficult to
work with colleagues.

2: _Don 't vet potential customers (in part because it might get political)_

This second one is less defensible. Avoiding politics is fine when it's
unrelated to the work, but when it intrudes on work, it becomes relevant, and
avoiding the issue is a lapse of ethical responsibility. That people might
disagree on the boundaries of that responsibility is precisely why the
discussions are needed.

I'm not saying this is easy, that it won't lead to conflict, but it can be
done in a structured fashion that minimizes the ability for conversation to
blow up into flame wars. Again, not easy, but necessary to avoid abdicating
moral responsibility for your actions.

~~~
ascertain
They've since changed #2 to the point of walking the whole thing back.

------
nullc
I find it kind of weird that this has to be stated.

Work-- and commerce in general-- should be a place where people can put aside
differences which are irrelevant to their enterprise and work together for a
common benefit.

Extensive discussion of divisive topics which are unrelated to working
conditions can really get in the way. Twenty+ years ago it seemed like it was
the norm to me, I'm not sure why people seem to have lost this insight.

This doesn't mean that you have to be totally neutral to mass murderers or
what not, but it's prudent to think carefully about where your political and
moral hard stops are. If they're not significantly more extreme than your
preferred views then you're probably adopting a position which is overly
intolerant to a diversity of opinions and you're probably wasting a lot of
time by failing to cooperate with others.

------
peeters
Whenever I think about this topic, my gut says that a service provider's moral
obligation to refuse service to customer relates linearly with the customer's
reliance on the service in conducting its morally odious behavior. In other
words, I see McDonalds selling cheeseburgers to ICE differently than I see a
physical security company selling cages to them.

Is this defensible? From a utilitarian standpoint there's an argument that
your refusal of service has greater moral impact as the customer becomes more
reliant on it. Practically speaking there's the argument about efficiency. A
lot of people need cheeseburgers and so the list of companies you have an
issue with is going to be pretty damned large. But other than that is there a
philosophical basis for this way of thinking?

------
Fr0styMatt88
Discussing politics at work has NEVER been a routine thing for me and as far
as I know that's always been the cultural norm, at least where I live. It's
handled very carefully. So I just assumed that this was the norm and
discussing politics at work was the exception.

~~~
michannne
It is the norm, in the non-SV world.

------
krick
_Don 't be yourself at work. Don't live at work. Don't say what you think at
work. You have been hired to do your job, not to enjoy your time._

I get it, it's totally normal, I'm honestly not judging anyone or saying it
_should_ be otherwise: it's most probably the matter of that it couldn't be
otherwise. But I find it kind of sardonic, that you take the fact you don't
really belong to yourself for most of your life much more naturally, than the
fact you have been told you cannot discuss _politics_ by one of your potential
temporary owners. Because, yeah, _politics_ is special, obviously.

Oh, and I'm totally fine with treating customers as "just customers" by the
way.

------
ga-vu
They're Ukrainians. Slav people are pretty blunt about these issues. Simply
put, they don't care. Work is work. Politics is not work.

------
grier
The idea that even spam is does not fall into "content moderation" is very
interesting.

A fake Rolex email is an interesting advertisement to some people and belongs
in the garbage for others.

Research has shown that buyers of spam advertised products will literally dig
through their spam folder to find a store to buy from.

As this (naturally, pun intended) expands to green coffee, açai, news articles
about Florida man, and on up to what we see as disinformation, the difficulty
in identifying intent becomes equally as challenging.

There's no way to "just host content", and anyone attempting to do this will
face a range of laws, user challenges, and more that introduce "content
moderation" into the platform.

------
gkoberger
I disagree with GitLab on this one, but that title is one crazy leap in
logic... "Blood money is fine with us, says GitLab"

~~~
shadowgovt
The Register has somewhat clickbaity editorial standards, to be sure.

(Edit: media name correction. Egg on my face!)

------
justinmchase
This article seems to be laced with innappropriate bias. It appears to be
judging gitlab for this decision.

Beyond that, its weird that this is not only an uncontroversial position to
take but anything other than the only legal option. The government should be
the only arbiter of morality with regards to business, where judging your
business or actions to be illegal and/or issuing a court order to a company to
stop service or remove content should be the _only_ legal way a company can
refuse you service.

I do not think putting these kinds of decisions into the hands of unelected
people or companies is a good idea.

~~~
Kaveren
Hypothetically, why is it so unreasonable that you would ban someone who
advocated for genocide from participating on your platform?

The government is not supposed to legislate all morality. There's plenty of
awful things you can do that are perfectly legal. Companies can and should be
able to choose who they do business with.

------
Cpoll
I wonder if they're trying to pre-empt the issues Chef has been facing
recently in selling to ICE.

~~~
the_watcher
Discussed in the article. The CEO was asked, specifically, about this.

~~~
Cpoll
Mea culpa, I shouldn't have skimmed.

------
whytaka
However, if your organization has any lobbyists under their pay, your
organization is inherently political.

I can accept that ideological divisions within a team sows disorder and that
businesses want to avoid that.

I would also suggest that in an age where we are again facing the threat of
totalitarianism, the threat of treasonous acts, human rights violations that
evoke memories of the holocaust, we, the adults, citizens, and guardians of
civil society have to cast aside our professionality for moral duty.

It would be preferable of course if we were able to take our moral convictions
and take to the streets instead of arriving at work each day, but many of us
do not have the luxury to take time off.

Politics is often the practical pursuit of our moral convictions. It's kind of
surreal to me that our pattern of livelihood forces us to stop considering and
dismiss the moral consequences of our daily actions.

The frank truth is that work is 1/2 of our waking lives. Acting without prior
moral deliberation for half our lives seems immoral.

I do not want to be calculating the moral value of everything I do, but having
become aware of the impact of my decisions in so many different areas, the
individual contribution I make to what is acceptable in our society, I cannot
help but be motivated to be more morally conscious - even if I fall short all
the time. At least, I am aware of it and disgust myself at times.

------
ajaimk
This is a biased article written in an inflammatory style. Also, there is a
mistake in the first 5 letters (Gitlab is not "San Francisco based" being
remote-only)

~~~
sl1ck731
The company entity is headquartered in San Francisco, even if its only a PO
box that is its "address".

------
aledalgrande
Politics could be discussed at work, if parties didn't decide to go for super
extreme, polarizing positions. These days it feels like you cannot speak with
the other side of the wall without getting into a fight. What happened to
pragmatism and centrists? Politicians need divisiveness to keep their chairs.

That said, I would exclude any customer that has extreme views. Why support
their platform, especially with a product like Gitlab, and help them spread
hate?

~~~
buboard
> and help them spread hate

because hate has been extended to include whatever people don't like, i.e.
hate. Hate is a particularly bad choice of sieve. Violence is better

------
shadowgovt
In practice, "don't discuss politics" policies imply "don't discuss it (below
a certain pay-grade)."

Corporations are political entities (even the decision to do business with
people regardless of their politics is a political position), so someone at
every corporation is considering that angle. Or the corporation is adrift on
seas of change without attempting to navigate them.

------
jnwatson
I think most of this discussion has missed the point. The point of the memo is
that Gitlab isn’t sorting customer into morally “good” or “bad” buckets and
choosing to do business with them.

The decision making process required to do that will necessarily be filled
with politics and value judgments.

He’s right, that is a huge distraction from the business of making money.

The important question is whether that distraction is worth it.

------
jka
As of yesterday, GitLab's marketing team have made some changes to their
Customer Acceptance policy:

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/merge_requests/...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/merge_requests/32614/diffs)

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/merge_requests/...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/merge_requests/32628/diffs)

In particular this seems to clarify that the company may under some
circumstances not work with particular customers, and that employees can - in
private contexts - discuss such issues.

In addition, the justification of 'efficiency' as a reason not to spend time
vetting customers has been removed.

It'll still be interesting to watch how GitLab behaves in future, since the
original policies stated may remain their true direction, even if the
externally-facing language has changed.

------
ojosilva
HN to me is the ideal model of modern, democratic publisher for the times we
live in. Content here is self-moderated and slightly editorialized. The
community strives for a civil, educated debate and penalizes who doesn't
follow suit. I don't know if HN would scale in a larger context, like in
FB/Twitter feed scale, or on more personal networks ie Whatsapp or Telegram.
Also comment sections of newspapers or Youtube should have a more HN-like
moderation and overall charter to make it more civil.

It really drives me nuts to not be able to vote or moderate down or my family
members that publish fake news to Whatsapp, or read racist and mysogenist
comments in YouTube that seems to persist regardless of downvoting and
flagging.

It sounds idealistic, but I really think the world would be a much better
place if the HN culture and processes could be somehow automated and embedded
into public and private threads everywhere as some sort of nearly inescapable
standard.

------
xurias
I think it's concerning that everybody seems to think it's okay for companies
to clamp down on political discourse. Where do people think we're supposed to
talk about this shit? Who's supposed to champion these causes if not
companies? Who has actual power in this world other than companies? Companies
dominate the media, the way we consume media and everything that we see.

All this means is nothing changes, nothing improves and companies are free to
profit off of suppressing rights in authoritarian countries without blowback
from people using their platform (like Blizzard/Riot) or people that work for
them. Companies are not and never have been neutral entities. If your goal is
profit maximization to the detriment of the social fabric and moral
principles, then sure, go ahead and pretend to be neutral. But I'm not sure
that should be the goal and we shouldn't be helping companies pursuing this
goal.

~~~
themacguffinman
> Where do people think we're supposed to talk about this shit?

With your personal friends and family? With NGO or activist groups and forums?
Town halls and local political events? Literally anywhere outside work?

> Who's supposed to champion these causes if not companies?

Democratically elected representatives? NGOs, activist organizations, and
citizen groups? Since when were for-profit fiduciaries the primary
battleground for politics?

------
m0zg
Politics are the new religion anyway: all rational thought has long been
abandoned by both camps, at least in the US. So if it's mauvais ton to discuss
religion at work (an it is), politics should follow the same rules. Same with
political activism: do it on your own time and dime, if it's not related to
e.g. worker rights and such.

------
donohoe
Utilities are forbidden to deny service based on similar reasoning. It would
not be right for Verizon or ConEdison or similar to deny services to ICE etc.

However Gitlab is not a utility or regulated as anything remotely close to
one.

A company that takes pro-active steps to declare that they will do business
without any scruples or ethical concerns is just plain disgusting.

------
fsiefken
The author Thomas Claburn is not entirely correct when he writes: "GitLab, a
San Francisco-based provider of hosted git software, recently changed its
company handbook to declare it won't ban potential customers on "moral/value
grounds," and that employees should not discuss politics at work."

The segment on discussing politics within the company has not changed for a
while and doesn't explicitly exclude discussing politics at work, but does so
in a public context. From the handbook:

"Religion and politics at work We generally don't discuss religion or politics
in public forums because it is easy to alienate people that have a minority
opinion. It's acceptable to bring up these topics in social contexts such as
coffee chats and real-life meetups with other coworkers, but always be aware
of cultural sensitivities, exercise your best judgement, and make sure you
stay within the boundaries of our Code of Conduct."

I regularly discuss topics like politics and religion when I feel free to do
so as it's part of my identity, of course I try to be considerate to opposing
viewpoints.

And I get the point to do business with others regardless of their political
views. For example

"A pro-democracy restaurant in #HongKong offers free meal to student
protesters. A pro-Beijing woman took her daughter there for the free meal, but
kept complaining the “rioters” are “destroying” things etc. Restaurant owner
waived her bill and told her to leave. "

He said... “This is a private property. I can call #HongKongPolice to get u
out but I won’t, coz I don’t believe in them.” Later on he said “u asked why
we are doing this (to her daughter)? Then ask yourself why did u say those
things (about the young #HongKongers)? I don’t want your biz!”
[https://twitter.com/ajmm19923493/status/1184173217474207744](https://twitter.com/ajmm19923493/status/1184173217474207744)

------
Kye
It's reasonable to not want to get into exhausting political battles at work.
But such a policy falls apart fast. What about when a coworker asks about your
dating life and you talk about a same-sex partner? A lot people see that as
political because it's not status quo.

"We're not going to be political" sounds so simple, but a whole lot of status
quo politics spills out when you try to apply it in reality.

Another example: a coworker is from a country bombed by the branch of
government you're selling stuff to. What then?

Aside: Hacker News rightfully sees a lot of criticism, but it has improved
some. This thread is full of people pointing out that apolitical is synonymous
with support of the political status quo, making apolitical an oxymoron.

------
dreamcompiler
I would encourage Github, Gitlab, and all the rest to continue working with
ICE. There's a good chance the next administration will want to prosecute ICE
for human rights violations and good version-controlled records of who did
what when will be essential.

------
jchw
Observation: It seems like we have lost faith in the legal system in recent
times based on everything from call-out/cancel culture to protests over
contracts. My question to the world is, are we right to feel this way?

I certainly feel at least in the U.S. that the legal system has done a poor
job of protecting humanities interests on many occasions, though I do not
think pushing the responsibilities of policing morality to businesses and
society is really a good thing over all. It has come with a lot of negative
side effects.

I do not pick a side strongly here, though. I sure as hell wouldn’t feel good
about helping an entity I feel is highly immoral. Is a mutual contract
“helping?” You can really get into the weeds fast.

------
swebs
This is honestly a breath of fresh air. It seems that in the past 5 or so
years, most tech companies have begun to radicalize and become more
authoritarian. It's great to have neutral platforms for people who don't
particularly identify as far-left.

------
thescriptkiddie
Regardless of whether they are just talking about not looking into the
background of their clients, or they are banning all discussion of politics in
their offices, this is incredibly shitty. Ignoring politics doesn't make it go
away.

------
tanto
As many here seem to like the idea of not a non political workplace couple
quick questions:

\- If I work at a workplace which produces a deadly weaponize-able Gas (lets
for random reasons call it Zyklon B) should I care for politics or just do my
job and provide any customer with my product?

\- If I offer storage (e.g. for Cars, Git-Repos, Shoes, ...) should I care if
maybe one of my customers is this Gas producing company which needs some
storage?

You see where I am getting? There seems to be this trend that politics is some
side business which people should only think about when they do either nothing
or do it as a job. I don't think Democracies will survive this way.

------
cft
Switching to Gitlab from GitHub. I wish they added a stackoverflow-like
product too.

------
luord
I was wondering why something that I thought so obvious that I would consider
GitLab making it official a formality, gathered over a thousand comments. And
then I read the article and quite a few of the comments.

The second top comment (which starts with the assumption that anyone who
wouldn't walk to talk politics at work must be "privileged") cleared up why
this subject got so many comments pretty quickly. In hindsight, I should not
have expected any different.

Appropriately enough, though, this thread is probably evidence of why politics
should _not_ be discussed at work, I think.

------
rawland
There is an issue opened to revert this:

    
    
        > [...] I understand the motivations behind the
        > policy change but they are misguided: GitLab,
        > please show that the concerns of your community and
        > staff are our first priority by reverting
        > this change.
    

See: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/issues/5579](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/issues/5579)

~~~
whoisjuan
An update was merged a few minutes ago: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-
gitlab-com/merge_requests/...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/merge_requests/32614)

------
friedman23
I think this is a good decision. I actually hold similar beliefs to many of my
coworkers in SF but I find it horrifying how common it is to dehumanize nearly
half the country. I've lived in three major cities in the US, two on the east
coast. San Francisco is the only city where co workers routinely disparaged
people living in other states. I do not think employees in tech companies have
the capability to be arbiters of anything cultural in this country. Leave that
to governments.

------
jmvoodoo
Not discussing politics at work seems like it's missing a pretty key point
here. Saying we will not choose our customers is not a realistic stance in
this world. Choices will have to be made and when they are it is helpful to
have a framework in place to make them. This just kicks the can down the road.
I have no doubt that a future article will feature gitlab in a situation where
they have had to choose and find themselves having to wordsmith or spin their
way out of it.

------
sunasra
This is awesome. Generally, Politics is opinion based which change with time.
I have seen people who have spoiled their long term relationship in politics
debates

------
duxup
I feel like discussing politics at work has always been something most folks
try to avoid.

On the other hand your company telling you not to is a whole other situation.
I'm not sure a policy really solves much. Anyone who wouldn't think twice
before discussing such things ... probabbly isn't going to read / care about
the policy.

It's one of those rules that no matter how well intentioned, I'm not sure it
works well as a policy.

~~~
PunchTornado
we discuss brexit every day at work. in my previous job too. i don't believe
there is an office in Britain where brexit is not mentioned.

~~~
duxup
That sounds exhausting.

------
peterashford
Companies are not divorced from politics or reality no matter how much they
want to be. Trying to be non-political is a political act and one that is
usually means "I benefit from the status quo, please don't change anything".
It's the corporate version of the white guying saying "I don't see color" when
he means "I don't want to think about issues of race"

------
Vaslo
I know many of you work in tech in areas of the country that lean very far one
way. I go back and forth on this: is this guideline more important in state
like Virginia where you will start to see a more diverse and potentially time
wasting or is it more important in Silicon Valley where some minority opinions
should be protected if only unpopular? And if unpopular they would respect
users views more?

------
whsheet
The Reddit thread, IDK why, feels more to the point than HN’s one:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/dj1048/gitlab_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/dj1048/gitlab_dont_discuss_politics_at_work/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)

------
staticvar
An organization is not a tool, it's a group of people thus it reflects the
morals of those people. Software is also not a tool, it's a continual process
in an organization of people. Just think, is the code you wrote today a rock?
Will it survive without you supporting it? I used to think that was the case
but after decades have never seen that to be true.

------
node-bayarea
Who are you to judge someone? Unless someone is proved to be a terrorist or
something everything else is subjective. I support Gitlab.

------
grumple
If your policy is going to be, "we'll take your money in exchange for goods or
services, no matter who you are", it seems that you'd be better off not making
your policy public. It just draws attention to you, and it's not going to
positive.

Gitlab is also a remote workplace, so it's not like there's much opportunity
for water-cooler talk.

------
option
Thanks for the clarification - gives people like me yet another reason to
champion using GitHub at the companies we work for

------
pimmen
I agree with casiotone; why pretend you have an important, guiding set of
enshrined morals and ethics at all when there’s a clause that nullifies
everything by saying ”some people might be fundamentally against our values
but if they’re loaded, and they want to do evil stuff more efficiently, we’re
the company for them!”?

------
onyva
Companies are not neutral entities. People work there and have values. If a
company thinks it’s ok to serve people that commit crimes against humanity, in
the case of ICE and the Drumpf administration, than they have a serious
problem. Maybe send the guy a link to the story about IBM and the nazi regime
for context.

------
pnako
Theo said it best: "But software which OpenBSD uses and redistributes must be
free to all (be they people or companies), for any purpose they wish to use
it, including modification, use, peeing on, or even integration into baby
mulching machines or atomic bombs to be dropped on Australia." \-- Theo de
Raadt

------
umeshunni
Gitlab, being a remote first workplace probably has a more politically diverse
workplace than most and probably realizes that not everyone agrees with
everyone else on many things.

Most SV companies, on the other hand, are political monocultures that assumes
that west coast liberal politics is the norm and everyone are just Nazis.

------
memmcgee
It seems no one has yet mentioned the potential illegality of this policy. The
rights of employees to discuss their working conditions at work, a largely
political discussion, is protected by the NLRA. Google got whacked by the NLRB
for their ban on political discussion as well.

------
daliusd
They have changed it already: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/commit/c69d6dc2...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/commit/c69d6dc2a258f7eb39ae536c7b3de1ba7c053d09)

~~~
NietTim
I like it, just wish they'd drop the "against protected groups" from point
three. Encouraging violence or discrimination against some other groups are
okay? (no) Odd.

~~~
daliusd
Good point, I wonder how they define "protected group". If that's
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group)
then it is slippery slope in some situations. E.g. when you decide to work
with Chinese companies should you take into considerations how China (as
country) is behaving with Muslims in their country.

------
aasasd
I always liked the rules that one prominent local web design company has: they
don't work with political or religious organizations. They don't seem to
include state organizations in that, but I would. I think this removes lots of
potential headache right away.

------
axilmar
I don't think there is a right or wrong approach in this one. In my opinion,
each organization shall be left to do whatever they want: if they want
sensorship, so be it, if they don't want sensorship, so be it. Let the market
decide what's best.

------
alexanderlabrie
Banning staff from talking politics at work shouldn't be allowed under the
First Amendment.

~~~
teraflop
As a general rule, the First Amendment only restrains the government. It means
the government can't ban speech (except in narrow, "content-neutral" ways) and
courts can't punish you for it (except for things like defamation).

But the US follows at-will employment, under the more general principle of
freedom of association. An employer does't have the same duty to treat its
employees "fairly" that the government has to its citizens. Your employer can
fire you for pretty much any reason, including differences of opinion, and the
First Amendment has nothing to do with that.

The exceptions to this rule are better thought of as exceptions to at-will
employment, rather than extensions of First Amendment protection. For
instance, you can't fire an employee for discussing wages or working
conditions with their co-workers, in the same way that you can't fire someone
for being the wrong religion or for reporting illegal behavior.

(If you're saying that the courts should _change_ their interpretation of the
First Amendment to include a right to discuss politics at work... well, that
would be a major break with precedent, and a huge reach beyond what the text
of the amendment says, with wide-ranging ramifications. Instead, some states
have passed specific laws that protect workers from discrimination on the
basis of political opinion, without needing to invoke the First Amendment.)

------
tobr
How does a rule like “can’t discuss politics” even work? Anything and
everything is political. Not allowing political discussions is in _itself_
political activism for the status quo. Are GitLab employees allowed to discuss
the rule?

------
nextlevelwizard
Based on the title alone, anyone who gets offended by this has not read what
GitLab actually states in their "values" page.

In case you don't want to go dig for it here it is:
[https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#religion-and-
polit...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#religion-and-politics-at-
work-)

TL;DR: it says that generally there shouldn't be discussions about religion or
politics on PUBLIC forums, but that such discussions are OK in social context,
like during coffee breaks. Also goes to say to keep in mind not to exclude
people due to their minority political/religious views.

This seems very reasonable and this whole issue seems almost like a hit piece.
GitLab hasn't done anything wrong, but since their world view isn't completely
black and white like people-in-the-current-year should have according to the
same people who get offended time after time from the most minute things (and
even about things that happened decades ago) they must be bad.

------
notadev
About 6 months ago, when the deplatforming conversation seemed to be at its
peak, people couldn't spit out "free speech only applies to the government"
fast enough. Well, reap what you sow.

------
lazyasciiart
The wording of this statement sounds very poorly thought out. Does a customer
have to pay them? What if I argue I don't believe I should have to pay, or I
have a moral objection? What if my belief in freedom says it's OK to ddos
them? Presumably they'll fall back on something like "our contract says you
have to pay us to use our services". Great. So you _can_ and _will_ refuse to
work with a customer for a reason you chose, not an externally imposed
restriction. The intended meaning is probably more like "we will work with
anyone who works within our core beliefs about how society and payment for
services should work, but we have not done the work of figuring out what those
are in advance".

~~~
tengbretson
You're conflating beliefs and actions. I can have a moral objection to paying
for Gitlab's services and still pay for Gitlab's services. I can write article
after article about how it is immoral to pay for Gitlab's services. As long as
I pay for their services, I will get them.

~~~
lazyasciiart
I don't think anyone is suggesting that Gitlab and other tech companies stop
selling to ICE because they disagree with the beliefs of the organization, but
because they object to the actions ICE is taking. If you think those can be
treated separately, then gitlab would still be able to say "we won't work with
any customer who sells guns".

------
dependenttypes
Didn't google do something similar?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20779004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20779004)

------
grawprog
>This [merge request] demonstrates that you don't have any values except 'we
want to make money, and it doesn't matter who gets hurt.'

Well, considering gitlab is a publicly traded company and as they state
clearly on their website

[https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/stock-options/#stock-
optio...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/stock-options/#stock-options)

>We are in business to create value for our shareholders

I personally appreciate their blunt honesty. Watching corporations pretend
they have morals and obligations other than providing profit to their
shareholders, while continually doing the opposite of said stated morals gets
tiring.

------
Chris2048
There seem to be a lot of extremely left-biased el-reg articles coming from
the SF office.

e.g: "James Damore's labor complaint went over about as well as his trash
diversity manifesto"

------
cousin_it
In my perfect workplace, people would be able to have political discussions by
mutual consent, or opt out of any political discussion, and not get penalized
for either.

------
anonytrary
Discussing politics at work is very crass, and people who do it should know
better. Politics is a draining subject, and employees should not be draining
each other.

------
cryptica
Corporations have become hotbeds for oppression and self-censorship. They will
devolve towards mediocrity.

At least it should become easier for startups to compete against them.

------
flippinburgers
Good for them. Work is about getting things done.

------
Jan_DeWit
A comment I thought was insightful on the NBA subreddit with regard: "You
cannot be global and apolitical at the same time".

------
angry_octet
I just need to laugh at this point remembering the fanbois who said we had to
use gitlab because it was open source and ethical.

------
eldavido
Meta, what actually upsets me is how we seem to be avoiding the need to use
human judgment.

By definition, every time some process or code is adopted, it takes the human
element out a little bit. You have to look case-by-case whether that's a good
thing. In some cases, where speed, consistency, precision, or efficiency are
valuable, that's a good idea. Leaving humans in the loop is probably better in
situations involving most kinds of moral judgment, situations that vary a lot,
or things involving a heavy emotional/social component.

Sidenote, I work in self-driving, so this is actually a big question that
comes up in my work: what's best to automate vs. what will humans do long-
term? It's an interesting question.

It's germane here because, I don't think anyone is really going to suggest,
oh, let's sell tools to people who are committing genocide, or pedophilia, or
rape, or a variety of other things considered harmful in most cultures. But
that's a very hard thing to put into a "code", or a statement of what you will
and won't do, precisely because (a) it involves moral judgment, and (b)
situations vary a lot.

So we get statements of policy that are black-and-white, perhaps enforceable,
but totally absurd. There is no way any reasonable person can take "don't
discuss politics at work", at face value. As a straight man, am I supposed to
not mention that I'm married? Is that "political"? Of course it is. But I can
make the _human_ judgment that that's not likely to offend someone if I
mention that I'm married.

There are good and bad effects to a lot of this. Codifying things probably
does reduce bias, such as in hiring, or university admissions. But I think we
also need to be cognizant of the cost: forcing unnecessarily rigid decision-
making into things that are better left a bit fluid.

The best outcomes are probably in the middle, but I don't think we should be
as scared as we are of human judgment, whether in university admissions, work
promotions, who companies do business with, etc. And yes, there is a thing
called "bad judgment" \- not all judgments are the right ones, or good, but
not all are bad, either.

------
rosybox
That article took the least charitable interpretation possible in order to
achieve the most clickbait it could possibly be.

------
Kagerjay
Semi-related, but supposedly one of the developers at GitLab also happens to
be an African Tribal Warlord.

Don't ask me why I know this

------
ctdonath
Diversity is good, remember?

When did diversity instantiate as “if you don’t agree with X without
qualifications, you’re Hitler”?

------
AimForTheBushes
Good, right? This allows the consumer to make the decision without distracting
GitLab from product building.

------
flywithdolp
That's how it should be. I'm not enjoying while I play WOW nowadays because of
damn politics

------
soulofmischief
At the end of the day, you can either put your customers first, or your
employees. Gitlab has made their choice. Microsoft has made their choice.

Cancel culture is cancerous, but this is a case where if I can avoid Gitlab, I
will, on the grounds that I wouldn't want to recommend them to another entity
given their CEO's readiness to do business with the worst scum on the planet.

------
akerro
It's much better than Apple not hiring people based on their political views
expressed online.

------
MentallyRetired
I think this is perfectly acceptable, especially since they've announced it
ahead of time.

------
pavanman5000
for everyone who thinks this is good, google has a child pornography problem
that they haven't taken seriously. With great power, comes great
responsibility, but unfortunately it's with great power, comes great
ignorance.

------
notadoc
Many political issues are so heated and have become so divisive that they can
create barriers to team cohesion (and societal cohesion for that matter), and
occasionally turn into outright intolerance.

Unless you work directly in politics, why are you talking about it at work
anyway?

------
pgcj_poster
>If ICE has violated the law, he argues, there are legal processes to deal
with that.

Well, problem solved then. It's a good thing that the law is always right, and
that it is regularly applied in full force to punish law enforcement agencies
guilty of wrongdoings.

------
hendersoon
"Don't discuss politics at work" seems an eminently reasonable position to me.
You're on the clock at work.

The second portion about KNOWINGLY doing business with entities that don't
share the company's values is extremely difficult to defend.

------
munmaek
It's impossible for a company to be entirely non-political. By choosing to
stay quiet and not vet potential clients, Gitlab just made a large political
statement. Choosing to not discuss politics means implicitly endorsing the
current status quo.

------
major505
a sound strategy. Don't mess with other people problems.

------
proc0
The argument "if you don't engage in politics then you might be part of the
problem", is itself a political argument, therefore it is irrelevant in the
context of a no-politics rule.

~~~
lazyasciiart
Then the initial demand to not discuss politics must also be political and
therefore self-contradictory, so it should be ignored.

~~~
proc0
"recently changed its company handbook to declare it won't ban potential
customers on "moral/value grounds," and that employees should not discuss
politics at work."

I'm assuming that "should not" means it's discouraged as a culture and not
enforced somehow, because otherwise I would think something different. If so
the article seems to try and persuade you against this because politics is
somehow important, but the whole point of the new rule is to precisely ignore
that.

~~~
lazyasciiart
Hmm, I definitely interpret "should not" in an employee handbook as much
stronger than cultural discouragement.

~~~
proc0
It comes down to whether it's enforced (regardless of how). If there are
repercussions of any kind, then in order to make that judgement you need an
objective perspective of what's political which is even more of a waste of
time if not impossible. Whoever is tasked with discerning what should be
punished and what isn't is bound to have some bias.

------
jccalhoun
I guess they can't talk about anything then.

------
agoodthrowaway
It’s funny how these modern companies are rediscovering the old rules for
behavior. When I was young it was a given that you didn’t discuss politics,
religion, etc...

------
sixoseven
A society that has decided to become unforgiving is halfway to becoming a
police state. The intent to arrest is the same.

------
Fej
Foreword: I am not suggesting that general political discussion should be
allowed at work; it has traditionally been taboo since it gets people riled
up.

I am concerned that developers and companies are attempting to somehow opt out
and divorce themselves of ethics, and to be amoral. This is not possible.

Ethical considerations are present in all work, especially ours - our work as
programmers, leaders, technologists, and so on has the potential to affect
large masses of people, even indirectly. Society has rapidly changed due to
the advancement of technology and it will continue to do so. I'm not
suggesting that every single agreement or project needs to be deeply evaluated
for its ethical implications, but projects or sales for questionable
organizations ought to have some thought put into them.

I will give an example: should GitLab sell its product to the American Nazi
Party, or other fascist organizations across the globe, should they request?
It is reasonably uncontroversial to say that fascist parties are vile, wrong,
unethical, even evil. Therefore, aiding these organizations and their missions
by selling them helpful products is unethical. Saying "we sell to everybody"
does not magically make the sale ethical.

To suppress the discussion of ethics as it pertains to a company and its
actions is itself unethical, as the impact of a company's actions can be wide-
ranging and the implications cannot be divorced from ethics.

------
slickrick216
This is why gitlab isn’t a company to work for. Nice folks but culture of
explicit silence is corruptive.

------
xtat
As much as I love Gitlab I've heard more than one rumor that they have weird
values internally.

------
sam0x17
Well, Gitlab just became even more irrelevant in my book.

------
_pmf_
Pulling GitLab into the "ICE is literally Hitler" smear campaign; nice smear
campaign.

------
imsofuture
Everything is politics.

------
Uhuhreally
sorry is this real ? It read as satire

------
milesward
Human rights aren't politics, they're non-negotiable.

~~~
fipar
I was born under a dictatorship (that fortunately became again a democracy
while I was still a child) and I can tell you human rights don't exist unless
you have enough people willing and able to stand up for them.

More broadly, laws aren't worth the paper they're written on if you don't have
a police and armed forces willing and able to uphold them.

I understand what your point is; I've talked to several people who voice the
same opinion when discussing my country's dark past, but trust me, when the
bullies get to power, you can't shout "it's a human right!" back at them. You
either have to fight back, hide, or run away.

~~~
atomi
We're American. We fight back.

------
tjpnz
So this doesn't preclude discussion of HK Police beating protesters or the
Uighur concentration camps operating in Xinjiang? Or is this also politics
now?

------
peterwwillis
Has anyone _read the pull request_? For those that didn't, here it is:

    
    
      + We do business with customers with values that are incompatible with [our own values](/handbook/values/) for the following reasons:
      + 
      + 1. Our mission is 'everyone can contribute', while there is a [code of conduct for contributing](https://about.gitlab.com/community/contribute/code-of-conduct/) we want to get as close to everyone as possible.
      + 1. We [do not discuss politics in the workplace](/handbook/values/#religion-and-politics-at-work-) and decisions about what customer to serve might get political.
      + 1. [Efficiency is one of our values](/handbook/values/#efficiency) and vetting customers is time consuming and potentially distracting.
      + 1. It maps to the MIT expat open source license we use that [doesn't discriminate against fields of endeavor](https://apebox.org/wordpress/rants/456).
    

Of the "we do not discuss politics in the workplace", this is the quote from
the handbook:

    
    
      We generally don't discuss religion or politics in public forums because it is easy to alienate people
      that have a minority opinion. It's acceptable to bring up these topics in social contexts such as
      coffee chats and real-life meetups with other coworkers, but always be aware of cultural sensitivities,
      exercise your best judgement, and make sure you stay within the boundaries of our Code of Conduct.
    

Here's the problem: this policy can be used to protect people, _and_
disenfranchise people.

On the one hand, you can use this policy to prevent white people from loudly
supporting a white supremacist political leader in an office with a very small
percentage of people of color. Banning talk of politics here will make it
easier to stop dog-whistle racism before it even starts.

On the other hand, you can also use this policy to shut conversations by
minority groups who want to support politicians who are improving the lives of
people of color. If one goal your company has is, for example, to make your
company more ethnically diverse, it would perhaps behoove you to allow
different ethnic groups to discuss the political issues they face, and raise
awareness of issues critical to them. Banning such speech makes it much harder
for them to advocate for better treatment, and educate people in the workplace
about the issues they face.

Everyone who thinks this is controversial is falling into the trap of trying
to judge a complex issue with emotion, rather than complex rational thought.
If you literally decided your opinion about this within 30 seconds, _chances
are it wasn 't very well thought out_. I'm willing to bet the CEO is just as
guilty of such rushed decision-making.

\--

But there were three other points in the PR!! The last of which I think is
really worth considering: _" The MIT expat open source license [..] doesn't
discriminate against fields of endeavor."_

The most common example given is that _" you cannot stop an abortion clinic,
or an anti-abortion activist, from using the source code"_. This is an
incredibly important part of our society that _protects minority groups_.

In 2012, in Colorado, a bakery discriminated against a gay couple by refusing
to make their wedding cake, because the bakery owners didn't approve of gay
marriage. This was (rightly, I think) found by the courts to be illegal
discrimination. But you could also consider this case a form of discrimination
of _field of endeavor_ , if what you're endeavoring-for is to be married while
gay. You can't refuse to make the gay couple a wedding cake - so should you be
able to refuse a white supremacist from using your version control tool?

This is where we walk into ethical quicksand. There is a _l o n g_
philosophical rabbit hole you can fall down trying to figure out how to treat
people you disagree with. People have spent their whole lives going over these
issues and literally nobody has figured it out for certain. And that's why I
think the policy, based on the third reason, is acceptable.

The third reasoning, _" vetting customers is time consuming and potentially
distracting"_, is clearly true. We could spend our _entire lives_ arguing the
moral philosophy of how to treat people we disagree with, but we'd never get
any work done. Sure, you could start an ongoing process of defining who can
and can't be a customer, but if it takes any amount of discussion at all, and
impacts your business, you're losing money and time, and not necessarily
achieving an increase in value, either for society, or your
customers/stockholders.

So for the sake of expediency, for simplicity, for being the Switzerland of
open source, this one company can allow that particular conversation to go on
outside its walls, and continue to just bake cakes and write version control
tools, and let history be the ultimate arbiter.

~~~
DATACOMMANDER
What part of the world do you live in, where there’s a real risk of a white
supremacist politician receiving even 1% of 1% of the popular vote?

~~~
peterwwillis
The USA. We've had white supremacist politicians for hundreds of years, and in
many parts of the us they carry more than 10% of the vote. As recently as
2016, the former head of the Ku Klux Klan received 3% of election day votes
(58,000 people) for a United States Senate seat for the state of Louisiana.

Here's an article from 2018, "All The White Supremacists Running For Office":
[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-supremacists-running-
fo...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-supremacists-running-for-
office-2018_n_5a7da926e4b0c6726e1285c1) There are 12 candidates listed.

Here's a white supremacist running unopposed for Congress in 2018:
[https://www.npr.org/2018/02/08/583993705/a-white-
supremacist...](https://www.npr.org/2018/02/08/583993705/a-white-supremacist-
may-be-the-only-republican-running-for-a-seat-in-congress)

In Germany there has recently been an alarming rise in white nationalist
political sentiment in large swaths of the country. Here's a list of European
white supremacy groups: [https://www.counterextremism.com/european-white-
supremacy-gr...](https://www.counterextremism.com/european-white-supremacy-
groups)

~~~
DATACOMMANDER
I should have been more specific: I was referring to elections for head of
state. Regardless, your post is high on rhetoric and low on content. You
provide no citation for your strongest claim (that in many part of the US
white supremacists carry more than 10% of the vote for some office or
another). The white supremacist whom you claim is running for Congress
“unopposed” will certainly be opposed by a Democrat, and will certainly lose.
If only 12 white supremacists ran for office in 2018, that runs _counter_ to
the notion that white supremacists are a significant force in American
politics. Almost anyone can _run_ for office, and I highly doubt that any of
them won anyway. Given the number of elected officials in the US, I think it’s
fair to say that any group that doesn’t hold at least _one_ office is not a
significant political force. Can you name an elected official who is a white
supremacist?

(Before you accuse me of shifting the goalposts: I wasn’t clear in my original
post. If you can find a presidential election that occurred in the last 20
years in which a white supremacist received more than 0.01% of the popular
vote, I’ll stand corrected. You’ll have to go back farther than 2016: I
googled every candidate [1] who received more than 0.01% of the popular vote
in 2016 and none of them is a white supremacist.)

1\.
[https://transition.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2016/2016presgeresults.p...](https://transition.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2016/2016presgeresults.pdf)

------
imgabe
Did I miss something? Is there a reason why you have to qualify that you're
not advocating for Joe Rogan? Did he get "cancelled"?

~~~
anm89
To clarify I don't dislike Rogan. I don't always like him either. I think he
occasionally makes great points and sometimes says profoundly dumb stuff. The
point is he's divisive and I don't wan't this to become a Joe Rogan debate.

~~~
sorenn111
I find it interesting that an admittedly not-that-smart (calls himself a moron
regularly) fighter/comedian who just talks with all sorts of people is
sufficiently divisive enough to merit such asterisks.

Strange times.

~~~
weaksauce
I think it's because he's not that bright and has one of the most prolific
podcasts in terms of listeners that he's divisive. He is mostly uncritical of
whatever someone says and isn't that quick on the draw to call people out so
he's basically a platform for any mildly famous person to go on the show and
spew whatever crackpot theory there is for a few hours unchallenged to his
huge base of listeners. He himself is not that controversial but he allows on
controversial characters unchallenged.

------
shadowgovt
So when do you imagine they'll be implementing Navajo language support in
their UI?

Or is someone going to have to make the judgement call that Navajo users don't
constitute a big enough political block to influence their l10n priorities?

Someone has to make those calls

~~~
repolfx
Navajo speakers aren't a political bloc, they're a linguistic bloc, and
support for languages is driven by revenue potential in any software company
I've ever seen.

~~~
starkruzr
Cultural respect should not be contingent on monetary incentives.

~~~
anm89
While I have no doubt that this is said with well intentions, imagine a
systemic way of dealing with this that is not facism.

There isn't. The only systemic and consistent way of enforcing "respect" as a
society is some government thought court crime tribunal.

------
galaxyLogic
"Trump just got impeached!". When that happens, are we not allowed to mention
it in the coffee-room?

I understand it is not good to ARGUE about things loudly. But no more "free
speech" sounds alarming.

------
calf
Silence is politics.

------
microcolonel
Excellent policy, but they could stand to realize how political their offices
have already become. Maybe the culture of the company blinds them to this, but
GitLab's overtly involved in politics.

~~~
detaro
gitlab has offices?

~~~
microcolonel
The point stands, I'm aware that they're relatively decentralized, but I
struggle to find that many ways to say "in the course of conducting their
business" that are succinct while not inviting nitpicks like this.

Also, yes, GitLab has offices, to some minimal extent.

~~~
detaro
Was actually a legit question (since "we don't have offices" has been big in
their marketing), but I should have made that clearer.

------
gerardnll
"Efficiency is one of our values and vetting customers is time consuming and
potentially distracting."

Always thinking about efficiency and performance, even to justify a decision
for vetting a costumer that may be evil. Money.

------
4ntonius8lock
I just gained a lot of respect for Git.

We really need more companies to take a stance against all this moral
posturing.

It's like at some point people forgot that publishers should not take sides,
and only remove things that are illegal.

Burning books has a long, dark history. Even if those non-criminal books are
truly nasty. At one time books portraying miscegenation were the nasty ones.
One generations nasty books are the next generations accepted ones. Internet
media is no different.

------
rolltiide
I agree with that statement. California's collective conscious has been such a
mess after the democrat loss. Everyone my colleague's vilified who knew how to
play the game was temporarily promoted to powerful positions. Thinking Peter
Thiel specifically.

Administrations globally change all the time.

When I enter a new market I'm just excited to be there and figure it out, I
don't stop and say "waaait a minute, did extremists just come into power
here?" I think, looks like there's some opening in high level positions.

But if you do ask yourself that and prefer to do something about it, don't
bring it into the workplace.

------
president
It's companies like GitLab that are propping up Saudi and Chinese empires.
Hope one day they get their Scrooge moment. Anyhow, most companies probably do
this by default and quietly but what is interesting about Gitlab is they felt
like they needed to announce publicly that they'll support all customers
regardless of their morality.

