There seems to be a strong belief here that it isn't reasonable to use OSS software written by people with alternative political opinions. That is silly. People who write software have really diverse and frequently deviant political positions that are too variable to audit.
The people who are making choices and citing the one time Eich gave $1,000 to a political cause totally unrelated to his OSS contributions are just misguided (especially since the vote outcome suggests it was a mainstream Californian position). Spend your outrage on something relevant. That attitude is doomed to irrelevance because nobody is ever going to be ideologically pure enough. There'll be people who have already failed the test, people who are going to fail the test in the future and people who nothing is known about their private life.
"This man has opinions that are roughly held by half of California!" is not the criticism to lead with. I imagine a remarkable amount of software would fail this test.
The people who are making choices and citing the one time Eich gave $1,000 to a political cause totally unrelated to his OSS contributions are just misguided (especially since the vote outcome suggests it was a mainstream Californian position). Spend your outrage on something relevant. That attitude is doomed to irrelevance because nobody is ever going to be ideologically pure enough. There'll be people who have already failed the test, people who are going to fail the test in the future and people who nothing is known about their private life.
"This man has opinions that are roughly held by half of California!" is not the criticism to lead with. I imagine a remarkable amount of software would fail this test.