Having someone post things in a public place where they identify as a member of a group can reflect badly on the group. It is in the group's best interest to enforce that people who identify with a group on a certain medium do not say/do things that would not be allowed on official group channels.
This specific instance seems to have been intended to be interpreted differently than it was and did not need to be brought into the spotlight.
No one within the group had a problem though. Coraline Ada came from outside the group and caused the disturbance.
> This specific instance seems to have been intended to be interpreted differently than it was and did not need to be brought into the spotlight.
It's good that this instance is being brought into the spotlight because it shows the dangers of introducing identity politics into open source.
Someone making the group look bad to anyone is bad for the group because it limits the(already pretty small really) potential pool of new contributors.
As far as "showing the dangers of introducing identity politics into open source"... you must not be a part of the same open source movement as myself. Identify politics have always been huge in the open source world. People work on projects, shun projects, ostracize projects, all because of identity politics.
Identity politics has been a large part of open source (and free software before it) since the beginning.
I don't think so, it's pure meddling.
> you must not be a part of the same open source movement as myself.
I must not because it used to be widely acknowledged that no one on the internet cares if you're a dog. Identity politics (specifically aggressive feminism) have made their appearance in the past 5 years.
If a black person tweets something I disagree with, and I let that lower my opinion of blacks as a group, isn't the best response for people to call me out for being an idiot and possible racist rather than to ask the black person to curtail their speech or to remove indications from their twitter account that they are black?
Similar if a woman tweets something I disagree with, or a member of a particular religious group, and so on.
I don't see why it should be different for associations that are formed around an open source project.
You are essentially advocating running open source projects as if they were religions, where converts are expected to uphold the religion's values in all aspects of their life rather than just in church. That makes sense for a religion, since those values are the point of the religion. It makes no sense for an open source software project.
The only problem is, if I associate (within a smallish group) with someone who is an very outspoken idiot, this association might taint my reputation. If I am grouped with this person within a relatively big group (male, female, white, black, human, mammal) this does not happen.
Personally I am trying to find the boundary that makes a group big enough, that these kinds of associations do not happen anymore.
With belief-based groups, it's somewhat reasonable to use one person's beliefs as a predictor of the group's beliefs; if the guy leading your kid's youth group starts spouting racist nonsense, then it may be time to find a new youth group. However, that's not true of project groups outside of the radical left¹, where people often put aside their differences in beliefs to further some other goal. Circumstantial groups are similarly heterogeneous: just because one Redditor is a staunch /r/MensRights follower doesn't mean that another can't find that subreddit abhorrent and instead follow /r/shitredditsays.
I think the reason that making the separation feels difficult for many people is that they find themselves in far more belief-driven groups than purpose-driven groups, and don't notice the circumstantial groups that they're part of.
¹ The American radical left focuses somewhat horrifyingly on ideological purity, to the point that many gay gun enthusiasts find more acceptance in gun clubs than gay rights groups.
