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.
Even in the very narrow sense you mean this isn't remotely true. Maybe take some trips back to old Usenet content?
But mordocai is absolutely right. "identity politics" is the foundation of free and open-source software.
While I don't agree with ESR on everything, I'd say he's a better source about this than mordocai: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6642
Who on earth said open source was based on feminism (whatever that could mean)? Please reread my above comment.
Meanwhile it never hurts to reexamine that age old assumption that every generation's fight is a novel one. The hacker ethic is fundamentally a set of political beliefs and if you really believe that those SJW boogeymen are the first to try to exclude people based on not aligning with some holy set of political opinions, then, again, you're missing out on the entire history of the FOSS movement. You don't even have to go far; ESR has some great writings on that very topic :)
It wasn't until 2010 that it seemed to really take off in the media so I'll personally excuse the "5 years". If you try to find feminist articles or gender politics articles circa 2004-2006 it can be pretty difficult, but if you try to find them from 2008-2010 they become plentiful and easy to find.
I find it intellectually dishonest to stretch "identity politics" to be about "Free vs Proprietary" in the context it was used in, because context will always matter more than a strict dictionary definition.
The nitpicking over terminology (and analogies) is an extremely annoying tactic. So I'll cite Layne's Law [0]. While in the actual "dictionary definition" of identity politics, he is factually wrong. You do indeed have to have a very narrow scope of identity politics (gender, most specifically) to become accurate. In modern usage, in regards to SJW/feminism, "identity politics" is almost exclusively about "gender politics".
No, you cannot narrow a definition to be about your pet cause and then declare anyone discussing the (fairly transparent) larger context to be nitpicking. The "modern usage" you're talking about is limited by self selection and is not, in fact, modern usage so much as jargon with a specific meaning to a particular subculture (or subcultures). Meanwhile the term continues to have a well defined meaning with an extensive and well documented history.
> The whole internet SJW brigade seemed to get its footing in 2008, which would make it about 7 years ago. Before that it existed in niche groups nobody ever heard of or dealt with and was far from being mainstream.
> It wasn't until 2010 that it seemed to really take off in the media so I'll personally excuse the "5 years". If you try to find feminist articles or gender politics articles circa 2004-2006 it can be pretty difficult, but if you try to find them from 2008-2010 they become plentiful and easy to find.
I have no idea how to respond to this except to suggest you may just not be very good at finding sources before 2008?
