[pydotorg-www] Fw: [Archiver-policy] Impact of SOPA?

[Andre Roberge]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Brandon Craig Rhodes <
brandon at rhodesmill.org> wrote:

> Python already has a reputation for being undeployable in an emergency
> because PyPI does not stay up consistency enough.  Please imagine the
> violence this will do to lone, hard-working Python supporters in the
> back server rooms of big organizations, if they have to explain to their
> bosses that the new web app cannot be deployed today; that they cannot
> set up their old virtualenv's on their new laptop's hard drive; and that
> they cannot even read any documentation, because of a protest going on
> against a law over in the United States.
>
> Shutting down the already-unreliable Python web infrastructure yet again
> would not harm the SOPA supporters in the United States Congress.  But
> it would harm our community the world over, and damage our reputation,
> while not doing a whit to prevent SOPA from passing.
>
> Python should strive to be the always-available, always-up, always-to-
> the-rescue language for programmers everywhere.  Our form of protest
> should be to become *more* available, *more* reliable; to reach out with
> resources to programmers in countries that try to block python.org; and
> to remain up until the very last moment, even if open-source one day has
> to go underground.
>
> Shutting down ahead of time would simply be to poke ourselves in our own
> collective eyeball.
>

+1000

This reminds me of a parellel that I saw both as a student and as a prof.
 Students would decide to go on strike to protest some issue.  Who was
penalized by the strike?  Certainly not the school administration, nor the
profs, nor the government: it was the students themselves.   Protests are
not very effective when it is the protesters (or their immediate community
and/or allies) that are inconvenienced.

Adding some sort of information banner about SOPA, it if is easily
feasible, might be a good idea.  But inconveniencing Python users is not,
imo, a good idea at this time.

André Roberge


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