I... Think this ruling is good, even if you disagree with the Commons clause? I'm not sure I'm thrilled with limiting the speech of developers by saying they cannot ever place any restrictions whatsoever on how their code is used.
In fact, modifying and updating licenses falls under what I'd consider free speech. The answer to bad license edits is not to shut them down, it's just to write better ones and convince others to use them.
I may not agree with bad license edits, but I'll defend them under the right to the free speech of the developer who is shipping the code.
Right? We already do this with names. "Please don't call me Bill, I prefer William". Ok, I'll call that person William. It'd be an asshole move to deliberately call them Bill.
Using someone's correct pronouns is the same. If they say, "use x not y" it's an asshole move to deliberately not use x.
One, you can't keep politics out of code. Code, like sports, like games, like movies, etc. is inherently political. Who has access to software? Who doesn't? Who is in the training set? Who isn't? Who gets the education necessary to write code? Who doesn't?
But I agree, you should target these improvements to open source tools you use, care about, or are a contributor to. It's ok to have a bot assist in writing the PR, but you should deploy it narrowly.
Right? "College student tries to help out, program has bugs, HN loses their goddamn minds" lol
Edit: the replies to this comment are emblematic of HN losing their goddamn minds. Hey, y'all, sometimes humans are humans. Sometimes college kids have big ideas and don't nail it. Have a little empathy, have a chuckle, and move on.
Looks like a student, trying to improve things and making some mistakes that are very much to be expected for a student project. Kudos for the effort, and I think they probably learned a good lesson in test data generation.
One "debate me" is pretty cringe, but two, I don't think you'd find anyone who thinks those are serious suggestions.
It's either a bug or someone trolling. I push hard for gender neutral language, but not whatever this change is proposing. Helps is not a gendered term, and should remain helps.