Leaving github

(Brief reminder that this represents my own personal opinion, not necessarily that of any employer or larger open source project.)

I am planning to move my personal git repositories (including mangos, tcell, govisor, less-fork, etc.)  from GitHub to GitLab.com. 

The reasons for this are fairly simple.  They have nothing to do whatsoever with technology.  I love the GitHub platform, and have been a happy user of it for years now. I would dearly love it if I could proceed with GitHub.  Fortunately GitLab seems to have feature parity with GitHub (and a growing user and project base), so I'm not trapped.

The reason for leaving GitHub is because of the hostility of it's leadership towards certain classes of people makes me feel that I cannot in good conscience continue to support them. In particular, their HR department is engaging in what is nothing less than race warfare against white people.  (Especially men, but even white women are being discriminated against.) By the way, I'd take the same position if the hostility were instead towards any other racial or gender group other than my own.

I'm not alone in asking GitHub to fix this; yet they've remained silent on the matter, leading me to believe that the problematic policies have support within the highest levels of the company.  (Github itself is in trouble, and I have doubts about its future, as both developers and employees are leaving in droves.)

Post Tom Preston-Werner, GitHub's leadership apparently sees the company as a platform for prosecuting the Social Justice War, and it even has a Social Impact Team just to that effect. In GitHub's own words:

"The Social Impact team will be focused on these three areas: - Diversity & Inclusion - both internally and within the Open Source Community - Community Engagement - we have a net positive impact in local and online communities via partnerships - Leveraging GitHub for Positive Impact - supporting people from varied communities to use GitHub.com in innovative ways"

It's no accident that they list "Diversity & Inclusion" as the first item here either.  Apparently this has been more of a priority for GitHub than improving their platform or addressing long standing customer issues.

Those of you who have followed me know that I’m strongly in favor of inclusion, and making an environment friendly for all people, regardless of race or gender or religion (provided your religion respects my basic rights -- religious fundamentalist nut-jobs need not apply).

Lack of diversity cannot be fixed through exclusion.  Attempts to do so are inherently misguided.  Furthermore, as a company engages in any exclusive hiring practices they are inherently limiting their own access to talent.  Racist or sexist (or ageist) approaches are self-destructive, and companies that engage in such behavior deserve to fail.

The way to fix an un-level playing field is to level the playing field -- not to swing it back in the other direction.  You can't fix social injustice with more injustice; we should guarantee equal opportunity not equal results.

There are plenty of people of diverse ethnic backgrounds who have overcome significant social and economic barriers to achieve success.  And many who have not.  News flash -- you will find white men and women in both lists, as well as blacks, latinos, women, gays, and people of "other gender identification".  Any hiring approach or policy (written or otherwise) that only looks at the color of a person's skin or gender is unfair, and probably illegal outside of a very limited few and specific instances (e.g. casting for movie roles).

 Note that this does not mean that I do not support efforts to reach out to encourage people from other groups to engage more in technology (or any other field).  As I said, I encourage efforts to include everyone -- the larger talent pool that we can engage with, the more successful we are likely to be.  And we should do everything we can as a society and as an industry to make sure that the talent pool is as big as we can make it.

We should neither exclude any future Marie Curie or Daniel Hale Williams from achieving the highest levels of success, nor should we exclude a future Isaac Newton just because of his race or gender.  The best way to avoid that, is to be inclusive of everyone, and make sure that everyone has the best opportunities to achieve success possible.

Sadly I will probably be labeled racist or sexist, or some other -ist, because I'm not supportive of the divisive agendas supported by people like Nicole Sanchez and Danilo Libre, and because I am a heterosexual white middle class male (hence automatically an entitled enemy in their eyes.)  It seems that they would rather have me as an enemy rather than a friendly supporter -- at least that is what their actions demonstrate.  It's certainly easier to apply an -ist label than to engage in rationale dialogue.

I am however deeply supportive of efforts to reach out to underrepresented groups in early stages.  Show more girls, blacks, and latinos filling the role of technophiles in popular culture (movies and shows) that market towards children.  Spend money (wisely!) to improve education in poorer school districts.  Teach kids that they truly can be successful regardless of color or gender, and make sure that they have the tools (including access to technology) to achieve success based on merit, not because of their grouping.  These efforts have to be made at the primary and secondary school levels, where inspiration can have the biggest effects.  (By the way, these lessons apply equally well to white boys; teaching children to respect one another as individuals rather than as labels is a good thing, in all directions.)

By the time someone in is choosing a college or sitting in front of a recruiter, it's far too late (and far too expensive).  The only tools that can be applied at later stages are only punitive in nature, and therefore the only reasonable thing to do at this late stage is to punish unjust behaviors (i.e. zero tolerance towards bigotry, harassment, and so forth.)

I'll have more detail as to the moves of the specific repos over the coming days.

PS:  GitLab does support diversity as well, which is a good thing, but they do it without engaging in the social justice war, or exclusive policies.