As a rule of thumb, it is a good idea to support smaller and indie companies than mega corporations, IMHO - even if those mega corporations aren't doing anything that is ethically dubious. That is doubtful, as it is likely not possible to become that big without trampling on some toes or bending some rules.

Why support Github when there is st.ht? Why support Starbucks when you can support a mom & pop coffee shop? Why buy books from Amazon when you can buy from a Indie book store? Granted, not everyone has the patience, time and money to vote with wallet, but we can try wherever possible. I hope more people ditch Github

> Why support Github when there is st.ht?

I’m not super opposed, but Drew can be pretty over the top ideological/irritable for my tastes (at least that’s my perception from reading his blog). I’m not sure I want to invest in his platform if he could just boot me over an Internet disagreement or something. Yeah, I can back up my stuff, but at a certain point I may as well self-host.

indrora

I at one point encountered Drew at a meetup.

He basically ignores anyone who has or currently does work at any company he deems unethical (read: Google/Amazon/Facebook/etc). You're forever tainted in his eyes, and your opinions are always only useful if someone else agrees with you that isn't tainted.

Which really sucks because his entire software stack depends on the work (and opinions) of the people that he discards: Go, Python, and Git for a few.

eesmith

But is he right? At what point is it unethical for an ethical person to continue to work for an unethical company? When should people who work for an unethical face personal negative effects?

He's not unique in this viewpoint. Quoting jwz: "As I've said before, if you work for Facebook, you should quit; it's the only morally defensible thing for you to do."

> his entire software stack depends ...

That sounds like the Mr. Gotcha meme: https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ . Again referring to jwz, his nightclub is on Facebook and Instagram because it's not economically viable to avoid them. ... Gotcha!

Similarly, it's hard to avoid all software which doesn't have influence from the big tech companies. I used https://github.com/swenson/sort ('Sorting routine implementations in "template" C"), and even this little indy package has contributors from Google Inc and the main developer worked at Google for a year.

DeVault's working on a new programming language, Hare. You could view that as having the long-term unstated goal of escaping unethical companies.