A few days ago, an email "Application for Aid to Ukraine" appeared on the PHP community email discussion list. The email was initiated by non-PHP developers and was intended to call on the PHP community to quickly participate in the Russia-Ukraine conflict...
Interestingly, non-PHP contributors were very positive about this idea:
There was even a "Ukrainian crowd" who proposed a compromise The method in: Change PHP's LOGO to Ukrainian colors (??)
But real PHP contributors think this suggestion is very dangerous, and PHP as a far-reaching influence Open source projects should adhere to their neutral stance and not participate in any form of siding.
Both sides had a heated discussion in subsequent emails. Let me summarize some of the arguments of PHP community contributors:
Paul Dragoonis: Please let the open source community maintain technology and neutrality
PHP, like many other OSS projects, has many contributors from countries on both sides of the war.
Please let an OSS project focus on the technology being built, completely free of the influence of politics. For many people, OSS is a safe haven, an outlet to relieve stress, a place without outside problems
PHP internals The forum is a place to discuss technology. If you want to participate in the Russia-Ukraine team, you can go to other platforms, such as Twitter, FB, and LinkedIn. Can you go to these platforms for dialogue, discussion, and moral debate on the Russia-Ukraine situation? ?
George P. Banyard makes two very important arguments:
PHP is not owned by anyone, no one can make statements on behalf of PHP, and PHP decides everything The only way was to propose it through the RFC process, but obviously, no one wanted to do that.
In addition, in this Russo-Ukrainian war, other programming language communities did not speak out, such as C, C#, Python, Go...
Why should the PHP community participate?
Some people also quoted the negative teaching materials about React’s Issue being flushed after joining the team:
Look at what happened to React’s issue tracker: https ://github .com/facebook/react/issues
Once any siding happens on the PHP project, it will attract a lot of criticism and undermine the work of maintainers and contributors.
In short, this proposal has not been affirmed by PHP contributors. PHPer’s position is simple: As a programming language with many contributors and huge influence, PHP should not participate in any country or world event.
Today PHP took part in taking sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Will it speak out for LGBT tomorrow? Political correctness should not penetrate every corner of the world, and every OSS community should maintain absolute neutrality.