@Arrrrrrrrr: > I think a significant portion of nim users found Nim through Rust. Not sure > why, but there used to be some sort of competition between the two (or at > least Nim was more known in the Rust community).
That, if true, is very interesting. I would've thought that Nim's closest competitor would be [D](http://forum.dlang.org/thread/mailman.1427.1428691340.3111.digitalmar...@puremagic.com): both are GC by default, both a lot less verbose than Rust, both created by individuals without big .com / .org / .edu sponsorship, nearly tied on most benchmarks (and now even in my package ecosystem license freedom rankings), etc. * * * @dom96 > that is a nice essay. I don't think that ad-hoc rant deserves being called an essay. Your polite tolerance of my rants (especially given that I've never contributed any code) is a great testament to the openness and geniality of the Nim community. > Thank you for taking the time to write it up. To be perfectly honest, GitHub's ten-alarm "Net Neutrality" banners (appearing for weeks on top of every project, file, issue, wiki article, etc) has been a huge blow to me psychologically. Internet freedom is sacred to me, and having calls for slavery injected down my throat in the name of freedom was just too much... And perhaps the worst part is when people don't even see that they did anything divisive or controversial... I've resisted bringing up this issue as a separate thread, but I guess I've jumped on too eagerly when I thought that @KevinGolding brought up the issue of left-wing political bias first. I now feel morally obligated to disassociate myself from GitHub - which is near darn impossible. A huge and growing fraction of the free software ecosystem is married to GitHub, _including Nim and the vast majority of its modules and tooling..._ > Sadly I cannot agree with some of your points, in particular regarding net > neutrality. I've not made any detailed arguments against "Net Neutrality" in my previous post. I've just said that it was a recent and particularly egregious "example of left-wing political hijacking" of free software communities - and one that _most directly involves Nim._ It would have been great if GitHub used such a banner to raise funds for hurricane victims, for example, but what they did was very very different - and perhaps some people don't even see this. I'll make more detailed arguments against "Net Neutrality" in this post, but only to illustrate that there are two sides to this issue. I don't expect anybody to ever change their political opinions, but what is most insulting is how **the left no longer even sees anyone who disagrees with them as human**. "Everyone must agree that Net Neutrality == freedom, no two ways about it, and anyone who disagrees is a bot for [soulless flat-earther corporate shills](http://dailysignal.com/2018/01/10/death-threats-fcc-chairman-unprecedented-must-stop/)"... > Many ISPs have a monopoly, especially in the US. So letting them go on to do > whatever they please, unregulated will be a nightmare. All claims of a "natural monopoly" are a conjecture that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, stifling technological innovations that would enable competition, but it is especially ridiculous in regards to the Internet. The Internet is a network, not a "monopoly". There are two different visions of Internet freedom: * A socialist vision of Internet freedom, based on faith that Mommy Government will make the Internet free. It pours opium on the government-created toothache of cable "monopolies", dulling the pain and enabling the illness to continue. The price of this opium is that everyone must trust the government to always put [its own interests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccolò_Machiavelli) aside. All governments everywhere are magically benevolent, and they would never censor or discriminate against anyone, ever. * A capitalist vision of Internet freedom, based on free market competition (which is how networks actually work). This vision would have avoided the cable monopolies in the first place, and encouraged a lot more and faster technological innovation with wireless (cellular, satellite, municipal wifi, drone wifi, mesh networking, etc) and locally owned (["last mile"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile), neighborhood cache, IPFS, etc) connectivity technologies. You have a choice between dozens of ISPs, and you can connect to several at the same time, adding or dropping subscriptions as you see fit (ex. based on connection speed). Ideally you also use independent VPN(s), so your ISP(s) can't even tell what you do online much less discriminate. Maybe most people prefer the former, but people who prefer the latter should still be treated with respect. I just hope that you understand that what GitHub did has crossed a serious line. As far as I'm concerned it was an act of war, in the propaganda sense of the term. * * * @Jehan > May I suggest that it's probably healthier to leave the politics out of this? It would be very nice if free software could be apolitical, but (as I've explained above) it is not. You can't have one side of the issue (ex. Stallman, GitHub, etc) shouting political propaganda with a megaphone, but as soon as someone disagrees - "OMFG, he brought up politics!? What a vulgar uncivilized brute!!! Fetch my smelling salts, O goodness, I think I shall faint!"
