Relevance of Russia/Ukraine conflict with Syncthing

Hello there,

I do not wish to debate about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine here, but I would just like to point out that the Syncthing foundation took a political action in the conflict that might or might not be shared by everyone in the Syncthing community.

For me, the Syncthing foundation is there to help fund the Syncthing software and nothing else. Although the money donated to Ukraine is probably employed for the greater good, I think that some people that might have donated to Syncthing might think that their money was not correctly employed for the objective they thought they donated for.

I believe in the future that Syncthing should take grater care in things like this or it might shy away some people that would otherwise gladly donate. For instance, I’m considering a business that might use Syncthing in some aspects (nothing done yet, just thinking) and I would have considered it natural to include a donation in the end-user price, but now I will consider to make this optional instead.

Again, the contribution that the Syncthing foundation is making is probably helping people in need and that’s a good thing, but at least, here in France, pro-Ukraine guys and pro-Russia guys tend to be very politically diverging and taking a stance here is like making a political statement that some people will strongly disagree with.

PS: I’m not responding to the original topic, I believe it has been locked, but I just wanted to share this without entering in a debate about the conflict itself.

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Indeed, this is obvious. We are humans with opinions and feelings, and in matters where we feel it’s important we will air them. It’s up to anyone else to agree or disagree.

Being “neutral” on this issue is in fact also taking a side; in my opinion, the wrong one.

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And if you don’t agree and feel like your donation has been used wrongly (generic you, because I suspect you in particular here never have donated), you are very welcome to not donate anymore.

And a small tidbit: The Syncthing Foundation doing “good stuff” means we receive regular bigoted bullshit messages. It’s actually a nice reminder we should keep doing “good stuff” regularly :slight_smile:

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While I agree with the message, and appreciate the fact that the foundation makes donations, I do find the banner on every Syncthing-related website a bit annoying.

I’d prefer it if the banner was only shown for a limited time (similar to the wikipedia donations banner) or if instead of the big textual banner there was a little badge somewhere, eg. a blue-yellow heart on the top right of the page that links to a message of support and lists charities that users can donate to.

But I understand it’s not my decision to make, and I will continue to recommend and support Syncthing regardless of how you decide to handle this.

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This is not about politics. It’s about war crimes and the brutal murder of civilians. How arrogant do you have to be not to recognize this and get upset about a short one-line banner calling for support for the victims.

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This is not an argument: don’t worry about what others think. I guess you are shameful to you for not being able to confess your own opinion.

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Before Ukraine, I believe the foundation was advocating for and supporting anti-racist organizations. I assume after Ukraine there will be a new focus (at some undetermined future time). You are free to make whatever product decisions you like, but we live here in reality where people decide to put their politics on their shirt.

There is a business ethos which says to avoid this “statement of politics in public” but it is not how everyone does business. If you read the forums here with any regularity you will note it is quite common for ST devs to say No to various things if it does not align with the values. If one has values, one must be willing to forgo money to preserve them. That is also the case here I think.

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After reading these arguments, I felt compelled to finally go to the Syncthing donate page and make a small contribution.

Thank you to the Syncthing team for taking a moral and ethical stand and for lovingly crafting software that has become essential to our own nonprofit organization. I for one am glad that however small it might be, a piece of this funding might ultimately benefit people in need.

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