I think the broader issue that Roberto is referring to is that Google is an 
unethical company for the reasons Roberto mentions, and for all the reasons 
that are agreed upon by privacy advocates today. I personally believe these are 
legitimate reasons to sever ties with Google. The pertinent question, from this 
perspective, is rather whether it is practical/feasible for Debian to find an 
alternative to the services Google provides, and whether Debian can survive 
without Google sponsorship.

I also don't think severing ties with Google the company has any bearing on 
whether individual contributors to Debian who are employed by Google and 
contributing to Debian under Google's capacity should be 
banned/shunned/whatever. I think Google employees should be allowed to make 
contributions to improve Debian. I think this in itself is categorically 
different from large-scale big corporate sponsorship (e.g., DebConf) or 
large-scale infrastructure dependency on unethical Big Tech companies (e.g., 
GCP).

Reply via email to