IIRC, they nuked 4chan's C Plus Equality repo [0]. The project moved to Bitbucket later, which then again got removed. However, you can still find some copies of it on Github [1]
“You agree that you will not under any circumstances upload, post, host, or transmit any content that:
is unlawful or promotes unlawful activities;
is or contains sexually obscene content;
is libelous, defamatory, or fraudulent;
is discriminatory or abusive toward any individual or group;
...”
The same meaning exists in English as well, as a verb. Commonly found in aviation.
The alternative meaning of "mentally-disabled person" is derived from this meaning, as their brain is "slow" / "delayed". That repo was absolutely using it in this latter sense - "WebM for retards".
Funnily enough, it was introduced as a euphemism to "idiot" or "cretin", primarily in a medical context, because those other words were considered too unsavoury.
Now, I daresay "retard" is considered worse than "idiot".
One instance in which it's still used is for retarders, a form of brake often used on trucks and trains. Some forms, such as the jake brake, are very loud so you'll occasionally see towns put up signs that say "no jake brakes" or "no brake retarders" (because 'jake brake' is a generalized trademark.) As you might expect, these later signs can turn into a source of amusement...
I think the term "fire retardant" is also fairly common in some circumstances as well, though I'll admit to not being terribly familiar with brake retarders.
"> From a business standpoint, too, if I were Github I probably wouldn’t want things like “C++ Equality” to be associated with my company’s name."
There is a major logical flaw here. When you provide a service without discrimination except so much as required by law, you are in no way connected to the usage of your product. You facilitate the usage as a business - end of story. It's only when you begin to selectively censor or target projects for subjective reasons of your choosing, that you end up tying yourself to the content of consumers. Because of your own actions, you now implicitly advocate or support everything which you don't discriminate against.
Imagine for instance a pizza delivery company started to discriminate against who they delivered to. This would be perfectly legal, so long as the discrimination was not based on the handful of protected classes. And so they generally decided to stop delivering to people they considered subjectively bad. Well now they have a huge problem - because anytime they delivered to somebody, who somebody else though was bad, it'd be an implicit endorsement of them.
This is why entering into the discrimination game to begin with is a fool's errand, even if you think things such as censorship are desirable. Keep in mind we're still in the baby steps of the internet and 'access theory'. For thousands of years we thought it was a good idea for reading and writing to be reserved exclusively for the elite of society - clergy and a handful of aristocracy. YouTube, by contrast, did not even exist a mere 15 years ago. I imagine the future will look back on the times of today with some degree of bemusement. Frankly it's quite hard to not be bemused while living through this mess!
You don't have a god-given right to take advantage of a company's brand or audience to make your view more visible than it would be if you published it anywhere else.
Unlike, say, the phone network, it doesn't actually cost you anything more to throw up a git repository on any number of free-speech-supporting websites, including many that offer substantially the same features as GitHub. You can still reach the same people without dragging your own cable half way across the planet - you just don't get to steal someone else's reputation in order to make it easier to do so.
The other side of things is that many websites actually want (algorithmic) editorial control over what their users wind up seeing because that's more profitable for them, and if they want that, they're definitely in a position where choosing to promote content is a direct reflection on the company even by your standards. GitHub is, as far as I'm aware, not one of these companies though.
- McDonalds food is unhealthy, we shouldn't eat it.
- You don't have a god-given right to take advantage of a company's food to make you more healthy[...]
This is basically the argument you're making. I agree with the premise: We don't have a right to take advantage of a company or forcing them to host anything, but we can also evaluate their quality and their level of professionalism, and choose one company or the other based on that. This thread is just pointing out that GitHub is not trustworthy and they lack professionalism when it comes to deciding what can be accepted or not in their platform.
Sure - I'll choose GitHub based on this and other well-publicised "incidents". I don't see any evidence of a lack of professionalism - in fact, I see a company attempting to follow at least some definition of an ethical code, whether that is as a result of internal or external pressure.
If following an ethical code is banning projects that don't align with your political ideology, then I don't want to associate with companies that "follow an ethical code".
Not to excuse Github but now it's Microsoft. I've never used Microsoft properties that included a public presence like Github before, what is their history like in these cases?
Github has an infamous history with imposing their feelings on projects they don't like.