It raises awareness of the issue. Why should any self-respecting developer want to contribute to a code base that does nothing but facilitate the government ignoring peoples' grievances, while at the same time making them feel like they are participating?
You're right. It does nothing except belittle the efforts of the developers. They're trying to make their work more open which should be applauded. Just because the entire administration does not adhere to their stated philosophy, doesn't mean that we (the developer community) should be jumping on those who are at least making an attempt.
The majority of HN readers and GH users would immediately close issues / pull requests like this and be bitter about it. I don't understand why there is a double standard being applied here.
But shouldn't they? They are accessories. They are developing something that has no purpose other than to mislead people. They're writing political malware, if you will. They should be belittled, as it's completely unethical to participate in such a farce.
We should also note that making this software open (which is actually pretty badly designed, actually looking at it) is a similar farce. The objective they claim, for doing so, is somehow related to an open government. That's like claiming open-sourcing the software you use to send electronic messages back and forth is making your actual communications with said software "open." Nonsense.
It's humorous to me how many people attempt to turn anything remotely criticized into a positive by justifying it with effort. Since you escalated into name-calling so fast, I can confidently say that you don't have one hundred times more respect for anyone or anything, you are simply under the false notion that those you support actually try harder.
Com'on guys. Give these guys (the WH dev's who released the code) a break. If the tech community starts throwing mud around, we'll never ever see another project open sourced from the administration again.
Give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe, just maybe, they have good intentions; clone the repo and and say, "Thank you".
Please describe how the programmers on this project can solve or mitigate the problem that some people will post petitions demanding legalization of marijuana (not necessarily a majority opinion in the US) and then be incredibly angry when this does not singlehandedly reverse the administration's policy.
Otherwise it is pretty mindless to attack the programmers for that.
Because: (a) Developers don't make policy decisions ; (b) In enterprise environments it takes a lot of effort to get an open source project approved ; (c) We should be actively encouraging more openness and transparency in government.
So I don't know what your argument is. But I assure you I do have 100x more respect for someone who does SOMETHING in the right direction as opposed to do someone who just whinges.
