One of the things you hear regularly when issues of a non-technical nature raise their heads are pleas to ignore the politics and focus on the technical issues. These are well-meaning but ultimately misguided. The point of murray’s post was that there are social issues that are having a detrimental effect on the project. You may disagree with the actual content of the post, but then the proper response is to disagree, not to implore people to ignore political or social issues altogether. If we insist on sticking our heads in the sand and ignoring social issues just because we “don’t like politics”, then we will get what we deserve as a project.

Update: It appears that in the time it took me to write this post, several others have expressed this sentiment more eloquently than I could have.