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Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

gizmodo.com

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Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#51

Post by adrr »

jgaa wrote: post #45

Governments will always do evil. Not to everyone, all of the time - but they are by nature evil. When I wrote the War FTP Daemon in 1996, as freeware, this became a problem to me. I did want to give away my work for free, but I did not want any government agency to abuse it. So I came up with a solution - a GPL license with an additional clause - that the government - any government - could not use it for any purpose…

Curious how that is enforced as a copyright clause. I grasp how GPL and other copyleft licenses work when copies are distributed but can't see how a usage restriction can be applied unless the party is distributing the software.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#52

Post by briandear »

Weird, employees had nothing to say in 2014 when these images were published:

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/06/18/photos-ob...

Kids were being separated then and being housed in the exact same facilities being used now.

Interestingly, this story “breaks” the exact same week the FBI inspector general’s report was released.

I am not judging the wrongness or rightness of what is and has happened in terms of illegal immigrants, however, a thinking person ought to be very skeptical about how this story catches fire at exactly the same time a significant piece of news happens: the inspector general’s damning report of the FBI. Were Microsoft employees sleeping when reports of these sorts of situations where being reported in 2014? Or was it more acceptable then because it was a different president?

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#53

Post by wyattpeak »

vinhboy wrote: post #22
coliveira wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that one can live outside of politics comes either from naiveté or from tacit support for the existing status quo. The later option is the most common, people just figure that they don't want to put the effort needed to change the system and at the same time want to deny the morality of such decision.

HN is very guilty as of this. The insistence that HN should never discuss politics is morality reprehensible. The people in this community creates many tools and products that could help or hurt a lot of people. As such, we should readily engage in political discussion so that we fully understand the impact we have.

I see this somewhat differently. We discuss politics all the time. We talk about our rights to expression, we talk about the role of legislation in the tech sector (and outside), we discuss domestic and foreign policy of every sort. Five of the top ten articles at the moment are about politics:

- China-based campaign breached satellite, defense companies

- Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

- Lead: America's Real Criminal Element (2013)

- AT&T, Time Warner, and the Need for Neutrality

- GitHub and Medium take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts

We've never not discussed it. But by avoiding discussing party policy directly (which is really what the rule seems to be), we remove many identity issues which keep people from seeing policies objectively.

HN is far from perfect, but that rule makes it a hell of a lot more pleasant and productive than most places for discussing politics.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#54

Post by briandear »

int_19h wrote: post #46
danjayh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This situation in particular is more complicated than the media portrays. Separating children from parents is obviously bad, and needs to stop. Zero tolerance for illegal crossings, on the other hand, is probably actually good. The prior policy of letting anyone with children go & handing them a court date heavily incentivized human trafficking of children, because a child was a golden ticket into the USA (and indeed…

From my experience talking to different people in US, most of them on both sides of the immigration debate have zero clue what their immigration laws are even like. One theme that's particularly common is hearing "they should just get into the line and wait for their turn". They genuinely don't understand that there is no line for the majority of those people - they don't have any legal avenues for immigration at all…

But that isn’t true. Asylum applications can be submitted to a US consulate. There is a process. Syrian refugees didn’t just show up in Laredo. Asylum can also be requested at a legal port of entry. These unlawful entry arrests are from aliens entering the country while avoiding ports of entry.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#55

Post by briandear »

jhanschoo wrote: post #19

It would be nice if the recent instances of employee pressure in Google and Microsoft are early signs of software workers organizing.

Organizing for what? Google employees are well paid, have exceptional benefits — why would they want to potentially destroy all that for collective bargaining? That’s ridiculous.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#56

Post by briandear »

blind_boy_grunt wrote: post #42
oh_sigh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would employees at Google or Microsoft benefit from unionizing?

The same way any other unionized employees do: higher wages, better benefits, collective bargaining, serious representation in the corporate hierarchy, better job security.

And Google employees don’t already that? What better benefits could a Google possibly want? How much higher could their salaries go?

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#57

Post by madaxe_again »

ggg9990 wrote: post #48

I just don't think we're tracking towards a healthy world where your email vendor pulls the plug on your contract because of your activities. I don't think any business should be allowed to deny their offering to any paying customer. Edit: Does that mean I have to sell lumber to the KKK even though they will likely burn a cross with it? Yes, unless they explicitly say they're going to. Leave those policing problems t…

This cuts both ways, and a precedent has already been set, recently, with the wedding cake debacle.

If a business can refuse service due to soneone’s gender or sexual orientation (I.e. it conflicts with the business owner’s sense of morality), why should a business not be able to refuse because they morally object to their client using their product or services to harm human beings?

Honestly, I don’t see the distinction. If one is legal then the other must be.

I take your point that this could end in a situation where all businesses end up being discriminatory in one way or another, but it’s then up to the market to reward or punish businesses for their stance. If you don’t like Microsoft selling Azure to human rights abusers, don’t buy their stock, don’t buy their products. If you don’t like that a bakery didn’t sell a cake to a gay couple, don’t buy their cakes.

Yes, it can be argued that we will end up back with “no blacks no dogs no Irish”, and if we do that’s a damning indictment of the times - but it can also be argued that large corporations have substantial power to influence policy, which they somewhat have a track record of using for Not Good. It would be nice to see it being used for good.

I don’t think it’s asking businesses to be police, rather to act as moral entities rather than purely economic ones. I mean - corporations are people, too (corporate personhood, emergent intelligence), and unless we want an entirely mechanistic and amoral future (think Cloud Atlas and kin), we need to allow businesses to be moral arbiters.

Is it a good idea? I don’t know, but it can it really be worse than selling zyklon b knowingly for genocide as Testa did?

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jun/04/gay-cake-ruling-...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesch_%26_Stabenow

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#58

Post by ThbTs4wbXC9Qjv »

Fire every single one of those Microsoft employees.

People in ICE protect me, mine, and our way of life with their lives every day of the week. I'm not going to flippantly say fuck those people because the politics of the day are making a mockery of a law that was duly imposed and enforced by both parties spanning multiple administrations because it's the fashionable political protest fad of the day.

Protest the leadership, not the in-the-trenches folk, the retail workers, or the on-the-ground law enforcement officers for what the people we elected decided to enact as law. I stand proudly by those who risk their lives for my safety and security against those who break our laws.

I will never support housing children with adults who we don't know 100% are their parents. Anything else would be disgusting, reprehensible, and vile beyond measure.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#59

Post by 6t6t6t6 »

jgaa wrote: post #45

Governments will always do evil. Not to everyone, all of the time - but they are by nature evil. When I wrote the War FTP Daemon in 1996, as freeware, this became a problem to me. I did want to give away my work for free, but I did not want any government agency to abuse it. So I came up with a solution - a GPL license with an additional clause - that the government - any government - could not use it for any purpose…

Any entity with enough power, may use this power to do evil.

It can be a government or a corporation.

Al least, in our democracies, you can decide the government with your vote.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#60

Post by jgaa »

adrr wrote: post #51
jgaa wrote: post #45

Governments will always do evil. Not to everyone, all of the time - but they are by nature evil. When I wrote the War FTP Daemon in 1996, as freeware, this became a problem to me. I did want to give away my work for free, but I did not want any government agency to abuse it. So I came up with a solution - a GPL license with an additional clause - that the government - any government - could not use it for any purpose…

Curious how that is enforced as a copyright clause. I grasp how GPL and other copyleft licenses work when copies are distributed but can't see how a usage restriction can be applied unless the party is distributing the software.

It is very difficult to enforce any clause in any user agreement (or even in law) - as bad people will just ignore them.

My clause was a statement: Don't use my software - I did not make it for you.

The Microsoft employees wish to put restrictions in commercial contracts is interesting - and also scary. There are so many interest groups, and so many agendas, and so many views on whats right and whats wrong - that things could get really messed up.

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