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Lerna relicences to protest ICE

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Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#141

Post by andrew_ »

jsgo wrote: post #108

Remember when people were apprehensive about using React because Facebook might weaponize your usage of it? This project is explicitly stating it can: you might not be on this list today, but there's nothing preventing you from being on it tomorrow. So do you want to commit to integrating it to your stack? While I'm not against their stance at all (at the end of the day, they've gotta do what is going to help them sl…

The author of that change follows the same pattern in nearly every project found on their Github account, and many that they contribute to: MIT licenses with added prohibitions targeting specific groups. Disturbing and toxic to say the least.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#142

Post by freedomben »

mindcrash wrote: post #125
Waterluvian wrote: post #43

I use BlueprintJS a lot. And about a year into use I realised that "Palantir" is apparently a company people don't like. All I could think about is how this might become a nuisance if a colleague or customer decides they're going to be political about it. These moves are frustrating. I just want to make neat stuff. I don't want to get involved in the politics of a country I have no interest in.

Well the sad thing about this is that Palantir is actually doing some very good things with Lerna, Babel and Yarn and they tried to explain that... ...BUT SOME PEOPLE ALREADY MADE UP THEIR MIND AND JUST REFUSE TO LISTEN TO ANY REASON. Do you want to hear what Palantir is ACTUALLY doing using these tools? Here you go: "[...]We appreciate your concerns based on the article you linked to. We would like to clarify that P…

Finally somebody else that had this thought too. Those all sounded to me like really good things to do. Child abuse and human trafficking are heinously evil. If lerna thinks they are lying, they should say that instead of misrepresenting the truth to make a political point.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#143

Post by ConanRus »

mirimir wrote: post #34
mberning wrote: post #5

This is a ridiculous thing to put in a software license and a completely toxic subject in general.

> completely toxic subject I agree about "completely toxic". But it's the policy that's completely toxic, not the subject. I mean, separating babies from their parents? That is just fucking insane.

Well, the Obama administration was doing this for 8 years. No news coverage, no protests, no licenses changes. And now every snowflake is crying 24/7 about that.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#144

Post by ConanRus »

augbog wrote: post #91
jancsika wrote: post #21

This is about as effective as ripping an arm off your shirt and throwing it in the vicinity of an ICE agent. The result of that effort will be a day fielding questions from everyone but ICE about what the heck is wrong with your shirt.

The main goal is less to hurt the companies that are supporting ICE by not allowing them to use an open source project, but actually bring a lot more awareness that these companies DO IN FACT support ICE. I had no idea Palantir was working on the technology to help deport people https://theintercept.com/2017/03/02/palantir-provides-the-en...

And what exactly wrong with supporting ICE?

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#145

Post by kika »

dplgk wrote: post #107
aeorgnoieang wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a legitimate desire in wanting to avoid "politics". It's a more specific instance of avoiding the trap described by 'perfect is the enemy of good'. Here's a good Tumblr post to which I linked earlier today in a similar HN thread: - [The Grey Tribe — Activism, Accessibility, Setting Good...]( https://the-grey-tribe.tumblr.com/post/175038067648/activism... )

All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing (or something), right? So some politics are a pinch or a slap but others are a hammer to the head. What's wrong with taking a stance about, for example, children in cages? This isn't just a protest over whether trickle down works or if taxes are too high/low.

Linkedin doesn't put children in cages, to the best of my knowledge. (I just randomly chose one company from the list). This list is random. There are companies which do business with federal government, some of them with ICE and law enforcement agencies. I'm paying federal income tax in the US and as every other citizen or LPR or even H1B visa holder fund ICE. I'm much more complicit in "putting children in cages" than Linkedin.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#146

Post by onion2k »

kika wrote: post #145
dplgk wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing (or something), right? So some politics are a pinch or a slap but others are a hammer to the head. What's wrong with taking a stance about, for example, children in cages? This isn't just a protest over whether trickle down works or if taxes are too high/low.

Linkedin doesn't put children in cages, to the best of my knowledge. (I just randomly chose one company from the list). This list is random. There are companies which do business with federal government, some of them with ICE and law enforcement agencies. I'm paying federal income tax in the US and as every other citizen or LPR or even H1B visa holder fund ICE. I'm much more complicit in "putting children in cages" t…

Complying with the law by paying taxes is less wrong than making a conscious choice to work for a company that provides services to ICE. You've been 'coerced' in to paying for ICE. LinkedIn haven't been coerced in to working with them.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#147

Post by sebazzz »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #27
TD-Linux wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MIT license has no restriction on applying additional restrictions, without the permission of the contributors. For example, MIT licensed software can be used in proprietary software.

It's not a MIT issue, it's a copyright issue. They're distributing the original contributions under the new license without honouring the terms of the original license. The software isn't now MIT+additional terms, it's MIT and MIT+additional terms. Meaning they need to continue to honour the MIT license for all exisiting contributions, just the same way as we need to when we use MIT licensed software. Namely, printin…

If Lerna has a contributor license agreement, then it isn't a problem. A CLA usually has a clause that you give up your copyright.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#148

Post by jancsika »

jancsika wrote: post #140
jsgo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

part that gives me pause, even though I'm 100% okay with being against the current policy of separation: what next? Totally silly, but what if it comes out that some food company is engaging in behavior that is deemed immoral. Lerna then tacks that onto the next revision of itself. But I, myself, really like food company's product and don't feel the controversy is warranted. Then what? I understand the motivation wit…

My point is that the license is the absolute worst place to put anything -- including a protest-- because licensing issues are way outside the expertise of most programmers. For example, if they put the same information in a comment in the code, then whatever flame war might ensue would at least be fully on the social implications of it. Nobody will worry about the comment accidentally getting interpreted improperly…

And now apparently the license has been reverted to MIT:

https://github.com/lerna/lerna/pull/1633

Someone had very decent aims-- protesting ICE-- and executed it in the wrong scope-- a license change.

If you read the comments on that issue you'll see at least one person takes that as a good lesson for avoiding the very decent aims in open source projects.

That is unfortunate, and IMO a good reason to avoid mucking around with licenses at all.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#149

Post by vsl »

roblabla wrote: post #9
eindiran wrote: post #2

I'd be very happy if someone could present a counter argument to this: this is something expressly against the spirit of the MIT license and Lerna should not continue claiming that the software is MIT licensed. https://opensource.org/osd In particular, this seems like a pretty explicit violation of the "no discrimination against field of endeavor" clause. Here is the text of the MIT license: " Permission is hereby gr…

It's still the MIT license for other people though. Licenses are a contract between a licensor and and a licensee. OSS requires the Licensor to provides the license in a non-discriminating way, and some licenses, like the GPL, explicitly enforce this. But the MIT license itself has no such provision. You could license a project with MIT to user A, and not to user B. This is all just rule-bending though. I'm very conf…

"MIT license for other people" is not the MIT license. It's no longer Open Source.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#150

Post by vsl »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #27
TD-Linux wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MIT license has no restriction on applying additional restrictions, without the permission of the contributors. For example, MIT licensed software can be used in proprietary software.

It's not a MIT issue, it's a copyright issue. They're distributing the original contributions under the new license without honouring the terms of the original license. The software isn't now MIT+additional terms, it's MIT and MIT+additional terms. Meaning they need to continue to honour the MIT license for all exisiting contributions, just the same way as we need to when we use MIT licensed software. Namely, printin…

No. They are (well, briefly were) distributing it under new terms, which meet all their obligations under the plain MIT terms. You fundamentally misunderstand how licensing of copyrighted work works. Read the text of the MIT license and observe how the new terms don't contradict them. This is specifically the purpose of the MIT license - to allow incorporation into more restrictively licensed works.

They don't own copyright to the code, its respective authors do, but they have a license to it (MIT) and are free to distribute and use the code as long as they meet the requirements the license puts on them. Which they do.

That this whole shitstorm was monumentally stupid go-proprietary-in-a-fit-of-zeal is another thing.

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