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Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

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Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#152
post #104

I'm in Texas. A LOT of Californians disagree with some of the laws that Texas has passed. How long will it be until my hard drive gets reformatted by some protestor in San Francisco who localizes my IP address?

You pretty much summarise what is wrong with the title. It is not "Protestware" that harms open source. It is politics and ideology harms open source. And the rate things are going may be Open Source will not only be split between permissive and copyleft, but progressive and libreRight. Edit: Now I remember Douglas Crockford's "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." license. I wonder if there are still any o…

> It is politics and ideology harms open source.

The movement towards free and open source software was created in no small part do to activists with a very strong ideology. Open source would not exist to the same extent without the ideology espoused by the FSF. The problem is that abandoning a key tenant of the free software movement, neutrality towards different uses (part of freedom 0 of the free software definition), does far more harm than good and contravenes FLOSS ideology.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use software to build stuff, not to subscribe to a set of political ideologies.

A small, extremely loud, and extremely sanctimonious part of the population will not accept that. They will consider your lack of political motivation for your work distasteful and eventually immoral. You'll be asked to support movements, participate in ritual, and publicly proclaim your allegiance. Eventually, they'll demand it. “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the…

not every politics-adjacent thread needs to devolve into "the wokes are coming for us all". You can disagree with the actions of progressives without making it this all-encompassing threat. Hell, I'm pretty left-wing and I'm fairly critical of some of the factions.

Either way, I can't see anybody putting "must add a BLM banner to their website" to the licensing conditions of their FOSS code.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#154
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source is driven by many opioniated and idealistic people who also worry about the current geopolitical development. They might make their opinions known in a non-destructive manner. You might not like it, fair enough, but expressing one's opinion in commit messages is neither childish nor an instrumentalisation by any government.

> expressing one's opinion in commit messages is neither childish nor an instrumentalisation by any government. It's childish because it's incredibly naive to think that commit messages are going to change anyone's mind. Instead they will look like someone preaching for no reason. Next, how about doing an online petition as well? /s

[deleted]

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#155
post #34

Do people think the people protesting like this don't know that this is damaging? They presumably feel that the issue at hand is more important than that damage. Every protest every has been met with "but this protest is being done the wrong way, don't inconvenience me", but that's the point: protest has to disrupt things to make people take notice and make changes. Would I do this? No. I don't think it's effective o…

But what is the limiting principle? Once you allow yourself to cause disruption and hurt people, when is it too far?

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#156
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

"I'm not a biologist." It's an answer good enough for the Supreme Court of the United States, but I'll bet it wont be good enough for Wokeware.

No post body was provided.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#157
post #4

I just don't understand what the node-ipc dev was expecting when he did that. "Hm, maybe if I put malware into a community-trusted module that destroys files of people in a certain geopolitical region, the countless innocent citizens that are affected will realize what they did wrong! Wait, who am I actually targeting again?"

Probably hoped the effects would negatively effect people there so they could put pressure to stop the murder of other innocent civilians. Arguments like this are similar to the BLM protest that try to equate property with human lives.

It's not acceptable to burn down someone's house because you disagree with them. Even if you disagree with them a lot. Please don't burn people's houses down.

If you burn down people's houses, you will be arrested and go to jail.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#158
I'm probably going to start sounding like a broken record here, but what I have realized is I am living here as a man. I am not a citizen, or another entity, and my morality is is between my myself, and my "creator". This creator could be God, could be nature/natural selection, just whatever process brought the "I am" here.

I am also aware that with this knowledge I chose to not harm any other living entities. The "problem" is that people calling themselves "agents of governments" go around asking other people initiate violence on other people, using words such as "laws" and "orders", and these other people, believing that "the government" i a real entity, and that these "laws" somehow overwrite our natural sense of morality and free will decided to act and initiate violence.

In this current conflict, people who call themselves the government on both "sides" are instructing people to go initiate violence, and people thinking the authority is real do so, and go murder other people.

We, as people who are mostly "uninvolved", acting in the role of "citizens", are seeing this evil occur, and want it to stop. However, we are still supporting this idea that government is real, that "Russia" is doing something to "Ukraine", when there is no "Ukraine", or "Russia" or "United States", but simply people who act as if these entities exist. We give power to these egregores, or intersubjective entities, and by doing so believe we are somehow absolved from making our own moral decisions.

All of this stops when each and every one of us (or at least a big enough percentage) takes individual moral responsibility for our actions, and learns to be moral for its own sake.

A big part of this that a lot of people I've talked to seem to be missing is the role of "money", and how people with free will thinking that pieces of paper, or numbers on a computer have power or value. The only value that exists is us as conscious entities. Every aspect of reality, from this computer I am typing this response on, to buildings, art, and technology is the output of consciousness acting on matter on its own free will.

When we believe that having money in our possession gives us power and freedom, it gives us a false sense of security. If I have some sum of money, I believe I can use this money to influence reality by giving it to other conscious entities. For now this is somewhat true, because you, and other entities agree to do thing in exchange for these imaginary numbers. However, what is true is that each and every one of us acts on our own free will, and we use money because we are too afraid to admit we are dependent on each other. As we continue believing this, we allow other people who know how to manipulate the numbers in clever ways, such as those people controlling central banks, and printing money to exert large influence on the direction of the world. During the last two years, a very large number of money was printed, and used to reshape reality. The value of every dollar decreased, as suddenly the equation was out of balance, but again, those in control of the money supply use this new money, and we, believing it represents value change our behavior trying to capture the value, forgetting it is us who are the real value the whole time.

So my message to other people who want to hear it is: you are the value. There are no governments, companies or money. There is only us, and we are the value.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#159
It harms all of technology and by extension anyone who participates in the modern world. Just like any malware or other antisocial behaviour.

It's a bit too indiscriminate to be a good protest, unless the thing you want to tear down IS the whole modern development process, which is based on the idea that most people are somewhat trustworthy and you can get the risk down to an acceptable level through the usual means.

It doesn't quite work if malware is not only a threat, but a semi-mainstream thing sometimes made by people you would think you could trust. The normal social process of trust breaks down if malware is included in the scope of normal things people sometimes do, as opposed to purely being something by the more criminal types.

I almost wonder if these people don't actively want to tear down tech itself, or not care, given how many coders dislike the fact that society is tech dependant.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small, extremely loud, and extremely sanctimonious part of the population will not accept that. They will consider your lack of political motivation for your work distasteful and eventually immoral. You'll be asked to support movements, participate in ritual, and publicly proclaim your allegiance. Eventually, they'll demand it. “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the…

not every politics-adjacent thread needs to devolve into "the wokes are coming for us all". You can disagree with the actions of progressives without making it this all-encompassing threat. Hell, I'm pretty left-wing and I'm fairly critical of some of the factions. Either way, I can't see anybody putting "must add a BLM banner to their website" to the licensing conditions of their FOSS code.

That would be a wonderful thing to able be do, if the woke brigade wasn't screaming "YOU'RE WITH US OR YOU'RE AGAINST US" a parent over. ;) Ignoring that isn't an option, unfortunately, believe me, that's been tried.
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