Live data from Hacker News

Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

opensource.org

231–240 of 575 posts

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#231
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that they got caught up in the socially accepted "hate fest" against citizens of a certain country, particularly by private companies.

If a company does business in Russia right now, they are giving money to the Russian government which will be used to kill Ukrainians. Let's not conflate wartime trade policy with Twitter wokeness marketing.

What about countries buying oil and gas from them?

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#232
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not taking sides is just not taking sides. There's no need to turn such a position into a shortcut to something else. It's as stupid as the kids saying "if you are not with us you are against us". Typical populist bullshit.

How hard is it to just say "I think Russia is wrong for invading Ukraine and killing people"? That's all you have to do. Just write it. If you can't do that, but still want to engage in the discussion on the topic, your standpoint is clear. You're not some holier person not taking a stand. You have taken one, you just don't dare to spell it out.

I can still say that Russia is wrong for invading Ukraine and say that the protestware we're talking about in the thread is wrong too (a different, lesser wrong, though)

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#233
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.

I have a legal (and moral) right to defend my property, often with deadly force. My property came into my possession by my own labors and time, i.e. by sacrificing part of my life to obtain it. Even if the property was gifted to me, that means that someone else sacrificed part of their life to give it to me. When someone violates my rights in the process of "protesting" something, I am legally and morally justified in using force to protect my rights. This includes the right to the property that I own.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#234

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?

No post body was provided.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#235
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not taking sides is just not taking sides. There's no need to turn such a position into a shortcut to something else. It's as stupid as the kids saying "if you are not with us you are against us". Typical populist bullshit.

Are there limits to this, or do you think ”not taking sides” is a morally defensible position to have regarding everything? Is it ethical to be neutral when it comes to the holocaust?

I think it's OK to refrain from taking sides about anything that we don't have firsthand knowledge about. There's no shortage of political and moral busybodies in the world, especially now that we have the Internet. I'm sure I've been one at times. So I think it's not so bad if we start going in the other direction, just minding our own business and sticking to things we can actually do something about. I should get back to that.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#236
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…

Digital arsonists who do it for the attention

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#237
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?"

I’m ok with it as long as the maintainer is consistent and does it for “the current thing” every time. That means Sudan, Darfur, Iraq war, ISIS, Assad’s regime, etc… Heck why not even Florida after the “say gay” thing?

Sounds like an opportunity to create a Protest Current Thing as a Service.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#238
post #197

But on the other hand, these people are not promising anything, do they? Check the MIT/BSD/GPL etc, all of them explicitly state that the software does _not_ come with any kind of guarantee. Harsh reality is: It's user's responsibility to test for those. Noone is forcing you to use this piece of code which is given as-is without any guarantees. Noone is forcing you to update. It might be a dependency, but still it's…

I think what you're missing is that this discussion is not about the legal consequences of these individuals, but about ethical decisions that will have a negative impact on the ecosystem as a whole.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#239
post #231
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company does business in Russia right now, they are giving money to the Russian government which will be used to kill Ukrainians. Let's not conflate wartime trade policy with Twitter wokeness marketing.

What about countries buying oil and gas from them?

Yes, that is bad too. However, in some cases it is necessary to prevent people from freezing, so there is a balancing act. Note that fossil fuel dependency just became a much more common political discussion item in Europe.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't do that, but still want to engage in the discussion on the topic, your standpoint is clear. That's not the topic at hand. The topic is, you don't need to pollute every thing you work on out there with your preachy opinions on every single topic, especially when you are whole-fully ignorant about what's actually happening, the in-and-outs of the conflict, because you are in a state of constant propagand…

You can't blame people for doing whatever they can when they are literally being bombed. Same with BLM mentioned in another subthread, it's easy to don't care when the issues don't affect you, but for other's it's their daily life. Of course it colors what people do. People who claim there were no politics before, were just oblivious to others' struggle. Which is ok, but it still happened, you were just sheltered or…

> You can't blame people for doing whatever they can when they are literally being bombed.

Are the authors of the change in question actually in Ukraine? And I'm pretty sure that technical minded people there could find better uses for their talents, rather than petty vandalism

Post reply on HN