> Instead of malware, a better approach to free expression would be to use messages in commit logs to send anti-propaganda messages and to issue trackers to share accurate news inside Russia of what is really happening in Ukraine at the hands of the Russian military, to cite two obvious possibilities How about not taking sides instead of acting like a kid believing one side is black and the other white with absolutel…
Not taking a side is agreeing with the oppressor.
Then you better be a well informed person or otherwise you will quickly become the latter.
On one hand, I don't want to be anywhere near protestware when it comes to my work or the tools I use. On the other hand, Javascript developers have a whole different culture than the developer circles I like to frequent. In npm-land, the societal expectations of quality and solemnity (for lack of a better word) are lower, and this kind of behaviour is even celebrated if it favors the "right cause". The last two case…
>Javascript developers have a whole different culture than the developer circles I like to frequent. Most Javascript developers I know are just writing code and that's what they're concerned with. Vocal voices on twitter or etc != most Javascript developers. I'd argue most vocal folks on forums or etc don't represent most developers of any given language.
> I'd argue most vocal folks on forums or etc don't represent most developers of any given language.
Sure, but for some reason, this stuff seems to only happen in the JS community (at least to my knowledge and recollection, which admittedly may be faulty). Maybe it's the fault of the tooling or the language, but python is another popular language which has historically had quite a messy answer to dependency management, and I don't remember ever hearing about an open source python developer throwing a hissy fit and trying to wipe the hard drives of everyone who uses their software.
While I am personally disgusted with what transpired with node-ipc and am also completely gutted and outraged at Russias violent invasion of Ukraine - I don’t like the idea of us trying to “tone police” open source projects. If some idiot maintainer wants to pull a stupid stunt like that they should have the right to do so. In my view it’s the software equivalent of “hate speech” which, while vile, should be protecte…
"Hate speech" (which I don't really agree should be protected in the first place) does not have the capability to cripple infrastructure and destroy personal data. This is an act of property damage and should be prosecuted as such.
Trying to paint this as "tone policing" is completely ridiculous.
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.
I know this will get labeled as whataboutism, so to pre-empt that I am suggesting sanctions and Hague charges for all perpetrators, but what is uniquely bad about killing Ukrainians over Syrians, Libyans, or Iraqis?
>Javascript developers have a whole different culture than the developer circles I like to frequent. Most Javascript developers I know are just writing code and that's what they're concerned with. Vocal voices on twitter or etc != most Javascript developers. I'd argue most vocal folks on forums or etc don't represent most developers of any given language.
Sure, just like most men aren't violent criminals but men are still statistically more likely to be violent criminals. The point is that JS devs seem (perhaps a proper statistical study will show otherwise) more likely per capita to shit up their ecosystem. There are several reasons contributing to this (the limited JS standard lib being a big one) but a major part of it really seems to be that JS devs are a differen…
> but a major part of it really seems to be that JS devs are a different breed.
Can you really make such generalizations considering there are millions of JS devs, some of them not working exclusively in this language?
“Crime X can be a form of protest” “Every protest ever has had people saying that the disruption to them is over the line” So which crimes would not be acceptable in a protest? And if people will always complain about the line being crossed, does this mean there can be no line at all?
Indeed, by this logic, the Unabomber was a pretty effective "protester."
Given how influential Ted Kaczynski's manifesto has been within the tech community, and how many people agree with his views (particularly regarding leftism,) if not his methods, I think that's objectively true.
> Are you disputing the recent Russia's invasion of Ukraine? Not the GP. I don't specifically dispute that. But in a time when many fictional stories can be told through video, I think it's reasonable to be unsure and neutral on things that we don't have direct knowledge about. Put another way, I think being neutral and silent by default is a necessary defense against manipulation.
>Put another way, I think being neutral and silent by default is a necessary defense against manipulation. But what if the purpose of the manipulation is to suppress dissent, or at least encourage passive acceptance of the status quo, by convincing people remain to neutral and silent?
The people who have certain knowledge of something wrong in the world, through firsthand experience or domain expertise, should certainly speak out. For example, I'm vocal about accessibility for blind people, perhaps to a fault. But I think we should be silent about things that we don't have direct knowledge about. Otherwise, we're no better than computers in a botnet sending out spam. That's why, lately, I've unsubscribed from multiple political mailing lists that keep pestering me to sign this petition or talk to my legislator about that important issue. I realize that I don't know enough to have an informed opinion on these things, and I don't want to be manipulated. (Yes, the fact that I unsubscribed implies that I went through a period where I was more involved in things I don't have expertise about; I was wrong in that.)
You are right, but economic sanctions harms also the countries that are making these sanctions. Shell leaving Russia harms also Shell. Banning Russian airlines harms aviation as a whole. And it's not a reason not to do them.
I think also that's it's better to focus on propaganda, like displaying a ascii-art of the old woman threatening a Russian soldier or whatever.
But at the end, maintainers have the right to do anything they see fit. And disruptive actions are in my view better than apathy and just ignoring the whole thing.
> 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 definiti…
> The movement towards free and open source software was created in no small part do to activists with a very strong ideology. This is true, and an argument that keeps getting repeated, but isn't the same issue. The politics of open source software are about software. How it's made and how it's used. The modern push is about injecting outside ideology into software (and everywhere else). Bringing geo, gender, and rac…
Either you or I misread GP, because I don't see any disagreement. GP points out that FLOSS movement was and is inclusive by design, while this modern development is exclusive by design against people who disagree with the person's opinions.