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Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

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Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#281

Post by gadders »

baryphonic wrote: post #262

To be honest, I'm annoyed by the benign protestware messages when they start to get in the way of using the software, particularly on mobile. I was looking at the isomorphic git documentation the other day, and noticed that their "#BlackLivesMatter #DefundThePolice" banner scrolls under the rest of the content, leaving this annoying gap that takes up screen real estate, especially in landscape mode on a phone.[0] Wha…

>>Is a single person going to be persuaded to support either cause by seeing this banner on a relatively niche JS library that reduces readability of its documentation?

The purpose of the banner is not to convert anyone, the purpose is to demonstrate that the author of the package subscribes to the correct opinions.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#283

Post by aspenmayer »

shkkmo wrote: post #164
oauea wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it likely for Russian ISPs to start blocking infowarship.com, if they haven't already? Since the script is loaded from their domain this would be easy to censor.

I certainly hope people don't just load this random website's script directly from their website frontend. That seem super insecure. If people want to use that popup they should download the code, give it a quick review, then host it themselves. This also solves the issue with that domain getting blocked.

> That seem super insecure. If people want to use that popup they should download the code, give it a quick review, then host it themselves.

If the node devs did the same thing, this whole story would have been a nonstarter. I don’t recall if you suggested for node devs to also do this.

Ironically, if the dev who made the hard drive wiping changes had said that it was a protest against the bad practices of the node ecosystem which allowed for their hard drive wiping code to work as intended, I think that the dev would be getting just as much ire cast their way, if not more. This way, they get to perform two protest actions at once.

I’m impressed. I don’t approve of his methods, but I do find the causes justifiable.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#284

Post by merrywhether »

makecheck wrote: post #51

One of the things I think protestware doesn’t understand is that the “users” of something are not clear-cut, and that should be especially obvious for things like chains of dependencies in modules/libraries. In other words, some (if not many or even most ) people have no idea that something else they use (or even need) is depending on your stupid module. For example, how would I know if my mouse driver software happe…

So company is making mice in bad place X, mice break after update, tech sleuths inevitably link mouse problem to protestware, people start asking questions about company? Isn’t that potentially causing change? Doesn’t that specifically rely on affecting downstream users? So you weigh the likelihood of positive vs negative outcomes against your risk tolerance and act accordingly.

I’d personally think that working on Truth Social would permanently affect your credibility in the industry, yet they have some devs who probably feel proud to work there. So people have different priorities in their lives.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#285

Post by BaronVonSteuben »

beaconstudios wrote: post #125
ksec wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

you can't really escape politics and ideology. What you can do, is to not be petty with your public contributions. As the parent example states, while somebody /could/ embed malware into their software that targets Texans, this falls under the pre-existing social doctrine of a "dick move". These things exist on a scale from "exclude government/corporate entities from your software license" to "try to fuck up random p…

I think the main problem is that we are increasingly operating with different definitions of "dick move."

To many people, the idea that a small business owner would have their store burned to the ground because someone else in their town (or on the other side of their country) did something bad, is a massive dick move. Yet, this happened numerous times during the summer of BLM in 2020 and it was widely defended with things like, "everything is political" and "not to take a side is to take a side" and "you're either with us or you're against us" and "mostly peaceful protests." There was even a famous "looting is reparations" in articles and at least one book called "In Defense of Looting."

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#286

Post by seneca »

BaronVonSteuben wrote: post #280
seneca wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yep, not disagreeing with them at all on their overall point. I just see this "FLOSS is inherently political" line floated a lot, and wanted to point out that it's a false equivalence. I probably could have made that clearer.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#287

Post by BaronVonSteuben »

unethical_ban wrote: post #117
ksec wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 isn't ideology, it's malware for political purposes. https://xkcd.com/605/ No, at the rate things are going, OSS will not be as you describe.

Thanks for the perspective and the laugh. It's very easy to see a trend that isn't there in an aberration.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#288

Post by reaperducer »

Isn't that the whole point of "open source" software? The author gets to put out code that matches their will, and if you don't like it, you either don't use it, or you fork it and make your own.

It's funny how every time there is an "open" project on the internet, from code to Wikipedia to whatever, there is always a group of people that forms to quantify, collate, tabulate, and regulate it into some imagined corporate structure.

Don't like the protest? Fork away!

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#290

Post by reaperducer »

slig wrote: post #231
pkulak wrote: 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?

What about countries buying oil and gas from them?

They're almost all (except India) moving away from that. It's not something that can be done overnight. It's been in the news for almost a month now.

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