Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source • Hacker News Board

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#321

Post by iaml » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

mohanmcgeek wrote: post #223

zucker42 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 They did have a strong ideology and they worked towards building the world they wished to see. Not by breaking existing things to virtue signal their support for "the current thing"

And then all of the effort spent on "building the world they wished to see" gets used to also build a world that goes against everything they wished, against their ideology. Due to openness of their efforts they also don't have an option on influencing that, unlike commercial products who can simply stop doing business with precise companies/people/territories. What if the very idea of open source gets used against itself? What would you advise those people to do? Shut up about "the current thing"?

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#322

Post by tomjen3 » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

It could certainly have been done better: if it has instead ran a torrent client that downloaded actual video from Ukraine it might actually have done something.

I get the author, it is impossible to see what is actually going on and not want to eviscerate Russia but the way he did it was counter productive.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#323

Post by dunkelheit » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

ensan wrote: post #301

reaperducer wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen anyone in this thread, or anywhere else, state that killing Ukrainians is uniquely bad. Do you have a source for this assertion?

Then, if you live in a western country, stop paying taxes because it supports killing innocent people, and to a much larger extent than what is going on in Ukraine. Leave your job because tech companies have contracts with the government/"defense industry" and also pay taxes. Don't buy anything from the grocery stores. Cancel your flight if it's on an Airbus/Boeing. Otherwise, it's all empty talk. To be clear, it abs…

It is kind of crazy when one remembers all the human rights abuses that companies providing popular products and services tolerate and benefit from, and where the tax money goes. It is almost as if if the goal is to be consistent and avoid hypocrisy, the only two options are abandoning modern lifestyle... or not protesting at all.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#324

Post by raxxorrax » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

shuntress wrote: post #300

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have legitimately argued against using NodeJS as the foundation of our next product for this very reason. NodeJS' culture is very much "move fast and break things", and "all software is political". Look at the TSC drama. Leftpad.js. This isn't an ecosystem that you want to build and maintain a product on.

All things are inherently "political" just not always significant enough to be worth considering. The trite ways to say it (ie: "we live in a society" or "actions have consequences" ) don't really capture the full complexity of human interaction but do somewhat describe the notion that everything you do as an individual affects and is affected by everything everyone else does. Being "political" really means just beli…

What makes everything political? Of course something I do or say can influence others, but it is still not political in the vast majority of instances. Not even non-significantly.

Political action is shaping my environment to my desire. Via compromise or war perhaps. What is your definition of it that it applies to everything?

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#325

Post by blueflow » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

BaronVonSteuben wrote: post #302

LunaSea wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically virtue signalling

Yes but pointing out that the emperor has no clothes is mean, so we need to pretend not to notice. Despite our modern day knowledge that most human behavior is almost entirely incentive-based (the hard part is identifying the incentive), we're still supposed to pretend that it's altrusim.

The good news, these people are easy to identify because their signalling is always in a very visible way. They want to be seen. And when you can identify them, you can avoid them.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#326

Post by a9h74j » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

octopoc wrote: post #304

KevinEldon wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is a cool idea. You would probably want to run the PCCaaS as a non-profit and donate some of the money (5% seems generous?) to appropriate causes. The main API would be for displaying an appropriate banner of course. Another API would be to determine if a specific domain subscribes to the service and how much they care about the appropriate topic (in terms of "points" which are partly correlated with how much th…

Pivoting now from Ad-Blocker development to CurrentThingBannerBlocker development.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#327

Post by BaronVonSteuben » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 4:32 PM UTC

dmos62 wrote: post #118

ekianjo wrote: post #47

> 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…

> How about not taking sides instead of acting like a kid If you have the power to do something and you don't, that's taking a side. You either oppose something or you enable it. At least own that. If you're saying you're neutral, you either agree with the unpopular side and are scared to admit it, or you can't form an opinion because you're uninformed and thus uncivil, or you feel unaffected by what's happening and…

> If you have the power to do something and you don't, that's taking a side. You either oppose something or you enable it. At least own that. If you're saying you're neutral, you either agree with the unpopular side and are scared to admit it, or you can't form an opinion because you're uninformed and thus uncivil, or you feel unaffected by what's happening and thus discompassionate. Either way, that's pretty much the definition of "acting like a kid".

I think this is an interesting argument, and I think it translates to a real world example quite well. For example, if my older kid hits younger kid I have to either:

1. Punish the older kid, taking the "side" of the younger kid

2. Not punish the older kid, thus taking the "side" of the older kid

however I think there's more nuance here than just that, because either of the kids could be lying. I wasn't' there, I have no video footage or proof, so I can only investigate and interrogate, and at some point I have to make a decision. Often times it comes down to the question of which is worse? Punishing an innocent kid, or letting a crime go unpunished?

The answer to that is far from clear to me. As an authority and neutral arbiter, I have a duty to administer justice, and I don't think taking a view that punishing an innocence can be worse than not punishing a guilty (obviously individual circumstances really matter here).

I also have a full time job, and I can't arbitrate between my kids all day long. I have limited time/attention. Given that there are dozens of issues every day that come up, and I don't have enough bandwidth to handle them, some packets will by necessity have to drop.

How do you know which position on which issue is the "right" one to default too when you don't have enough information? Given your argument, you must default to one of them. What criteria do you use when you have limited info?

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#328

Post by harry8 » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #250

harry8 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an extremist position to say you don't have to do much about big companies feelings about using Free software. You don't have to expend your scarce resources to make them feel comfortable. Note well here I am talking about nothing whatever of substance, this is all pure marketing. If big cos turn from Free software due to prejudice and ignorance about what it is, what it does and how to manage it, rather tha…

> I am talking about nothing whatever of substance, this is all pure marketing This is fair. Would note that one advantage to teams that do the outreach and accommodation can be support, financial and contributions. But that's speculative and not the right move for every team.

>It wasn't that long ago that using open source software required a lot of politicking inside my clients, and we could easily go back there with enough spooked executives.

That's what this discussion is about. You want to monetize your Free software project? That's a very different discussion to this one, about which nobody writing Free software need care. Note also the "protestware" or whatever nonsense this is didn't hit anyone with a support contract from the developer, or am I wrong with that guess? So big co.s are using a metric ship load of code that they didn't pay a cent for and don't bother even reading once. Just hit the auto-update while paying and contributing nothing,, then claim this is the fault of Free software somehow? Yeah. Ok. Bye. The value proposition sucks for them, apparently so they'll pay someone a lot of money to solve that. Nobody else need care - unless you're sliding into that space to solve that problem for them.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#329

Post by mrtranscendence » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

ensan wrote: post #301

reaperducer wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen anyone in this thread, or anywhere else, state that killing Ukrainians is uniquely bad. Do you have a source for this assertion?

Then, if you live in a western country, stop paying taxes because it supports killing innocent people, and to a much larger extent than what is going on in Ukraine. Leave your job because tech companies have contracts with the government/"defense industry" and also pay taxes. Don't buy anything from the grocery stores. Cancel your flight if it's on an Airbus/Boeing. Otherwise, it's all empty talk. To be clear, it abs…

What specifically is empty talk? Someone can support Ukraine for a number of reasons that don't require withdrawing from all life in a western nation. They might trust that their rulers have evaluated most alternatives before deploying military options and do not kill indiscriminately. You might scoff, but I suspect most people are at least somewhat in that boat; even if they think that the US shouldn't have invaded Iraq, for example, they probably think it wasn't that bad and that murders of civilians were minimal. That doesn't mean that they don't or shouldn't protest the invasion of Ukraine, though it probably does mean that they should reflect further.

They might also believe that invading Ukraine is uniquely bad because it is a developed western nation within mainland Europe, setting a terrible precedent. Or they might simply not have thought very much about the contradiction. And I note that you're lumping every western nation under the same category when some are much less objectionable than others; in how many developing nations has Finland engaged in extralegal murder?

That said, yes, the costs are lower to protesting the invasion of Ukraine than protesting everything the US government does overseas. So what? The costs are lower for me to buy Kroger brand soft drinks, too, that doesn't mean my opinions about the flavor is just empty talk.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#330

Post by mpweiher » Thu, Mar 24, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

celeritascelery wrote: post #318

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…

There was a package (that I won’t name) which completely removed their online documentation and replaced it with a BLM message for a period of time. I was floored at that unprofessional behavior. Now when I link to their docs, I always use archive.org to make sure other users don’t run into a similar issue in the future.

> I was floored at that unprofessional behavior.

Profession - "A professional is a member of a profession or any person who earns a living from a specified professional activity. "

If you want professional behavior, pay the person.

If you want free, you get whatever the person wants to give you for free.