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Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

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Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#381

Post by mrguyorama »

Miraste wrote: post #201
shadowgovt wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who have no influence I believe the crux of the political theory is that in a representative democracy, nobody has no influence over the issue.

That is obviously not true, and even if it were, the country in question is Russia, an autocracy. What is our poor hypothetical node developer expected to do, march down to the Kremlin and beat Putin with his MacBook?

This is Russia we are talking about right? A country that has had countless uprisings of literal serfs with farming implements replacing their government.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#382

Post by shkkmo »

Latty wrote: post #357
shkkmo wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that blocking your software from running on some computers would be very disruptive but should be legal. (Edit: not endorsing this, just trying to clarify where the line lies) Actively trying to harm those computers is simply not OK and goes beyond "disruptive" protest into harmful. To analogize, if your protest blocks traffic, it is disruptive. If you protest goes looking for property owned by Russian speake…

I don't think the line is so simple. I agree that the "any Russian person" aspect of this makes it unjustified, in my eyes, but harming property more generally? Well, denying someone their property is certainly harm of a sort, and if I were asked if it was justified to seize or destroy an oligarch supporting Putin's property or yacht or whatever, then I'd say absolutely. In a similar way, there was a case in the UK r…

> if I were asked if it was justified to seize or destroy an oligarch supporting Putin's property or yacht or whatever, then I'd say absolutely.

Those are targeted actions taken against specific individuals, not an indiscriminate attack.

Causing indescriminant harm to random people as an attempt to protest is not acceptable. Targeted harm has to be assessed on a case by case basis.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#383

Post by waoush »

I work in the banking industry which has a bit of regulation, and is a bit risk-averse. People are expected to engage in risk management at all levels. If sabotaging became more common, OSS adoption would likely become unacceptable at these organizations. Mine already blocks Github and you need to request permission just to view it, and even then you can't pull code via command line.

Putting in code that is destructive like that, for any reason, is a good and fast way to scare management away from using your code. If you are going to insist on doing that stuff, just engage in hacking on the side lol.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#384

Post by whimsicalism »

whatshisface wrote: post #319
dunkelheit wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actions speak louder than words and the reaction to the current conflict is certainly unique. I haven't heard of people pressuring companies to stop doing business with the US due to the Iraq war.

The simplest explanation is that US companies + media + government is the only group with enough clout to do this, and they will not sanction themselves. It's not like there's a Netherlands invasion of Germany for us to all use as a neutral reference.

I think you are conflating things here. Sure, US govt is not going to sanction itself. But I don't perceive the general populace as being as outraged by lives lost when the US bombs a hospital in Afghanistan as opposed to when Russia bombs a theater in Ukraine.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#385

Post by gadders »

Brotkrumen wrote: post #366
gadders wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the person concerned is taking zero personal risk by displaying a view that is backed up by 99% all of media (even if no 99% of all people). If they had a banner saying "Trump 2024" or "The AZOV Battalion are Nazis" I might not agree with them, but at least they are taking some personal risk of cancellation.

Criticising the silent majority when they try not to be silent anymore with "youre not taking any risks, so stay silent" is a bad take.

I'm highlighting the emptiness of the moral grandstanding.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#386

Post by nimih »

duxup wrote: post #296
nimih wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 managemen…

>this stuff seems to only happen in the JS community What stuff? Drama? That happens everywhere. Malware? That stuff happens a lot of places, maybe npm makes it more accessible but that's just a technical hurdle ... doesn't mean it wouldn't happen elsewhere if folks could do it easily.

I'm talking about the particular sort of incident mentioned in the grandparent post, where a dev gets a bee in their bonnet about something or other and decides to purposefully screw over their users. Other ecosystems have had supply chain attacks of course, but something about JS seems to really encourage turning run-of-the-mill internet drama into CVEs and broken software.

Maybe, as you say, it's a technological problem. However, if that's the case, it's an eminently solvable one, as evidenced by the fact that I've never in my life had to avoid bumping my Java dependencies because I'm worried my CI pipeline will be overrun with heart emojis, and the fact that the JS community has not solved it just points to a different kind of un-seriousness.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#387

Post by Latty »

shkkmo wrote: post #382
Latty wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the line is so simple. I agree that the "any Russian person" aspect of this makes it unjustified, in my eyes, but harming property more generally? Well, denying someone their property is certainly harm of a sort, and if I were asked if it was justified to seize or destroy an oligarch supporting Putin's property or yacht or whatever, then I'd say absolutely. In a similar way, there was a case in the UK r…

> if I were asked if it was justified to seize or destroy an oligarch supporting Putin's property or yacht or whatever, then I'd say absolutely. Those are targeted actions taken against specific individuals, not an indiscriminate attack. Causing indescriminant harm to random people as an attempt to protest is not acceptable. Targeted harm has to be assessed on a case by case basis.

I mean, as I said, I think that's a core factor in this instance, and culpability increases the justification.

I don't think that means that targeting random people in protest is wrong universally. A common example might be blocking roads, which can harm random people disrupted from being able to go to work, for example. I think there are cases that can be justified.

I mean, right now the sanctions put in place to try and cripple Russia's ability to wage war are hurting random Russian people. That's essentially state-level protest. It sucks for the Russian people who don't support their government, but I think it's the lesser of two evils rather than funding and enabling a regime that is invading Ukraine.

It's a combination of factors, I think trying to draw hard lines universally is just the wrong way to think about it: protest should be proportional and justified, and each case has to be judged on its own merits as to whether it is, something people won't ever agree on universally.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#388

Post by whimsicalism »

tomjen3 wrote: post #315
whimsicalism wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

After ISIS rose I gave up the idea that countries like Syria, Iraq etc can ever become anything more than "hellholes", at least in my lifetime. Certain areas like Kurdistan excepted (and I hope and support their recognization as a state), but in general there will always be one strongman or another. But Ukraine was different (and I hope it still will be), turning from the world of the strongman and toward Europe and…

All this comment shows to me is you knew very little about Syria & Iraq. The cultural & population centers of Syria were never taken by ISIS and Damascus prior to 2011 would not have felt as "hellhole"-esque as I think you are imagining.

> turning from the world of the strongman and toward Europe and modern freedoms

Towards Europe, certainly, but also towards nationalism - undoubtedly. It is not a "modern freedom" to ban minority languages from schools and government, restrict regional autonomy, etc.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#389

Post by whimsicalism »

mrtranscendence wrote: post #329
ensan wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> murders of civilians were minimal.

But nobody (AFAIK) is contesting that the US killed more civilians in Iraq or in Syria (or second-order in Libya) than Russia has killed in Ukraine.

Your argument is that people perceive it as okay because the intentions were good? Our government could not forsee that these people would die, it was unexpected?

Or were they unintended consequences that were foreseen? I don't believe such a distinction is defensible, if you foresee the consequence and do it anyways, you intended such a consequence.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#390

Post by dunkelheit »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #333
celeritascelery wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be clear if you are not paying them, there should be no expectation of service. Open source is something they offer out of passion or goodwill, both of which can change at any time

Open source (and by extension a large chunk of software industry) runs on the expectation that people won't do random disruptive things even if it is plainly stated in the license that there is no such guarantee. Perhaps we should move away from this expectation (and events such as these will certainly accelerate the transition), but this is the current state of affairs.
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