Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

opensource.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 575 posts

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#441

Post by auxfil »

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…

These actions can be classed as slacktivism and as impotent virtue-signaling, sure, but I believe that the actors of these methods of protest are trying to do what the left calls "creating safe spaces" and genuinely feel that they are "showing their support" and therefore somehow...helping. The thing is, they may be achieving that first part - creating a safe space, perhaps unwittingly marginalising, demonising, and isolating the very people who can affect the most change (i.e. politicians, policemen, russian people, going by the examples of causes in OP's post alone), at a further cost of inconveniencing absolutely everyone - testing the resolve of existing allies, and likely creating new opponents out of those who were on the fence or apathetic.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#442

Post by def_true_false »

yyyk wrote: post #398
FDSGSG wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think Putin wouldn't use that to rally Russia and launch a massive war, you haven't observed Putin for long. Do you believe that node-ipc would do this but the current vastly more impactful sanctions regime wont? Also, everybody capable of thinking understands that Russia isn't capable of launching another "massive war" when it already has almost all of its conventional combat power committed to Ukraine. If…

>Do you believe that node-ipc would do this but the current vastly more impactful sanctions regime wont? >There's no other kind of "massive war" he could launch at this point. Russian society isn't anywhere near enthusiastic. That's why Putin has been searching for ever dumber excuses. Give him an actual indefensible incident to rally society around, and he'll get a lot more manpower. That could expand the war to Ode…

What next? Is refusing doing business with Russia a war crime, too? After all, some civilians might lose their livelihoods and starve to death, right?

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#443

Post by pessimizer »

whimsicalism wrote: post #389
mrtranscendence wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 believ…

> Your argument is that people perceive it as okay because the intentions were good?

Even worse, I think the argument is that the intentions were good because it was our rulers who did it, not theirs. Our rulers are careful and thoughtful, while theirs are evil and cruel.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#444

Post by joshstrange »

raxxorrax wrote: post #244
seanw444 wrote: 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?"

Worse, he also provides ammunition for Kremlin propaganda. Which already is easier because people don't trust the press. Which is also understandable because some write a lot of bullshit.

I don't buy this argument. It's the same argument used for "Well the Democrats can't talk about/attempt doing X because the Republicans will misrepresent it and twist their words" when at the end of the day the Republicans will manufacture whatever they want regardless of what the Democrats say. Better to be called a "socialist" while actively trying to do something that will help people verses still being called a "socialist" while doing nothing.

Kremlin is going to Kremlin, aka lie and spread propaganda. Let's not pretend that protestware is making their job so much easier, it's a tiny drop in a tsunami of lies and disinformation that the Kremlin puts out daily.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#445

Post by [deleted] »

kennywinker wrote: post #436
blueflow wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the signalling achieves anything. Its annoying, the signalling people really stand out. Seeing them doing the "Notice me, I'm standing for the right thing, im a good person!"-move makes me cringe. I wish they would stop.

> None of the signalling achieves anything This is just false. Some signaling achieves nothing, but there's plenty of signaling that has caused individuals to change their behavior, politicians to pass laws, and corporations to change their products. The thing is it's basically impossible to tell which is the useful signaling and which is shouting into the void, even as the person signaling the signals. Which drop fi…

[deleted]

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#446

Post by heavyset_go »

zzzeek wrote: post #367
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…

I took a look at the first site in responsive design mode and it looks like the "Branches" menu, which aims to be in a fixed spot, is getting pushed down by the extra content. the actual protest message scrolls up with the rest of it and does not get in the way of anything. Seems like a simple UX bug that could be fixed if you send the developers a bug report.

> Seems like a simple UX bug that could be fixed if you send the developers a bug report.

Something tells me that they don't want to actually fix anything and are just virtue signalling on HN.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#447

Post by whimsicalism »

def_true_false wrote: post #435
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?

From the point of view of American isolationists, there is no difference. There is a difference for Europeans, in that Ukraine being engulfed by a full scale war will result in around 40M refugees in the EU, almost 10% of EU population. That's an order of magnitude bigger than the previous migration wave. It's also an order of magnitude faster. Over 10M people have been displaced already. Some numbers: https://en.wik…

I think you are reversing causality here. No doubt the EU could have seen similar numbers of refugees from Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan, had they allowed them in.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#448

Post by rdiddly »

mpweiher wrote: post #330
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.

> 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.

How 'bout if I go one commit back, and get what they wanted to give me for free one commit ago?

Anyway, if we ignore for now the circularity of that definition of "professional" and take it at face value, then swapping out your open-source docs for a political message would fail the definition of professional, not just based on the "earn a living" part, but also on the "specified professional activity" part. Assuming we're using their repo because it's, like, for programming computers and shit, we might be surprised to find out they had changed their profession from computer-programmer and computer-program-explainer, to worked-up self-important opinion-haver. Which even fewer people would pay money for, by the way.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#449

Post by shadowgovt »

AQuantized wrote: post #431
shadowgovt wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of the thin black bar we put at the top of HN periodically? It sounds like the underlying issue is insufficient testing of the UI layout with the new content, not the fact that there is new content.

There's a difference between providing information ("Someone significant to many members of this community has died recently") and providing a (arguably very superficial) signal of support for a cause dear to some of the developers.

I'm afraid I don't see the difference. Can you clarify?

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#450

Post by yyyk »

def_true_false wrote: post #442
yyyk wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you believe that node-ipc would do this but the current vastly more impactful sanctions regime wont? >There's no other kind of "massive war" he could launch at this point. Russian society isn't anywhere near enthusiastic. That's why Putin has been searching for ever dumber excuses. Give him an actual indefensible incident to rally society around, and he'll get a lot more manpower. That could expand the war to Ode…

What next? Is refusing doing business with Russia a war crime, too? After all, some civilians might lose their livelihoods and starve to death, right?

There's an obvious difference between trying to hurt people and not trading with them yourself. If the distinction is difficult, there are laws to define this 'war crime' thing, you may wish to consult them.

Also, Russia is relatively self-sufficient foodwise. There'll be shortages but no starvation. I'm sure though that if starvation was serious possiblity the West would exclude food imports.

Post reply on HN