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Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

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Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#481

Post by qsdf38100 »

LunaSea wrote: post #292
gadders wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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.

So basically virtue signalling

You can say this whenever someone speaks out about something.

You can always dismiss what they say by saying they don’t actually care, it’s just to look good.

It tells more about _your_ beliefs and what _you_ stand for than anything.

It seems a lot of HNers don’t stand for freedom too much. They stand for not being annoyed by the fallouts of this war.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#482

Post by dwaltrip »

deltarholamda wrote: post #469
zucker42 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment has the implication (intended or unintended) that Ukraine was the instigator as far as ceasefire violations go. As far as I can tell, that's not true. However, the real way to find out for sure would be to go through the OSCE SMM reports[1] about ceasefire violations and determine what percentage of them were likely from Ukranian-controlled territory versus separatist-controlled territory. [1] https://ww…

Your comment has the implication (intended or unintended) that there are situations where civilian casualties are perfectly acceptable. My only real point was that who the Good Guys and who the Bad Guys are in Ukraine are predetermined by the set of assumptions you start with. Everybody who was paying attention isn't that surprised by the invasion. It's not even a puzzle as to why Russia would do it. They spelled it…

Are you saying Russia is not a bad actor here? I'm not very convinced by your arguments.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#483

Post by rnd0 »

amelius wrote: post #455
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…

It's still better than ads, though.

It's indistinguishable from an ad.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#484

Post by rnd0 »

kennywinker wrote: post #402
prepend wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> general I am for personal expression. I’m for signal, not noise. I don’t want stupid personal expressions, I want meaningful or beautiful or somehow useful. I used to work with a person who would raise their hand in every presentation and say “security is important how is this software secure” even when it wasn’t anywhere remotely relevant. It was counterproductive and distracting and wasted valuable time that we c…

> I don’t want stupid personal expressions, I want meaningful or beautiful or somehow useful. I guess I feel that improving our world, ending war, making our society more just and fair, these are meaningful, useful, and beautiful things to do. They might be some of the most meaningful things actually. > It was counterproductive and distracting and wasted valuable time that we could use to do something better. This is…

>I guess I feel that improving our world, ending war, making our society more just and fair, these are meaningful, useful, and beautiful things to do.

They would be, if they actually made meaningful strides to accomplish those objectives beyond stroking the dev's ego.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#485

Post by whimsicalism »

geoka9 wrote: post #473
whimsicalism wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> to ban minority languages from schools Please, it's not a ban. The relevant law only applies to state-funded schools and makes sure that students who don't speak Ukrainian gradually learn it over the years and start using it in school: _ https://ukrainian-studies.ca/2020/08/01/ukraines-russian-lan... If Ukraine hasn't been the target of Russian territorial expansionism, we could argue that this law is overreaching.…

Your link is broken.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#486

Post by shadowgovt »

lliamander wrote: post #471
shadowgovt wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What HN does is less obtrusive, less likely to stoke heated division amongst its users, and more relevant to the content of the site.

> What HN does is less obtrusive

Agree. I often have to click around to figure out why the black bar has shown up.

> less likely to stoke heated division amongst its users

This is interesting. Why does #BlackLivesMatter stoke heated division among HN users? And what does that say about the community that has been built here?

> and more relevant to the content of the site

I'm sure I don't agree. As the world moves further into automation, machine learning, machine analysis, and sousveillance, the interaction between technology and minorities in our communities is of vital importance to what we do. Questions of interaction between minority developers, customers, users, and community members and the majorities in those spaces impact on questions like hiring policy, behavior analysis and prediction (and the benefits and drawbacks of those tools), unequal treatment laid bare when the cameras are in the hands of the many and not the few (and the consequences of that knowledge), software that only works for a subset of users optimally because it was designed with only those users in mind, and other topics.

Software is growing to touch every part of human existence, and it's probably actually dangerous for hackers to traipse through life ignorant of that fact. We build things that impact people in a huge way, and if some groups are structurally invisible to the builders of those things, we really risk baking inequalities into the very engines of our society.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#487

Post by bjt2n3904 »

staticelf wrote: post #76
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.

Basically all big js front ends have the same issue. Most of them had banners or whole pages for the BLM movement which made no sense to anyone outside of the US like myself. I mean a framework or library with a global audience shouldn't push american politics. Vue, React, Preact, Nodejs, Ember (had a whole page and made documentation unavailable for some time), Go lang, ExpressJS (still has the banner up), Typescrip…

It's not even that a software project can't (or shouldn't) have political causes that it supports.

It's the arrogant attitude that "if you aren't for me, then you're against me". That their views are so righteous, that the only people who could possibly object are bad actors.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#488

Post by geoka9 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #485
geoka9 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to ban minority languages from schools Please, it's not a ban. The relevant law only applies to state-funded schools and makes sure that students who don't speak Ukrainian gradually learn it over the years and start using it in school: _ https://ukrainian-studies.ca/2020/08/01/ukraines-russian-lan... If Ukraine hasn't been the target of Russian territorial expansionism, we could argue that this law is overreaching.…

Your link is broken.

Thanks, updated.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#489

Post by Double_a_92 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #486
lliamander wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What HN does is less obtrusive, less likely to stoke heated division amongst its users, and more relevant to the content of the site.

> What HN does is less obtrusive Agree. I often have to click around to figure out why the black bar has shown up. > less likely to stoke heated division amongst its users This is interesting. Why does #BlackLivesMatter stoke heated division among HN users? And what does that say about the community that has been built here? > and more relevant to the content of the site I'm sure I don't agree. As the world moves fur…

> Why does #BlackLivesMatter stoke heated division among HN users?

Simply because it is a political issue, on which people might have different opinions. And since that specific issue is not related to tech at all, it just causes conflict without any benefit.

While honoring the death of some generally respected figure in our field is hopefully less controversial and more informative.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#490

Post by BigJ1211 »

auxfil wrote: post #441
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…

It's basically taking the "Thoughts and prayers" under a Facebook post to the next level.

It would be fine if the banner was close-able or displayed once a day or something along the lines of that. The problem isn't that they're showing support. It's doing it a completely obnoxious way that's the issue.

If you are one of the people doing this, look around you. Literally everyone slapped a BLM banner on their website, when everyone has done that yours literally adds nothing. Sure, put that message up there, but make it close-able. Not something that takes up valuable screen real-estate permanently.

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