I'm under no illusions that this is a totally new thought, but for me first with cryptocurrencies, then "AI", and now this, the fundamental issue that the biggest problems come back to is one of trust. Cryptocurrencies try to code around it, LLM boosters try to dazzle you into it, and the attacker here half-succeeded in laundering it. The most consequential (rightly or wrongly) technologists of our time are failing t…
A few minutes reflection on “who can I trust” would lead one to discard the extremely egalitarian ethos built up around open source software. But casting out meritless ankle-biters will immediately lead to being attacked as an unreconstructed egotist who needs to be hung from the neareat Code Of Conduct
I think this is an interesting line of thought but think we should take it further. These codes of conduct that focus of the feelings of third parties over the good of the project (the code) can themselves be seen as an attack on the project. They also often are imposed on projects via peer pressure and other social engineering methods. Perhaps we can use these codes of conduct and the people that push them as open examples of how projects can be infiltrated by those with different agendas and learn from them how to better defend against such attacks.