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Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

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Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#361

Post by beachy »

KevinEldon wrote: post #237
ryanmarsh wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m ok with it as long as the maintainer is consistent and does it for “the current thing” every time. That means Sudan, Darfur, Iraq war, ISIS, Assad’s regime, etc… Heck why not even Florida after the “say gay” thing?

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

That's a great idea. The only problem would be determining the correct set of things to be protested at any given time. So I'd suggest grouping them into flavors - say US liberal or US conservative flavors. You just choose the one you subscribe to and then let the service decide whether to insert say BLM or anti-CRT messages at any given time.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#362

Post by deltarholamda »

pkulak wrote: post #143
lioeters wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that they got caught up in the socially accepted "hate fest" against citizens of a certain country, particularly by private companies.

If a company does business in Russia right now, they are giving money to the Russian government which will be used to kill Ukrainians. Let's not conflate wartime trade policy with Twitter wokeness marketing.

If a company shows support for the Ukraine, then they are giving aid and comfort to the Ukrainian military who was shelling civilians in the Donbass region for the past decade.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#363

Post by dunkelheit »

kdmccormick wrote: post #338
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.

As a less cynical take: When it comes to Ukraine support, the banner could theoretically have an anti-propoganda effect. Russian and Chinese citizens are cut off or pushed away from world political discourse in a lot of ways, so using open source libraries as a vector for anti-Russia messaging could have a real effect on devs in those countries.

Two counterpoints: 1) the kind of people that use open-source libraries are one of the most plugged into the world political discourse parts of the population (BTW I am not sure that this is unequivocally a good thing, this "discourse" is just another brand of propaganda at this point) and 2) If some random open-source maintainer from across the ocean starts lecturing me that I am guilty of not overthrowing Putin or, worse, wipes my hard drive, I'm not going to be moved by this, I'm just going to think that this person is out of touch and be really annoyed.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#364

Post by prepend »

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

It’s not the expectation, it’s the reputation of the project. If a project does dumb stuff like taking down existing documentation, that reflects poorly on the project. It shows poor judgement and unreliability.

I don’t require them to be smart and professional, but they should be or will lose users. Thanks to OSS, I can just fork. But being OSS doesn’t mean you can suck and be random and still stay useful to people.

Of course if it’s your project, you’re free to do whatever you would like.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#365

Post by prepend »

NoGravitas wrote: post #356
cameronfraser wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they're virtue signaling, not trying to create change

Would you rather they signal vice?

I’d rather they do. Focus that energy into productive action rather than just signaling.

It’s like those people who do 50 commits instead of one to look busy. Just put that mental energy into real stuff.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#366

Post by Brotkrumen »

gadders wrote: post #342
mrtranscendence wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bad take. The purpose is, at least partially, that the author of the package subscribes to these opinions rather than others, sure. But this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with them being "right" or not. I don't get a lot of capital at Hacker News by saying that I support Black Lives Matter, but if I do so (and I'm doing so) does that mean I only want to display that I subscribe to the "correct" op…

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.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#367

Post by zzzeek »

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.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#368

Post by extheat »

aulin wrote: post #228
jraph wrote: post #10

npm install is such a scary command these days (or yarn install, same thing). I never liked it because of the shitload of dependencies it usually pulls but now I would hesitate running it outside a well isolated container. This event added to the strong distrust I came to have on NPM these last months. The NPM ecosystem seems incredibly immature and unreliable and any Javascript project depending on NPM is now a pote…

> In theory the same things could happen for PIP, Maven, Gradle, their Rust and Go counterpart and any such package manager. Any data on this? in theory, but why is it always node.js/npm? I work on completely different things... is it a different community culture? is it the thousands of tiny low quality packages people include to do the most basic things?

I think in large part is there’s a higher focus on modularization in Node.JS which leads to lots more dependencies. That increases the attack vector and makes a supply chain attack easy because all it takes is a single malicious author to break trust in a chain of hundreds of packages. For example a code base I work on currently has over 250+ 3P dependencies, not because we import that many deps but because the dep tree expands that far. Combine that with copycat attacks, where one person does one thing and others feel motivated to push their button, it exasperates the problem.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#369

Post by mannerheim »

shkkmo wrote: post #90
Latty wrote: post #34

Do people think the people protesting like this don't know that this is damaging? They presumably feel that the issue at hand is more important than that damage. Every protest every has been met with "but this protest is being done the wrong way, don't inconvenience me", but that's the point: protest has to disrupt things to make people take notice and make changes. Would I do this? No. I don't think it's effective o…

The problem is that that the node.js filesystem deletion "protests" was an indiscriminate digital attack that harmed people who are doing a much better job of actively opposing the invasion. I believe that the developer who implemented that attack should face criminal charges. Our ability to trust our open source is a critical part of our economy. People who abuse that trust to directly harm others should know they w…

How many Russian cyberattacks on Americans go unpunished by Russia? I don't see any reason for America to bother prosecuting American attacks on Russia as long as Russia isn't prosecuting Russian attacks on Americans.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#370

Post by noelsusman »

gadders wrote: post #342
mrtranscendence wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bad take. The purpose is, at least partially, that the author of the package subscribes to these opinions rather than others, sure. But this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with them being "right" or not. I don't get a lot of capital at Hacker News by saying that I support Black Lives Matter, but if I do so (and I'm doing so) does that mean I only want to display that I subscribe to the "correct" op…

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.

Fox News is part of the media, conservatives cancel people too, and calling the Azov Battalion Nazis is not exactly controversial. They're pretty open about that.

But mostly I'm wondering why it matters if they're taking a personal risk or not. How is that relevant to anything?

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