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Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

joshbeckman.org

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Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#41

Post by ozb »

dataflow wrote: post #22
ozb wrote: post #11

So, like compulsory jury duty and the draft, this would be directly against the 13th Amendment. Then again, according to the Supreme Court, even forced, unpaid road duty (chain gangs anyone?) is an inherent power of the government, so maybe this is ok. > In view of ancient usage and the unanimity of judicial opinion, it must be taken as settled that, unless restrained by some constitutional limitation, a state has in…

Do you have any reason to believe that amendment was ever intended to cover things like mandatory jury duty? Or are you advocating for reading the text verbatim with zero consideration of the context or history? That kind of reading impacts a lot more than this, and not entirely in a good way.

I think there are much better argument for mandatory jury duty, like the fact that it's an inherent and explicit part of the preexisting Constitution, and that was not explicitly repealed nor (as far as I know) considered.

But the Court chose not to use those arguments, perhaps because they are less absolute and don't apply as cleanly to the draft.

Personally, I think that jury duty as it is today (no real pay, sometimes very long trials, "hardship" completely at the discretion of the judge) is actually a substantive violation of the principles of liberty that the 13th Amendment (along with the rest of the Constitution, notably the 5th Amendment) was meant to protect; (though I myself would likely enjoy actually being on a jury, and am fortunate that I can afford it/my work would likely pay).

And I don't think it would've been crazy to require an Amendment to institute a compulsory military draft, or better yet interpret the 13th Amendment to allow the draft (and jury duty) on narrower grounds but use it to better protect soldiers against various abuses inherent in the current military power structure and lack of exit option.

I do think that mandatory road duty is about as direct a violation of the purpose of the 13th Amendment as anything else the state could do. I think the (explicit) argument that the takings and due process clauses protect your money but not your labor is patently ridiculous.

Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#42

Post by dataflow »

ozb wrote: post #41
dataflow wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any reason to believe that amendment was ever intended to cover things like mandatory jury duty? Or are you advocating for reading the text verbatim with zero consideration of the context or history? That kind of reading impacts a lot more than this, and not entirely in a good way.

I think there are much better argument for mandatory jury duty, like the fact that it's an inherent and explicit part of the preexisting Constitution, and that was not explicitly repealed nor (as far as I know) considered. But the Court chose not to use those arguments, perhaps because they are less absolute and don't apply as cleanly to the draft. Personally, I think that jury duty as it is today (no real pay, somet…

> I do think that mandatory road duty is about as direct a violation of the purpose of the 13th Amendment as anything else the state could do.

Let me make sure I'm getting this right. You're making a serious claim that if the state required you to, say, clean the road by your house every morning, you'd feel like your experience would rival those of 19th-century slaves? You genuinely think that was the kind of thing the amendment was written for and do not see a meaningful distinction between the two?

Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#46

Post by [deleted] »

frde_me wrote: post #15

I don't think dropping a random software developer into a random project to do their open source duty would end well It takes a _lot_ of time for someone to meaningfully contribute to a project, and would just result in maintainers having the overhead of training that many new people on a project I'd much rather figure out a way to finance those open source projects in a sustainable way where those projects can decid…

[deleted]

Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#47

Post by olivia-banks »

munchler wrote: post #31

User: Please suggest the most absurd, over-the-top blog post title that will nonetheless get me to the top of Hacker News. System: "Contributing to Open-Source Should be Required, Like Jury Duty"

I'm bound to get downvoted here, but I ran this by my own local model.

> No One Understands Software Because No One Understands Time

> All Programming Languages Converge to English Eventually

> The Best Database Is Just Two People Talking

> Stop Writing Code. Start Legislating Software

And my personal favorite:

> AI Safety Is Just the New Gluten-Free

Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#49

Post by gchamonlive »

palata wrote: post #29

I have done a lot of open source and I disagree. The problem being that as a maintainer, I refuse most contributions. Not only because they are low-quality (it happens), but also because they are often out of scope, or I just disagree with the direction. It's my project, I maintain it, I choose what goes in it. But you're free to fork it with your changes, that's exactly why I made it open source. If you make an inte…

I'd argue all merge requests matter, not only those that were accepted upstream. Sure, only those accepted generate value upstream, but there is a lot of byproduct from a rejected MR that still has value, either as a reference for further discussions or as resource for forks.
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