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Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

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Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#551

Post by yyyk »

FDSGSG wrote: post #534
yyyk wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's just absurd fanfic. Sending in untrained "manpower" with no equipment would not help advance Russian goals. Some of them probably have military training, and quantity has a quality of its own. Regardless, Russia will not be able to subdue Ukraine, but there's nothing good coming from a more enthusiastic Russian society. >"Cyberwar"? Russia has never before needed any excuses to unleash wiper worms like NotPet…

> Regardless, Russia will not be able to subdue Ukraine, but there's nothing good coming from a more enthusiastic Russian society. You are mistaken if you believe that Russian society isn't already enthusiastic. But this isn't a country with the warrior culture US has, dying for your country isn't cool in Russia, it just means that you were too poor and/or stupid to dodge the draft. > There's a law for these things.…

>You are mistaken if you believe that Russian society isn't already enthusiastic.

It's a society where showing up for what the authorities do is common.

>Which law is that?

A long codicil of war conventions (Geneva, Hague) and anti-terrorism conventions. What I wrote is a common exegesis.

>Many of the sanctions... The sanctions will not go away.

As I wrote, there's a difference between 'we won't trade with you' and actively harming someone. Also, if Russia withdraws completely and lets Ukraine join NATO, I'm pretty sure the West will drop sanctions. There'll be no point in maintaining them - if you want to change Russia, you'll need a finer instrument.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#552

Post by minerva23 »

Aspie96 wrote: post #539
minerva23 wrote: post #261

Unpopular opinion: telling people they need to keep their protests non-disruptive is akin to telling them they can’t protest. “Protest in a way where I can ignore you.” Do I think “protestware” is a bad idea? Sure. Am I going to tell them to take their fight for human rights elsewhere? Not a chance.

> Not a chance. Why not? Is every action legitimate as long as it uses "human rights" as an excuse? Something doesn't become more ethical just because it's described as an act of protest.

> Something doesn't become more ethical just because it's described as an act of protest.

Agreed, but fighting back is often seen as ethical when unwarranted aggression is not.

In the case of this “protestware”, they’re both fighting back against unwarranted unjustifiable war AND doing no direct harm. They’re free to restrict who or where their software may run. They’re also free to include a boobytrap for anyone who doesn’t respect the license/restriction.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#553

Post by Aspie96 »

minerva23 wrote: post #552
Aspie96 wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not a chance. Why not? Is every action legitimate as long as it uses "human rights" as an excuse? Something doesn't become more ethical just because it's described as an act of protest.

> Something doesn't become more ethical just because it's described as an act of protest. Agreed, but fighting back is often seen as ethical when unwarranted aggression is not. In the case of this “protestware”, they’re both fighting back against unwarranted unjustifiable war AND doing no direct harm. They’re free to restrict who or where their software may run. They’re also free to include a boobytrap for anyone who…

What?

That malware was directed to anyone with a Russian IP. The license was an open source license.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#554

Post by minerva23 »

Aspie96 wrote: post #553
minerva23 wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something doesn't become more ethical just because it's described as an act of protest. Agreed, but fighting back is often seen as ethical when unwarranted aggression is not. In the case of this “protestware”, they’re both fighting back against unwarranted unjustifiable war AND doing no direct harm. They’re free to restrict who or where their software may run. They’re also free to include a boobytrap for anyone who…

What? That malware was directed to anyone with a Russian IP. The license was an open source license.

The license change was implied by the boobytrap. Are you saying they didn’t have the right to change the license?

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#555

Post by baryphonic »

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.

Thanks for the suggestion! I feel stupid in retrospect, but I've never thought to submit a bug report about docs being hard to use.

Also, SQLAlchemy is badass, rockstar tech, but in a good way. Only DB abstraction layer I've used that doesn't feel like a leaky, kludgy mess.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#556

Post by baryphonic »

HWR_14 wrote: post #392
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 feel that's because too many people still aren't seeing what their sites look like on mobile devices. I'm sure the perma-banner looked fine on desktop.

Not sure why this is downvoted. It was one of my personal hypotheses. It's a bit unusual to look at docs on mobile, or even the Svelte REPL (though using on mobile has helped me spot various UI/UX bugs with my own code).

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#557

Post by baryphonic »

joshcryer wrote: post #460
goodpoint wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> noticed that their "#BlackLivesMatter #DefundThePolice" banner scrolls under the rest of the content, leaving this annoying gap People get killed and a HNer is annoyed by a gap around a banner.

The OSI article even encourages banners and other such thing in ones work. If code is speech, then speech shouldn't be frowned upon when the coder uses it in their project. The OSI is specially calling out an incident where someone actually put malware in their code which targeted Belarus and Russia. Totally unacceptable and not a form of protected protest at all, and arguably not speech.

I honestly don't care that much if people want to put political messages in and amongst their code. The maintainer of SQLite is a devout Christian and had "the Rule of St Benedict" from the 4th century.[0] Or the person known as "Ciro Santilli," who has a bunch of anti-CCP content in various repos.[1] (I've actually considered putting some of his content into my repos as a sort of "kill switch" targeting CCP theft and misappropriation of copyright.) I fully endorse both, even though they earn me no brownie points, nor are they likely to convert the world to the one true faith nor overthrow a murderous, totalitarian regime. The only differences are that my opinions are a minority among the community, and that I simply wouldn't let the hashtag activism detract from the product. I'd certainly let people opt out of the banner, and would probably set a cookie to remember the preference for a while.

[0]https://www.sqlite.org/codeofethics.html

[1]https://github.com/cirosantilli

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#559

Post by eternityforest »

thot_experiment wrote: post #535
eternityforest wrote: post #159

It harms all of technology and by extension anyone who participates in the modern world. Just like any malware or other antisocial behaviour. It's a bit too indiscriminate to be a good protest, unless the thing you want to tear down IS the whole modern development process, which is based on the idea that most people are somewhat trustworthy and you can get the risk down to an acceptable level through the usual means.…

> It harms all of technology and by extension anyone who participates in the modern world. Just like any malware or other antisocial behaviour. Sure but the problems are in order of significance are: Putin invading Ukraine Trusting things from NPM This author adding malware to his package I'm disappointed by the chorus of "keep politics out of tech" that seems so prevalent on HN, though not surprised. In general I'm…

I believe pretty strongly in some of Taleb's theories. That some people are antifragile, they gain from chaos, and that the people in the strongest positions are the ones who do so.

What I don't agree with is the idea of structuring society to benefit antifragile people and encourage more to become such.

Indiscriminate sabotage is a type of chaos. I expect it to always benefit those who are already in the strongest positions, and harm those in the weakest positions.

If one is going to do hacktivism, I'm sure they can think of something better than just randomly attacking computers supposedly in one country but probably all over the world because of IP weirdness.

An attack on tech in general is somewhat of a political statement that you would like to side with the less tech dependent people, at the expense of the more technical side.

This could destroy records at a Children's hospital. It could affect peace protesters.

I'm not sure that anything that preferentially targets technical people while leaving those with analog-first lives unaffected is useful.

It's stirring up chaos, giving power to those who benefit from chaos.

Does that not include those who benefit from war?

Maybe I'm wrong and this is actually going to being about world peace.

But to me, it seems pretty random and poorly thought out.

Re: Open source ‘protestware’ harms Open Source

#560

Post by Aspie96 »

minerva23 wrote: post #554
Aspie96 wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? That malware was directed to anyone with a Russian IP. The license was an open source license.

The license change was implied by the boobytrap. Are you saying they didn’t have the right to change the license?

I'm saying malware isn't the same as a license change.

If we consider malware to be simply a form of licensing, than all malware is allowed, in every place. If malware hits you, it means you shouldn't have been using the software.

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