Open Source Is Broken

Source code is as moral or immoral as a box of nails. You can use it for good and you can use it for evil.

The reason why we've had such a massive boost in productivity in tech is precisely because of all this unpaid labor. Does it suck that the builders of said code didn't receive much (or any) compensation for their work? Sure, but then again, that was never the point. You don't volunteer at the local SPCA and then complain that you weren't rewarded enough.

Open source has eaten the world. Most of the closed protocols, closed formats, closed systems, closed specifications, etc have died over the past decade, precisely because we have freely available interoperable software and specifications.

This "ethical code" movement will only gum up the works by mixing in a whole bunch of incompatible licenses: This npm component requires that you not use it in nuclear tech. That component requires that you not eat meat. This one requires that you not have dealings with China. It'll be chaos because nobody could ever satisfy them all, which means that no legal department would ever authorize its use, until a few sane people managing these software collections/repositories finally wake up and say "No crazy licensing allowed."

Leave politics out of the tools you build. Politics don't belong there.

Someone is trying far too hard to make their philosophy studies relevant.

Everyone is aware the model isn't perfect. Making a long list of things you view as issues is a bit meaningless unless you can suggest something better. There are some vague suggestions at the very bottom, but nothing concrete.

It approaches the problem from entirely the wrong end. Code is code and we shouldn't be adding ever more licenses and conditions to it.

Besides the definition of 'evil' is a purely political one. While ICE is a good example, what about Cuba? Many people would claim Cuba is a despotic terrible regime (I wouldn't agree) and US sanctions already stop certain goods and services being provided to Cuba. What about a research department in Iran using code to predict earthquakes? What about here in the UK, the department of work and pensions (DWP) is undergoing a huge IT overhaul, my belief is their current incarnation is borderline fascist and anyone working with them is committing social murder, but it's not clear cut.

But these aren't code's problems to solve. They're ours,they're for politics to solve and that's a messy process that shouldn't interfere with a movement to build a commons of knowledge in the form of code. The same with Amazon or whoever profiting without giving back. I believe, as do many others, that the wealth of people like Jeff Bezos is obscene and unjustifiable (many others, especially here feel opposite). But trying to thrash out these issues through code licenses is just absurd.

While I'm all for things like codes of conduct to improve conditions on open source projects the reasons given here for putting up fences around the 'commons' of open source just seem wrongheaded.

As a final example take decentralised technologies. A lot of actual usage is by people who don't want to be monitored for more nefarious reasons (human trafficking, csa etc) (alongside/counter-to genuinely positive usages like whistle blowing, evading censorship, etc) but that's not a flaw with the technology, we have social structures to deal with that sort of thing.

Why not, call it Code of Conduct part 2, place it right after Diversity Statement and the definition Feelings then ban everyone who disagrees with your view on what evil is. And soon no one will be able to use EVIL mode on Emacs anymore /s