Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Devs Reverse Decision to Block ICE Contractors From Using Software (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard:
Less than 24 hours after a software developer revoked access to Lerna, a popular open-source software management program, for any organization that contracted with U.S. immigrations and Customs Enforcement, access has been restored for any organization that wishes to use it and the developer has been removed from the project... The modified version specifically banned 16 organizations, including Microsoft, Palantir, Amazon, Northeastern University, Johns Hopkins University, Dell, Xerox, LinkedIn, and UPS... Although open-source developer Jamie Kyle acknowledged that it's "part of the deal" that anyone "can use open source for evil," he told me he couldn't stand to see the software he helped develop get used by companies contracting with ICE.
Kyle's modification of Lerna's license was originally assented to by other lead developers on the project, but the decision polarized the open-source community. Some applauded his principled stand against ICE's human rights violations, while others condemned his violation of the spirit of open-source software. Eric Raymond, the founder of the Open Source Initiative and one of the authors of the standard-bearing Open Source Definition, said Kyle's decision violated the fifth clause of the definition, which prohibits discrimination against people or groups. "Lerna has defected from the open-source community and should be shunned by anyone who values the health of that community," Raymond wrote in a blog post on his website.
The core contributor who eventually removed Kyle also apologized for Kyle's licensing change, calling it a "rash decision" (which was also "unenforceable.")
Eric Raymond had called the decision "destructive of one of the deep norms that keeps the open source community functional -- keeping politics separated from our work."
Kyle's modification of Lerna's license was originally assented to by other lead developers on the project, but the decision polarized the open-source community. Some applauded his principled stand against ICE's human rights violations, while others condemned his violation of the spirit of open-source software. Eric Raymond, the founder of the Open Source Initiative and one of the authors of the standard-bearing Open Source Definition, said Kyle's decision violated the fifth clause of the definition, which prohibits discrimination against people or groups. "Lerna has defected from the open-source community and should be shunned by anyone who values the health of that community," Raymond wrote in a blog post on his website.
The core contributor who eventually removed Kyle also apologized for Kyle's licensing change, calling it a "rash decision" (which was also "unenforceable.")
Eric Raymond had called the decision "destructive of one of the deep norms that keeps the open source community functional -- keeping politics separated from our work."
...so you open the software and you make it available to all, but what makes OSS companies money is the support and other services that are value adds. If you say your biggest payers are now cut off, you aren't going to last. Imagine if Walmart decided trailer park dwellers and fat people were no longer allowed to shop there...
Its funny how we allow countries with communism, dictatorships, genocide, censorship use open source, but we must ban ICE. Trumpâ(TM)s command on ice is just horrible, but if there is any glimmer of compassion with the ICE agents, why suppress it?
Letting yourself get emotionally manipulated by so-called news media is never wise. Their stories are just stories. They aren't about you. Don't be a tool -- don't let the news media control your life, or your actions, or whether you're happy or sad. They haven't earned it. They don't care about you. They won't be there for you when you need help. Your life means nothing to them.
You're contracting with ICE if you live in the US. They're part of the law enforcement arm of the government and the government is a representation of you (US citizens). Vote or stop paying taxes if you don't want to support ICE, better yet, move out of the US. Us immigrants spent a lot of time and effort to never run afoul of ICE, not sure why some people have such trouble with them.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
This wasn't a cancer. This was Kyle being thrown under the bus when the other lead devs saw the inevitable shitstorm get kicked up. It does not endear me to the other lead developers.
Yes. If Hitler wanted to use Linux, he should have the freedom to use Linux. It's not our job as software developers to save the world.
Sure, we can't completely remove politics from out work, but the current open source model does an excellent job of drawing the line.
We want freedom in software, and that freedom is extended to everyone, including evil people, unfortunately. That's the politics of open source. Anything else is a slippery slope that will be detrimental to the entire community.
If we deny Nazis from using Linux today, we can deny the Russians from using it tomorrow, then we can deny rich people from using it. And why stop there? Why allow people who think pineapple on pizza is acceptable to use Linux?
Feel free, but then it's no longer FOSS and is effectively removed from the open source community.
Yes, politics should be kept the hell away from work in an open group.
In your example, a significant amount of developers would actually have been on the German side, so they'd be developing away like crazy on their fork (possibly as closed source extensions for their own personal use as a military in some cases), which is allowable anyway.
When in peace time you have an "agenda", and you try and poison open solutions by disallowing groups based on political belief (which is often poorly informed), then you're often just enshrining ignorant bigotry.
Take the ICE case; this is a completely underfunded organisation, trying to do the best it can to juggle a lot of conflicting factors (people trying to game the system, people abusing the system, and genuine people that need to follow particular paths and have them filtered away from the ones trying to game the system), and look after the people as well as it can with the funds. Individuals in it may have unpleasant attributes, but what organisation doesn't? The majority are trying to do a job well.
Denying them access because politics is only going to make matters worse for the end recipients, piss off people in the middle as it could muck about with them doing their job, and they'll see the reduction in care they're able to give, which sure as hell isn't going to endear the open source movement to them..
The options in a movement that explicitly states "this is open, available to everyone" are to either put the work in, knowing that you may disagree with some end uses, but the majority case is that you're benefitting people in general, or you can withhold your work, and not be part of that movement.
Good on ESR; I count this as a sane move. It's a shame the guy was the one thrown under the bus for what seemed to be a general consensus; if they were good at what they did, then a good old rollicking, learn from being stupid (and against the license you were working under), and getting on with the work would have been my preference. And all the senior staff that agreed with it should have been rollicked.
If you're working under the express license that you can't restrict how you want your work to be done, as part of a much larger project, then your choices are either do the work, knowing you'll benefit the groups that you want to help, with edge cases that ones will exist that you don't, or just leave the project. That simple.
If the entire group feel that strongly, they can stop using the license, and build a new product that they can happily play politics with.
So let's take this to the extreme: If computing and Linux were around in WW2, should we have let Hitler use Linux?
Do you _really_ think Hitler, and Nazi Germany are going to obey your little license agreement in that little readme during a war? Get serious here.
What if Hitler's use of Linux was the deciding factor in NAZI Germany winning the war?
Then I guess Linus gets the gas chamber? This is one of the stupidest questions I've heard in a long time. You might as well ask "If The Beatles has been around during WWII, should Hitler be allowed to copy their records to raise morale? What if "It's a Hard Days Night" was a deciding factor in rousing the troops, and thus winning the war?
Anything can be used for purposes people don't like. Maybe we should start getting all cranked off when members of the KKK are "allowed" to eat our favorite breakfast cereal. "Cheerios bans the sale of Cheerios to members of the Nazi Party, the KKK, and Donald Trump".
What a great world that would be where everyone starts drawing lines around what you can and can't use based on your politics.
Right, because a government conrtolling its borders, something all governments do, it totally the moral equivalent of Hitler. Man, Godwinned on the second post.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
he problem with your movement or organization taking a political stance is partisans start fighting back. Just look what's happened to science, AGW has big political implications and the moment it was embraced by "one side" the other side basically became an anti-science political movement.
What he said. The right has been saying to the left for a decade or so now "you keep changing the rules, but you're not going to like the new rules". Politicizing everything seems fun until you start realizing the other side can do it to. And, right now in the US, if you're on the left, you might ponder: hmm, the right has all the political power and seems to be on the rise.
Politicizing everything: think about how it will play out.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I consider that an attempt to bamboozle people into believing that politics is something to be avoided or an attempt to fool people into believing that one can "keep politics separated from [one's] work". Such a thing is not possible as people hold different views on all sorts of things and work together for different reasons.
Right in line with this is an assertion I've only ever read from advocates of the open source development methodology that some licenses (such as the MIT X11, the 3-clause BSD, and the Apache v2.0 licenses) are "apolitical" whereas the GNU GPLs (v2, v3, and the AGPLs) are "political". And this is typically said in a context which tries to demean use or defense of the relevant GPL. It's no accident that the former set are lax permissive, non-copyleft, or (as free software activist Richard Stallman aptly puts it) "pushover" licenses which all allow proprietary derivatives and these GNU GPLs do not allow proprietary derivatives. It's also no accident that large proprietary firms are fans of the open source development methodology. They stand to benefit when people develop powerful useful software and license it to allow for proprietary derivatives.
A better and more useful observation is that politics are an inescapable part of life, it's better to understand what's really going on and why (typically uncovered by asking 'who benefits?'), and that different political views are not the same as an absence of politics.
Digital Citizen
The Deporter in Chief's (Obama) policy resulted in kids being handed back to human traffickers to be sold as slave labor.
Maybe it's time for Congress to actually fix the fucking problem instead of calling ICE nazis?