Open Source Devs Reverse Decision to Block ICE Contractors From Using Software (vice.com)

Uh huh by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 02:40 · Score: 1, Funny

ESR lectures us all on not mixing open source and politics. Consider us schooled.

Quote by dcollins · 2018-09-01 02:43 · Score: 2

"Everything is politics." -- Thomas Mann

--
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes

Re:Quote by malkavian · 2018-09-01 03:06 · Score: 2

That's something a politician would have you believe.. Politics is the glue that fits disparate pieces together, but it should stay the hell out of doing the actual work for those pieces.
"Everything is actually science, just the politicians do it badly." -- Me.
Re:Quote by Aighearach · 2018-09-01 07:06 · Score: 1

Politics is social technology. Trying to get the technology out while having more than one human involved is foolish and illogical.
And believing that such a thing is possible makes it very likely that you're being constantly manipulated by politics, because you're not willing to pay attention to what is going on around you, or learn how the tools work.

Market still rules... by CRB9000 · 2018-09-01 02:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

...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...

A blind eye by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 02:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

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?

Re:A blind eye by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 03:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

Trump Derangement Syndrome is real.
Re:A blind eye by GuB-42 · 2018-09-01 03:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

Another reason to keep politics out of software dev. Your bad guy isn't the always other community member's bad guy. If we let everyone exert their grudge on software licenses, no one would be able to use that software.
Re:A blind eye by AmiMoJo · 2018-09-01 04:07 · Score: 1, Interesting

It's impossible to separate politics from daily life, because politics is how we manage our daily lives. I say this as someone who was driven from their home, their family, their country of birth by politics.
But sometimes you also have to recognize that there are other issues. In this case the integrity of free software really matters. I take a hard line on it, I'm a strong supporter of the GPL and its principals, even when they meant that software can be used for evil.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:A blind eye by Bruce+Perens · 2018-09-01 04:16 · Score: 1, Insightful

It's funny how you conflate an economic paradigm with various social evils. Communism isn't inherently evil, it's just that it has often come with totalitarianism. Capitalism doesn't have a great record for social good either.

--
Bruce Perens.
Re:A blind eye by Chas · 2018-09-01 05:08 · Score: 2, Insightful

Said by a man living in one of the countries that is the greatest beneficiary of Capitalism lifting a huge portion of the planet out of abject poverty...
Is Capitalism perfect? Of course not.
But, carefully overseen, it's still a damn sight better than anything else humans have tried in the entirety of their history.

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Re:A blind eye by Bruce+Perens · 2018-09-01 05:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

While you are next driving down our public roads to our parks, consider that all of these things are commons. And they don't do all of those bad things some folks pin on communism.

--
Bruce Perens.
Re:A blind eye by DRichardHipp · 2018-09-01 05:23 · Score: 1

No, Bruce. Capitalism arises spontaneously whenever you give people a few basic freedoms. The only way to make communism/socialism work is to take those freedoms away. So the only way that you can argue that communism is not inherently evil is to say that it is not evil to take away such things as the right to detemine for yourself what you will do for a living and the right control the products of your own hands (which is the right to own property), the right to enter into mutually beneficial contracts, the right to buy and sell as you see fit, and basically the right to determine for yourself how to live your own life. Take away those rights and what you are left with is usually called "totalitarianism" or "tyranny" or some such. But whatever you call it, it is inherent to communism.
The other day I was reminded of a quote from Flavius Josephus, the 1st century Roman historian. Writing in about an ancient ruler in Babylonian ruler, he says:

He gradually changed their government to tyranny, finding no other way to break their fear of God than to make the people dependent on him for all of their daily needs.

The really interesting thing about this quote (I think) is Josephus's definition of "tyranny", which is basically any form of government that makes the citizens dependent upon the government. By that definition, Open Source is the antithesis of tyranny, since the whole point of Open Source is that the users are in control and are not dependent outside powers. The whole point of Open Source, at least as I see it, is that individual people are free to control their own destiny.
Bruce, I really admire all that you've done for Open Source. Can we now agree to work together to fight tyranny? Part of that is recognizing that you cannot have communism without taking from people the right to control their own destiny.
Re:A blind eye by Bruce+Perens · 2018-09-01 05:35 · Score: 1

Open Source is a commons which grants freedom. Specific individuals would be "more free" if it was a gift rather than sharing with rules, but the rules tend to make everybody more free.
So, we have this conflict of individualism vs. collectivism. I submit that it's better to make everyone more free than it is to make some people very free and other people mainly subject to them. This means the 1% vs. everyone else in today's "capitalism", which is probably more accurately described as a sort of economic feudalism.

--
Bruce Perens.
Re:A blind eye by Bruce+Perens · 2018-09-01 05:47 · Score: 1

Well, there is this little problem with your thesis, which is that if you refuse to play the game, your children starve to death. That is, unless you hold some plot of ground by force of arms which you use to feed and water them. Ultimately there is little that is peaceful about it.
We could try acknowledging that people have a right to eat and be sheltered, and that the purpose of society is for everyone to work together to provide for those needs. I know some religious communes where people do this for each other, for example the Hutterites. Although I was never a Christian and am not a religionist, they seem to be nice folks.

--
Bruce Perens.
Re:A blind eye by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 05:48 · Score: 1

>It's impossible to separate politics from daily life, because politics is how we manage our daily lives.
Bullshit, You don't believe that for a second. Most people around the world just want to be left alone to get on with their daily lives without some power hungry fuckwads trying to get a rise out of the rabble to further their goals of usurping whatever current power structure is in place.
Given your predilection for rah-rahing sedition against democratic institutions and Western culture, maybe whoever drove from your country had good reason. Then again, maybe that never happened. Curiously you wrote "their home, their family, their country of birth" using the 3rd person possessive adjective, which usually denotes plural ownership, instead of "my" as in "my home, my family, my country of birth". Seems like if you really went through what you supposedly went through, you wouldn't write about it so impersonally. I don't think any of what you wrote happened to you.
>But sometimes you also have to recognize that there are other issues. In this case the integrity of free software really matters.
Integrity? The idiots included Microsoft on their ban list. You know, the company that owns the Github platform where they host the Lerna project? It would be massively hypocritical and untenable to the goal of their protest to continue to use for free the platform provided by the evil company you just prohibited from using your software. They reversed course because of expediency and inconvenience, not integrity. They didn't have that to begin with.
Re:A blind eye by Bruce+Perens · 2018-09-01 05:56 · Score: 1

That's mainly because Open Source is not food or shelter. You're required to sponsor those in a socialist society because it's important for people to have a roof over their head and a full stomach. How we provide these needs is economics, and there is more than one way to do it.

--
Bruce Perens.
Re:A blind eye by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 05:57 · Score: 1

It's impossible to separate politics from daily life, because politics is how we manage our daily lives.

It's clear to everyone on slashdot that for you specifically, AmiMoJo, that statement is correct. As for the rest of us, we don't consider the political implications of our choice of bowl we use for our breakfast cereal.
Re: A blind eye by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 06:05 · Score: 1

Speak for yourself. Personally I only use clear bowls, as a political protest against the lack of government transparency.
Re:A blind eye by HanzoSpam · 2018-09-01 06:06 · Score: 1

Well, there is this little problem with your thesis, which is that if you refuse to play the game, your children starve to death.
And what happens to you and your family if you refuse to play the game in Communist countries?
Yeah, I'll take my chances with the capitalists.

--

Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Re:A blind eye by DRichardHipp · 2018-09-01 07:07 · Score: 1

I submit that it's better to make everyone more free than it is to make some people very free and other people mainly subject to them.

Yes, this is exactly my point. In every implementation of communism to date, there have been a few heads-of-state who were very powerful and very free and countless ordinary citizens that were subject to them. That's the situation that Josephus refers to as "tyranny". That is the situation that you and I ought to be opposing.
And Open Source does oppose this. Gone are the days when programmers had to subject themselves to IBM/AT&T/Honeywell in order to get access to the software they needed. Only the elites could afford software then. These days, anybody can download a copy of Debian, for free. Open Source is a great equalizer. Open Source does not solve every problem, but it is a force for good.
There still exist concentrations of power, which are worth opposing. But transferring all power to the state, which is what communism does, creates a new and even greater concentration of power, which ends up making the problem worse. Better is to move power downward, toward regions, communities, civic and religious organizations, families, and individuals. Distributed is better than centralized. That's why we have checks-and-balances, three branches of government that (by design) are constantly in opposition to each other, frequent elections, laws against monopoly control, unions, a bill-of-rights, and so forth. The whole point is to prevent concentrations of power, since, as you observe, concentrations of power tend toward evil.
Communism is about concentrating power in the hands of the state. Open Source is about distributing power to smaller groups and individuals. The two are in opposition to one another.
Re:A blind eye by Aighearach · 2018-09-01 07:09 · Score: 1

Communism isn't an economic paradigm though. Did you get confused and accidentally use the line for "Socialism" on "Communism?"
Communism is about taking away personal freedoms, to be exercised for the benefit of the group, there is nothing economic about that part. Communism is a system of control that often claims to also be Socialist. Any economic part comes from the claimed socialism.
Re:A blind eye by Aighearach · 2018-09-01 07:15 · Score: 1

No, none of those are a commons. That would result in Tragedy!
You should really take a closer look at the language here, it is heartbreaking to read things so ignorant from somebody such as yourself.
If the road was a commons, that would mean everybody owns it equally and can just use it however they want. That's a commons. The whole point of understanding the "tragedy of the commons" is that in order to be able to share a common space, we can't allow it to become a "commons!" Instead, so that sharing can take place, we assign ownership to the government; and then we make rules that allow everybody to share it in certain ways, and to deny access to uses incompatible with the desired sharing.
Re:A blind eye by ChatHuant · 2018-09-01 07:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

Communism isn't inherently evil, it's just that it has often come with totalitarianism.

Sorry, Bruce, but you're wrong.
Communism is inherently evil; it can't work without tyranny, because it relies on idealized people who selflessly put the interest of the society above their own. This is not how real people behave. Capitalism relies on people following their impulses (even supposedly negative ones, like greed). It channels those impulses them in directions that benefit others, for example by rewarding people who produce or create new stuff. Communism wants to completely repress those impulses, so it has to force people to behave contrary to their natural inclinations. It has to indoctrinate people to follow the ideology, so freedom of speech and the free flow of ideas are forbidden. Also, communist countries don't reward producers or creators - at best, they should be happy they contributed to the betterment of society. At worst, they are regarded as exploiters, and repressed.
I have first hand knowledge of both systems - I lived more than half my life in an Eastern European country that was theoretically "building a Communist society", and then moved to capitalist America. The difference is huge. And I know some people will come up with the "no true Communism" argument - but those are mostly folks who have never experienced life in a communist country, and can't really understand the realities there.
I believe the best balance is a Canadian or Western-Europe style of capitalism, with strong laws and strong social support. American-style capitalism has become, IMHO, too unregulated and too influenced by money. However, with all its warts, it's miles better than any communist country.
Re:A blind eye by Billly+Gates · 2018-09-01 07:57 · Score: 1

My politics include budding out of others business unless it negatively impacts me. Yes, I oppose ICE in it's current form politically but I do not want to use software as a weapon and prefer to vote in primaries for politicians who can make a bigger impact than software no one uses.

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http://saveie6.com/
Re:A blind eye by Billly+Gates · 2018-09-01 08:01 · Score: 1

This has nothing to do in my opinion of economic policy models. I am left wing or far left in the USA at this time. However, I agree with the right win libertarians on this.
You have no right to tell others what to do with their computers.
The exception of course is if you are paying them. More than likely you own the computers anyway and would also reserve that right as owner of the equipment. This is why I do not do anything personal on a work PC so I can still own it. But regardless, the same principle applies. I also prefer a MIT/BSD style license as well for this reason as if someone wants to make money great! If someone at home wants to learn it or use it and even contribute that is great too. I don't care.

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http://saveie6.com/
Re:A blind eye by Billly+Gates · 2018-09-01 08:08 · Score: 1

Well, there is this little problem with your thesis, which is that if you refuse to play the game, your children starve to death.
And what happens to you and your family if you refuse to play the game in Communist countries?
Yeah, I'll take my chances with the capitalists.
In communism man exploits man. In capitalism it is the other way around. :-)
The problem is as long as authoritarianism and power is in the hands of few it will be fucked up either way. True more have it in America than a communist country but you are still being screwed over every day. Examples is when you buy or sell stock HFT programs at stock exchange manipulate the price so you sell less and buy more. They can trade at night (which was illegal for over 100 years). You can't. Your interest rates and home loans are being manipulating and there is nothing you can do about it.
If you are not super smart and have a disability or a cancer in the US without health insurance you are fucked. I was right wing not too long ago as I watched socialist countries suffer. Then I looked today and Finland, UK, and even Canada are waaaay better to live in. My kidneys are going and I do not have health insurance at this time due to me being fired in 2017. I am employed as a contractor now as HR is too scared to give me a shot with a gap.
I would not have this problem if it was treated earlier and if I were Canadian or European.
But software in my opinion shouldn't take any role. FOSS shouldn't be more libertarian and if capital was invested to write the software it should stay closed source with a cost as well. Seems only fair. But users of either shouldn't be dictated too except for payments for the closed one.

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http://saveie6.com/
Re:A blind eye by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 08:13 · Score: 1

Why not use everything you can as a weapon? Get them using the software, make it integral to their processes, then pull the rug from under them as far as update licensing. If they keep using it, you have grounds to sue. Use the court system to help human rights, through fair or foul means.
Re:A blind eye by Jodka · 2018-09-01 08:47 · Score: 1

Capitalism doesn't have a great record for social good either.
A few points in reponse:
Capitalism is orthogonal to tyranny. Pinochet endorsed capitalism; so did British governors of Hong Kong. Those mid-20th century German National Socialists maintained and controlled capitalist enterprises; Thomas Edison was a capitalist.
Improvement in the material well-being is the essential foundation for progress in all fields of human endeavor; Art, Music, Literature. Science, Mathematics, Open Source software. That improvement is primarily the product of capitalism and secondarily the product of volunteer and non-profit endeavors in free markets.
Because of its essential role in sustaining all other endeavors, it is no exaggeration to say that almost all social gain has been, either directly or indirectly, the product of capitalism. Look at the times and places in the world where the greatest advancements have taken place and how those coincided with capitalism, there is a consistent relationship.
Bruce, what was your thought process there, exactly? Like you compared the consequences of Mao's collectivization in the Great Leap Forward to the results of Deng Xiaoping economic reforms? So about 55 million people died in a four year period under communism and the transition to improved standards of living in China began with the introduction of capitalism, so you concluded that "Capitalism doesn't have a great record for social good...?" Well, it does, subjectively, to those who prefer to eat food and live instead of dying en masse.

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Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Re:A blind eye by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 09:21 · Score: 1

That's the point: to bypass the voters. Democracy is generally over-rated -- it's been described as a bunch of wolves voting on which sheep to eat. If a single crow can scare off the wolves, it's a good outcome.
Re:A blind eye by AmiMoJo · 2018-09-01 09:37 · Score: 1

I'm reminded of that poem starting "first they came for..."
Aside from the moral imperative I hope that by standing up for others I have no personal connection to, one day I may get similar support.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:A blind eye by Kohath · 2018-09-01 09:39 · Score: 1

Is Capitalism perfect? Of course not.
The argument against capitalism is that it sometimes doesn't work out good for some people. The argument for socialism is that it sometimes doesn't work out badly for some people.
Why wouldn't we choose not as bad as everyone says over not as good as everyone says?
Re:A blind eye by Jodka · 2018-09-01 10:12 · Score: 1

Bruce Perens Wrote:

While you are next driving down our public roads to our parks...
Their construction and maintenance is funded by tax revenues collected from capitalist enterprises and their employees.

...consider that all of these things are commons.
"Commons" not "Communist". In your own words.

And they don't do all of those bad things some folks pin on communism.
Because they are commons, not Communism.
Hayek makes the point in his book The Road to Serfdom that some types of collectivism are consistent with classical liberalism. Namely, those collective actions for which there is broad public agreement on specific policies. The distinction is that, instead, Communism compels collective action in the circumstance of many differing factions, with the necessary outcome that a small minority imposes its will on the majority. (Necessary because, with division into many factions, there are only small minorities.)
Furthermore, non-rivalrous goods such as roads and parks are special cases. By citing such examples alone, you have failed to make the general case for collectivism.
And you are cherry-picking, listing only the success and leaving off your list such massive fiascos such as the the New York subway system. Construction costs are 10x per mile higher than they should be because of graft, the stations are disgustingly filthy, trains are frequently late.
Additionally, you have not addressed if in those cases which you mentioned, parks and roads, the public would be better or worse served by privatization. You failed to make the comparison. Instead, you merely defended the collectivized case by stating that it was not a worst-case scenario. What an absurd endorsement. In any context outside of politics such and endorsement would be laughed at. "Hitting your thumb with a hammer is not as bad as the critics says." The meaningful question is: is a person better off when the government compels him to pay taxes which it expends on road building, or better off when private businesses build roads for which that person pays fees to access. Well there are many aspects to consider. There are network effects, so that benefits accrue to those not using roads. There are transaction costs for collecting fees for road travel only in the case of private roads. Public roads subsidize trucking, which creates price distortion, artificially lowering the cost of truck transportation. That means it wins out over other more efficient means of transportation in some cases, and also that it distorts the price of goods transported by truck, resulting in over consumption of goods and fuel. Finally, with privatized roads, the poor can be subsidized using currency or vouchers, so this is purely an issue of efficiency, not equity.
The point here is not that generally or specifically either private or public roads or parks are preferred, but that there are many considerations involved when addressing the issue, of which none you seem even slightly aware. You lack any rational framework for addressing the issue, having made no comparison between alternatives. In summary, you demonstrate a severe incapacity to address issues competently. It's like anything that comes to your mind that makes Communism sound good, or less shitty, you type. That is ideology, not intellect. You seem like more of cheerleader than a thinker.

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Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Re:A blind eye by Billly+Gates · 2018-09-01 10:15 · Score: 1

Where my stance is that changing an EULA to get back at someone is stupid. Voting for a different politician is smart on a given issue.
My issue also is freedom. I got flamed before for being a BSD advocate when quoting Bill Gates on the viral comment on GPL. He is 100% right as you link to software it must also now be free. RMS did this intentionally.
My point is not a flamewar on this but rather my own philospy of supporting MIT/BSD style licensing and to a lesser extent copyleft LGPL licenses is about freedom. Freedom to use software for whichever purpose encouraging a community but business use and those in certain universities can as well.
Basically it is wrong to tell somewhat else what to do on his or her computer.
SJW and socialist style RMS rants are harmful. My example is the Rust programming language. Mozilla worked really hard to promote Rust but the SJW and politics turned developers off. Why do you think Cisco and then Juniper choose FreeBSD over Linux for their TCP/IP stacks? If you want to change the world then find the appropriate avenue. I will never stand in the way of someone who wants to make money. Also I will not stand in the way of someone who wants to give his or her work away for free either. My favorite license does both of course.

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http://saveie6.com/
Re:A blind eye by Chas · 2018-09-01 10:59 · Score: 1

Well, if you want to walk down a path that's killed a hundred million people over simple ideology, and always results in detrimental totalitarianism, on the off chance that YOU would be special?
Knock yourself out. You can presented as another negative example to future generations.

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Re:A blind eye by Jodka · 2018-09-01 11:59 · Score: 1

Bruce Perens wrote:

[under capitalism] if you refuse to play the game, your children starve to death....
That is the opposite of communism, where if you accept the game your children starve to death.
Industrial nationalization and farm collectivization under communist regimes have resulted in mass famines in North Korea, the USSR, Venezuela and China. In China alone, about 55 million people perished in a four-year period during the Great Leap Forward.
Participating in communism kills. Participating in capitalism saves children's lives (according to Bruce.) An idiot considers those points and concludes, "communism good, capitalism bad."
In addition to his inverted value system, Bruce is pushing an argument that communism provides social safety nets and capitalism excludes social safety nets. That is a lie. If communism indeed provided social safety nets, then it would not be widely associated mass starvation. Capitalism is the only economic system which generates sufficient wealth to adequately fund social safety nets.
One of the most zealous advocates for capitalism, the late Milton Friedman, devised the negative income tax specifically to benefit the poor and he advocated for it persistently. (It was eventually implemented under Reagan as the earned income tax credit) Earlier, Hayek maintained that social safety nets were consistent with classical liberalism.

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Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Re:A blind eye by Kohath · 2018-09-01 12:01 · Score: 1

Well, if you want to walk down a path that's killed a hundred million people over simple ideology,

Nah, I'll take an imperfectly good free market system over that. But only because I want people to be better off more than I want to steal from my neighbors paychecks.
Re: A blind eye by Pseudonym · 2018-09-01 18:47 · Score: 1

The communist picture of the human is just as noble and inspiring as the libertarian one. The community coming together towards a common goal and common vision.
Communist countries have also been the deadliest regimes in history.
While I think there would be less mass murder perpetrated by the government, there's no reason to think that pure libertarian countries would fare well. No country based on any kind of fundamentalism has ever been good for its people or the world.

--
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Re:A blind eye by thegarbz · 2018-09-01 22:40 · Score: 1

And I know some people will come up with the "no true Communism" argument - but those are mostly folks who have never experienced life in a communist country, and can't really understand the realities there.
The crux of their argument would be that neither have you.
Re:A blind eye by ChatHuant · 2018-09-02 06:03 · Score: 1

The crux of their argument would be that neither have you.
Of course, of course. That's how the "no true Scotsman" fallacy works, isn't it? No matter what counter-examples one offers, they aren't going to be the "true" whatever.
Re:A blind eye by HornWumpus · 2018-09-02 06:34 · Score: 1

Budding out?
Yes this years are coming along nicely. But one is kind of late, might run up against the start of rainy season.
You are looking for: 'butting out'.

--
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Re: A blind eye by HornWumpus · 2018-09-02 06:39 · Score: 1

It's inherently evil, because it has totalitarianism wrapped right into its structure.
All command economies do. They require excessive concentration of power, which then corrupts. Can't be fixed.
The only alternative it a religious interpretation of Marx. Fuck those people. Government is not going to atrophy if you give it enough power. That was the single stupidest thought Marx ever had, and he had a lot of stupid thoughts.

--
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Re:A blind eye by Cinnamon+Beige · 2018-09-02 07:43 · Score: 1

But sometimes you also have to recognize that there are other issues. In this case the integrity of free software really matters. I take a hard line on it, I'm a strong supporter of the GPL and its principals, even when they meant that software can be used for evil.
If you're of the philosophical view that politics run that deeply--and that even which end of the hardboiled egg you start at is a political choice--then the GPL and its principals are political, and moreover the political ideals that you believe should be supported and prioritized above all others, at least within the FOSS community.
From that perspective, we're in full agreement. I just happen to be against discrimination against people or groups, period, because I view it as simply not morally possible to justify--and that includes discriminating against people for failing to share your political beliefs...which is, roughly, what's behind the idea that you should leave your politics out of your work, because some people are utter shit at recognizing the irony involved in them preaching tolerance while having none for even mild skepticism of their ideology.
Re:A blind eye by thegarbz · 2018-09-02 09:50 · Score: 1

That's how the "no true Scotsman" fallacy works, isn't it?

Not quite. The no true scotsman fallacy takes issue with the subject at hand. This would more be taking issue with the claimed expert.

No matter what counter-examples one offers, they aren't going to be the "true" whatever.
This however can actually be said without fallacy of pretty much every political system in the world. No country exists that purely implements any of the theoretical forms of political systems perfectly and in isolation, and every regime including those of the most eastern of European nations sit somewhere along a very long sliding scale between the extremes of any definition.
There are however plenty of Scottish people in the world :-)
Re:A blind eye by ChatHuant · 2018-09-02 15:53 · Score: 1

This would more be taking issue with the claimed expert.
I may have misunderstood your post then; did you mean they'll say what happened in Eastern Europe was no true communism (but the real one will be all rainbows and ponies), or they'll say I misunderstood whatever I saw, and I should believe them and not my lying eyes?
Or, maybe you mean they'll argue my claims of living in Eastern Europe are lies? Sure, I am just a guy on the Internet, and I may be lying, but it's a really weak argument for their position (whoever "they" are). While I can't be arsed to bring proof I lived there, there are lots of well documented histories, movies and chronicles of life under communism in Eastern Europe, which anybody can consult, and they'll support my points.

There are however plenty of Scottish people in the world :-)
Ah, but is there any proof any of them are true Scotsmen?
Re:A blind eye by thegarbz · 2018-09-03 02:01 · Score: 1

I may have misunderstood your post then; did you mean they'll say what happened in Eastern Europe was no true communism (but the real one will be all rainbows and ponies), or they'll say I misunderstood whatever I saw, and I should believe them and not my lying eyes?
A big mix of everything. Every discussion on Slashdot about politics deals in absolutes and ideals. Every example bundles them together. I'm not saying that what you experienced wasn't inherently horrible, just that it wasn't pure communism as pure communism wasn't implemented anywhere without being assisted with other political systems and managed by a certain type of political power (typically tyranny).
The living conditions in eastern Europe sucked, but that was the result of the mixed bag of political systems present and not the result of pointing at one specific subset of it in isolation and declaring it evil.
That said it is plainly obvious that every single political system in isolation could be described as evil and the only acceptable solution in the world is to combine elements of each. There is no pure communism, there is no pure capitalism, there is no pure socialism. There are true Scotsman.

Ah, but is there any proof any of them are true Scotsmen?
Passports. Just like the political systems would be backed by their respective theoretical definitions. When discussing any political system its best to remember all those physics examples: "Imagine a frictionless plane...."

Should Politics be Separated from Work? by iCEBaLM · 2018-09-01 02:52 · Score: 2, Interesting

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."

Should politics be separated from our work? I'm not convinced it should be. The whole idea of open source / free software is political in nature as it is a means to keep power and control of a users computing with them and not in the hands of any outside entity such as a corporation or government.

So let's take this to the extreme: If computing and Linux were around in WW2, should we have let Hitler use Linux? What if Hitler's use of Linux was the deciding factor in NAZI Germany winning the war?

Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by plopez · 2018-09-01 02:57 · Score: 5, Informative

Computing was available. IBM sold tabulation machines and rented technicians to run them to the SS for use in the concentration camps.

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putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by plopez · 2018-09-01 03:02 · Score: 1

Not should, can.

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putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 03:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

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?
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by sjames · 2018-09-01 03:15 · Score: 1

Much to their profit and shame.
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by malkavian · 2018-09-01 03:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 03:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.
Re: Should Politics be Separated from Work? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 03:30 · Score: 1

Should we let Hitler use Linux? Absolutely, just as we let North Korea, Iran, and other enemies use Linux today. Most likely, though, the Nazis would have developed their own OS, and we would steal that after the war along with their best devs, none of whom would face trial for anything. Thatâ(TM)s exactly what we did with their rocket scientists.
If it would allow the Nazis to win?
Thatâ(TM)s a bullshit hypothetical because Linux has never won a war. If the war was so utterly equal in other ways that victory rested with the choice between operating systems, then the generals and strategists fucked up royally.
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by quantaman · 2018-09-01 03:46 · Score: 3, Informative

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."
Should politics be separated from our work? I'm not convinced it should be. The whole idea of open source / free software is political in nature as it is a means to keep power and control of a users computing with them and not in the hands of any outside entity such as a corporation or government.
I think it's a good idea to keep them separated. The 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. If Open Source gets rebranded as a left wing political philosophy you're going to start seeing legislation targeted at stopping those Libera^H^H^H Open Source people from writing code that controls important infrastructure.
The other big issue is that the Open Source community doesn't necessarily agree on politics outside of the idea of Open Source, and the Open Source community by it's nature tends to take political philosophy a bit more seriously than most. So branding community as a left-wing thing could really split the community. And you don't really want to get into discussions on whether to ban ICE while allowing the Chinese government.

So let's take this to the extreme: If computing and Linux were around in WW2, should we have let Hitler use Linux? What if Hitler's use of Linux was the deciding factor in NAZI Germany winning the war?
Ignoring the question of how you could stop him from using Linux...
Yes. I'm willing to sacrifice many of my principles to fight NAZIs.

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I stole this Sig
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by lgw · 2018-09-01 04:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

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Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by Solandri · 2018-09-01 04:24 · Score: 2

The underlying fundamental premise behind open source is that since software has zero cost of duplication and distribution, its benefit to society is maximized by making it free to copy and distribute. Thus maximizing the number of people who can benefit from using it.

If you then start stipulating reasons (other than self-preservation) for why you should be able to restrict people's ability to copy and distribute open source software, you're saying that software's benefit to society can be increased by restricting how it's copied and distributed. You're basically saying the closed source, for-profit software distribution model is superior to open source. At which point, why even bother working on an open source project?
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by The+Cynical+Critic · 2018-09-01 05:02 · Score: 1

Not really... IBM's local subsidiary was nationalized and thus taken out of their control years before the concentration camps opened so IBM couldn't have helped the nazis with the holocaust even if they wanted to.

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"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by Kohath · 2018-09-01 05:11 · Score: 1

The other big issue is that the Open Source community doesn't necessarily agree on politics...
The modern response to that is to bully people into agreeing or keeping quiet (and voting for Trump because he stands up to people who try to bully him).
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by Chas · 2018-09-01 05:29 · Score: 1

Ignoring the question of how you could stop him from using Linux...
Yes. I'm willing to sacrifice many of my principles to fight NAZIs.
Now onto the real problem.
*Parades 1000 random people in front of you*
Now. Pick out the "nazi".

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Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by Raenex · 2018-09-01 05:57 · Score: 1

Why allow people who think pineapple on pizza is acceptable to use Linux?
Don't knock it until you've tried it. I used to think the same, but ham and pineapple pizza is awesome.
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by AmiMoJo · 2018-09-01 06:13 · Score: 1

That's not how I recall it happening. The GOP rigged the vote with voter suppression and gerrymandering. After a couple of decades it's really paying off, but even so they only have a small majority and their president lost the popular vote.

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const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by iCEBaLM · 2018-09-01 06:28 · Score: 1

It's not our job as software developers to save the world.
Isn't it all of our responsibilities to save the world? If we can prevent an atrocity, shouldn't we?

We want freedom in software, and that freedom is extended to everyone, including evil people
Even the GPL has limits on use, most free software / open source licenses do.

Anything else is a slippery slope that will be detrimental to the entire community.
I understand the slippery slope argument and I agree that there isn't a good mechanism to determine where to draw the line, but I'm pretty sure the majority of people would choose not to aid NAZI Germany. I suppose it would be the developers who would have to decide, but I am absolutely not convinced that we should aid evil people and not aiding evil would be detrimental to the entire community.
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by quantaman · 2018-09-01 06:32 · Score: 1

Ignoring the question of how you could stop him from using Linux...
Yes. I'm willing to sacrifice many of my principles to fight NAZIs.
Now onto the real problem.
*Parades 1000 random people in front of you*
Now. Pick out the "nazi".
This one.
The response wasn't about modern day white supremacists or neo-Nazis, it was about about actual WWII Nazis. There are people who believe you should follow a moral philosophy even if it leads to an abhorrent outcome. For instance, Kant believed you should always tell the truth even a would-be murderer was asking you for the location of your friend. In modern times this has often been adapted to telling Nazis the location of hiding Jews.
My point is that you shouldn't follow your morals off a cliff. Yes you should keep politics out of your project, but if NAZI Germany, or modern day ISIS, is suddenly using your project to do great harm then you're more than free to try and stop them.

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I stole this Sig
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by Chas · 2018-09-01 06:41 · Score: 1

The "But if Nazi Germany" argument is a deliberate rhetorical faceplant though.
Quite simply, you're dealing with an impossible situation (Nazi Germany, dead for over 70 years, alive and using your software) with the benefit of that 70+ years of historical perspective.
The problem is, nobody in the time of Nazi Germany had that sort of perspective.
If they had, Hitler would have been murdered well before taking power.
So it remains a pointless, facile argument.
As for ISIS, it again comes down to ability to enforce.
How does one tell ISIS "no no no", when you don't have the ability to force them?

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by religionofpeas · 2018-09-01 06:57 · Score: 1

If we can prevent an atrocity, shouldn't we?
And who will we put in charge to decide what things are atrocities ?

the majority of people would choose not to aid NAZI Germany.
While not getting an absolute majority, they were the biggest party in the 1933 elections, with over 40% of the votes.
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by quantaman · 2018-09-01 06:59 · Score: 1

The "But if Nazi Germany" argument is a deliberate rhetorical faceplant though.
Quite simply, you're dealing with an impossible situation (Nazi Germany, dead for over 70 years, alive and using your software) with the benefit of that 70+ years of historical perspective.
The problem is, nobody in the time of Nazi Germany had that sort of perspective.
If they had, Hitler would have been murdered well before taking power.
Again the question specifically mentioned WWII, so well after Hitler took power. And people certainly understood he was really bad news, though they didn't know about the Holocaust yet. Either way, the premise of Hitler examples generally assume you do know about the extent of their evil.

So it remains a pointless, facile argument.
And I also I specifically mentioned ISIS for just that reason because they're modern and we know they're just as evil as Hitler was (though they are a far smaller threat).
I'm sorry, but I don't think you've raised a single point that wasn't a misunderstanding on your part or something I already explained but you ignored. I feel like you just really want to make these counterarguments, and the specific content of my posts was irrelevant.

As for ISIS, it again comes down to ability to enforce.
How does one tell ISIS "no no no", when you don't have the ability to force them?
Again... Do I need to restate points I made in my first comment you responded to so you don't act like it's some big shortcoming I hadn't thought of when you respond to my second comment?

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I stole this Sig
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by Tough+Love · 2018-09-01 08:19 · Score: 1

What if Hitler's use of Linux was the deciding factor in NAZI Germany winning the war?
Not tough enough, try this one: if Hitler submits a great patch, should Linus accept it?

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When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by Tough+Love · 2018-09-01 08:27 · Score: 1

should we have let Hitler use Linux?
If Hitler failed to respect the GPL then corrective action would be needed, up to and including defeating his army.

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When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by Tough+Love · 2018-09-01 08:33 · Score: 1

It's not our job as software developers to save the world.
That's not quite it. We did see it as our job to save the world, at least the part of it that was within our power to save. If we weren't trying to save the world then we would never have built Linux, instead we would have used our talents to make Windows or OS/X better. This does not apply to everybody involved of course, but certainly to enough key players that if there were no sense of mission then there would be no world domination today.

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When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by Tough+Love · 2018-09-01 08:37 · Score: 1

*Parades 1000 random people in front of you* Pick out the "nazi".
The guy wearing the the swastika?

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When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by thegarbz · 2018-09-01 22:42 · Score: 1

I'll leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by Tony+Isaac · 2018-09-02 02:14 · Score: 1

When it comes to politics, is open source really different from close-source or commercial software? Is it different from any other kind of product?
What if a US state wants to use certain drugs in lethal injections? Should the pharmaceutical company care about how it's product is being used? How is the answer to this question different from the answer to the question regarding open source software?
Re:Should Politics be Separated from Work? by HornWumpus · 2018-09-02 06:52 · Score: 1

^^ This is what 'liberals' actually believe!

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John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'

Don't be a tool by Kohath · 2018-09-01 02:54 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

Re:Don't be a tool by jedidiah · 2018-09-01 03:46 · Score: 1, Insightful

> There are people who care about others in the world,
You are a sanctimonious jackass trying to claim you are the only person with compassion or empathy.
Your perspective is not the only valid one. You can also see this as child kidnapping and endangerment. I could just as easily accuse you of being just as callous for your defense of child abuse.

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A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Re:Don't be a tool by AmiMoJo · 2018-09-01 04:00 · Score: 1, Insightful

They aren't about you.
Not sure I get your meaning here. Isn't caring about other people a pretty fundamental and important part of humanity? In fact people who really don't care about others are called psychopaths.
Surely that's not what you meant, but I feel like caring about the activities of ICE is important and a good thing. Especially when your actions at the voting booth directly lead to those actions and their effect on other people's lives.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Don't be a tool by Kohath · 2018-09-01 04:02 · Score: 1

Caring doesn't require surrendering yourself to become the news media's tool.
If you genuinely care, why don't you specifically help someone? Rather than posing or posturing or pretending political noise solves anything, why not donate your time or money to a charity that genuinely helps individuals who need help?
Re:Don't be a tool by Kohath · 2018-09-01 04:23 · Score: 2

Not sure I get your meaning here. Isn't caring about other people a pretty fundamental and important part of humanity? In fact people who really don't care about others are called psychopaths.
Pretending to care and making political noise isn't caring. Actually, genuinely helping individual people is caring. You have caring confused with posing and pretending.

Surely that's not what you meant, but I feel like caring about the activities of ICE is important and a good thing.
You don't know about "the activities of ICE". You only know stories. You don't know which stories are true or false or 40% true/60% false. You don't know all the stories the news media decided not to tell you -- to hide them from you.

Especially when your actions at the voting booth directly lead to those actions and their effect on other people's lives.
Not really. How do they? Because we're pretending laws might somehow change? Because we're fantasizing that open borders might someday be a thing?
In a non-fantasy, non-pretend world, voting isn't going to make sneaking across the border work out for people. Living a life without following the basic rules of a society is never going to have a high probability of a good outcome -- not in the US or anywhere else.
Telling people otherwise is the opposite of caring.
Re:Don't be a tool by AmiMoJo · 2018-09-01 04:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

Pretending to care and making political noise isn't caring. Actually, genuinely helping individual people is caring.
Trying to effect political change will help more people than trying to help one or two individually. Also, claiming that any sentiment you don't like is posturing (or "virtue signalling" in newspeak) is not an argument, it's just an out of hand dismissal.

You don't know which stories are true or false or 40% true/60% false.
Claiming that the truth is unknowable because all media lies all the time is a standard post-truth tactic to avoid criticism and generate apathy by making misdeeds easier to ignore.

Because we're pretending laws might somehow change?
It didn't even take a change in the law for ICE to start separating children from their parents, and it didn't take a chance in the law to stop it either. You argue that trying for political change is ineffective, when clearly it was effective in that case.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Don't be a tool by Kohath · 2018-09-01 05:06 · Score: 1

Pretending to care and making political noise isn't caring. Actually, genuinely helping individual people is caring.
Trying to effect political change will help more people than trying to help one or two individually. Also, claiming that any sentiment you don't like is posturing (or "virtue signalling" in newspeak) is not an argument, it's just an out of hand dismissal.
No it won't. You're just fantasizing . Because actually helping an individual costs you time or your own money, but fantasies don't cost you anything. You've helped no one, while declaring yourself a hero for having an emotion and waving a flag (and keeping your time and your money -- the things that genuinely help actual, individual people -- all to yourself).

You don't know which stories are true or false or 40% true/60% false.
Claiming that the truth is unknowable because all media lies all the time is a standard post-truth tactic to avoid criticism and generate apathy by making misdeeds easier to ignore.
Nevertheless, you still don't know.

Because we're pretending laws might somehow change?
It didn't even take a change in the law for ICE to start separating children from their parents, and it didn't take a chance in the law to stop it either. You argue that trying for political change is ineffective, when clearly it was effective in that case.
And you're encouraging people to keep walking children across the desert at night to be used as bargaining chips. So that parents can raise them up outside of the rules of a society -- forever preventing them from having a nation they can call home. And subjecting them to be deported later, back to a country where they were born but not raised, where they don't have friends or a job. Congrats.
Also, directly to the point, voting wasn't a factor.
Re:Don't be a tool by Chas · 2018-09-01 05:32 · Score: 1

There's "caring", and then there's pathological altruism.
What this guy did was the latter in the guise of the former.

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Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Re:Don't be a tool by Chas · 2018-09-01 05:43 · Score: 2

Trying to effect political change iwll help more people
Unless you happen to be wrong or misled.
So if you wind up harming people en-masse, then what?

Claiming that the truth is unknowable
The truth isn't unknowable. You simply haven't done the research to discover the truth for yourself. You're relying on hearsay.

It didn't even take a change in the law for ICE to start separating children from their parents, and it didn't take a chance in the law to stop it either. You argue that trying for political change is ineffective, when clearly it was effective in that case.
They started well before Trump took office. Because what's ALSO happening down on the border is CHILD TRAFFICKING. People picking up kids at the border, claiming to be the parents, and using loopholes in the law to escape. A change, years back, made this harder. As attempts are now made to actually verify whether or not said children actually ARE the offspring of the adult in question. Also, it came about because of rules changes stating that children being brought across by adults could NOT be incarcerated with the adults.
But keep focusing on images of babies being ripped from their mothers' arms...
You have blinders on. You only see what you're allowed to see. So you think it the sum total of everything...

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Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Re:Don't be a tool by Chas · 2018-09-01 05:45 · Score: 1

How would we enforce something like this.
Everyone is a moron, sooner or later.
A death penalty would result, eventually, in the extermination of humanity.
Granted, to the pathological environmental carebears, this would not be a Bad Thing...

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Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Re:Don't be a tool by AmiMoJo · 2018-09-01 05:53 · Score: 1

What research would you recommend people do?

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const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Don't be a tool by Chas · 2018-09-01 06:22 · Score: 1

Congratulations on missing the point.

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Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Re:Don't be a tool by Chas · 2018-09-01 06:35 · Score: 1

OFF WITH HIS HEADS!
The little one first!

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Re:Don't be a tool by AmiMoJo · 2018-09-01 07:03 · Score: 1

I'm genuinely interested in what research you would do to confirm the activities of ICE in relation to family separation.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Don't be a tool by Kohath · 2018-09-01 08:19 · Score: 1

Congratulations on being manipulated like a puppet to advance someone's political agenda to wield power over others.

This is still about microsoft buying github by t0y · 2018-09-01 02:54 · Score: 3, Informative

The same guy made a huge drama when Microsoft bought GitHub:
https://twitter.com/jamiebuild...
https://github.com/Microsoft/w...

Re:This is still about microsoft buying github by AmiMoJo · 2018-09-01 04:20 · Score: 1

Did you actually read those links? He is complaining about Microsoft violating the MIT licence that Lerna was released under, not about them buying GitHub.
It seems that Microsoft created their own fork of Lerna called "Rush" that was substantially the same. If the code wasn't copied and refactored directly it was at least heavily based off Lerna. The MIT licence states that the copyright message must remain on such code, so if he is right (and a quick scan at the version he was talking about before Microsoft tried to obfuscate it suggests that he is) then Microsoft is violating the Lerna project contributors' copyright.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC

Boo-hoo by guruevi · 2018-09-01 02:55 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

--
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Re:Boo-hoo by Kohath · 2018-09-01 03:27 · Score: 1

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.
1. Mostly, they don't. If one event happens and the story is retold 10,000 times, it's still one event, not 10,000 of them. Specific activist groups are making noise to advance a political agenda. They want power. And claiming victimhood has been a route to power.
(It won't work this time because voters probably can't be persuaded that a foreign national who snuck in or overstayed a visa matters more than all the people who didn't. Who knows though.)
2. People mainly have trouble because they decided to sneak across the border rather than follow the rules like you do. That mentality of sneaking around and not even trying to follow a society's rules leads to having trouble with law enforcement.
Rather than coming here, why didn't they go somewhere with no ICE and none of these rules? I suggest Canada.
Re:Boo-hoo by guruevi · 2018-09-01 03:40 · Score: 1

Ever tried getting healthcare in Canada?

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Re:Boo-hoo by joppeknol · 2018-09-01 03:43 · Score: 1

To my knowledge the US is still a democracy at heart. If you don't like you leaders, select a different one. If you don't find qualified candidates, make yourself electable.
If you don't get elected or don't get a good leader, blame the people who elect.
You can talk about misleading information, propaganda or marketing strategies, but in the end it is the American people who chose. Don't blame your government, blame the people who choose it.
Re:Boo-hoo by El+Cubano · 2018-09-01 03:50 · Score: 3, Interesting

No. As a US citizen, you're being ROBBED of your tax money...
I'll stop you right there. You are more right than you know. Taxation is not robbery only if you disagree with the use of the funds. If you think about the nature of taxation, it is really a confiscation of money from a person (remember that corporations are persons too). It is a confiscation because it is not is not an equitable and mutually agreed upon exchange. Therefore, it is always robbery. Also, the one on whom the tax is levied does not have the ability to not pay (in practice people evade taxes, but the government enforces compliance with harsh penalties) and market forces have on bearing on taxes (really taxes are themselves an influencer of the market).
All that said, taxes are necessary. The governed populace collectively identifies those matters which the government must discharge, manage, execute, etc., and via their representatives they levy taxes on themselves to see to it that those functions are accomplished.
This is what underlies the principal grievance of the American colonists prior to the American Revolution: taxation without representation. If taxation were not by its nature confiscatory, there would have been no grievance.
So, where we are left is to strike a careful balance of the things that the government should do and the things it should not do, then levy taxes appropriate to accomplishing the things it should do. This exercise must be accomplished at each level of government. It is painful, arduous, tedious, and never-ending. If you look at the last 100 years of history in the US, various crises have enabled the government to tip the balance toward expanding what government does at every level and especially at the federal level.
Of course, people are going to come out and say how every civilized nation provides healthcare, education, and jobs for their people. I suppose that is fine when you talk about a nation that has the population of Florida and you do not have a founding document that enumerates the power of the national government and then specifically prohibits it all other powers. To say nothing of the economic complexity of implementing those things on the scale of a nation and economy the size of the US.
Politics in the US is so polarized right now because lots of people want to rebalance the "things government should do" and "things government shouldn't do" while those who benefit from the expansion of government are not particularly excite about ceding their benefits. Add to that the fact that while many Republicans want to paint the party as being about small government, the reality is that they want as much government as the Democrats, but they want to get there by growing different parts of it.
Re:Boo-hoo by djinn6 · 2018-09-01 04:06 · Score: 1

You won't be saying that when you run into the real mafia.

Law enforcement takes a tiny cut of your taxes by comparison and they don't murder people for not paying taxes. Now if you really hate having money go towards your own protection, you should try moving to a country without decent law enforcement, such as Somalia.
Re:Boo-hoo by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 04:12 · Score: 1

Maybe. If they weaken the Fed gov to the point that the US ends up a virtual confederation, then they'd be a good thing for states like California being able to run their affairs on their own without Federal interference (lax immigration, lax drug laws, strict environmental laws, public healthcare). Less money being taken by DC would mean states being able to tax more for services in their own states while cutting unpopular services. Under the right circumstances, Calexit wouldn't be needed since DC would wither and die.
Re:Boo-hoo by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 04:13 · Score: 1

The problem is that the US is so big that no one is really represented anymore. It would be better for the US (and the world) if the US split into a few different countries, or a loose confederation of super-states.
Re:Boo-hoo by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 04:15 · Score: 1

I'd prefer somewhere like Czech Republic to be honest. Lax law enforcement as far as victimless crimes, porous borders due to the EU, and relatively small amount of spending on military parasitism abroad. The US military and law enforcement are oversized drains of resources -- parasites on the public dole.
Re:Boo-hoo by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 04:18 · Score: 1

As a citizen or legal resident with a serious problem, it's far faster and easier than in the USA. If you need a knee replacement due to poor life choices, you may have to wait a few months, no big deal -- your issue isn't immediately life threatening.
Re:Boo-hoo by AmiMoJo · 2018-09-01 04:25 · Score: 1

Protest is an important part of democracy. Trying to suppress protest by suggesting that people should not do it is anti-democratic.
Democracy is a balance. Direct democracy is a bad idea because it leads to the tyranny of the majority, so we have representative democracy. Sometimes the representation is broken though, as it currently is in the highly polarized United States. In which case protest is an important balance, and important way to address issues without resorting to civil war or direct attacks on politicians.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Boo-hoo by Kohath · 2018-09-01 04:40 · Score: 1

Ever tried getting healthcare in Canada?
No. I hear it's bad. I also hear it's good. So I don't know whether it's bad or good.
I can guess though: It's a human institution, so it can't be perfect. It's a government-run institution with a limited budget, so it has to be subject to distinct tradeoffs -- meaning you might get what you need, eventually, but you probably won't get exactly what you want. Canada's government seems less incompetent and corrupt than US governments, so that likely helps.
Once you get your Canadian passport, you can come to the US and buy health care if you can afford it. Or go to Costa Rica or somewhere else.
Re:Boo-hoo by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 04:48 · Score: 1

Problem is that the central government isn't terribly accountable to the places that actually have the people.
Re:Boo-hoo by El+Cubano · 2018-09-01 04:50 · Score: 1

The problem is that the US is so big that no one is really represented anymore. It would be better for the US (and the world) if the US split into a few different countries, or a loose confederation of super-states.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say, "The problem is that the US federal government is so big ..."
Interestingly, the Articles of Confederation created a federal government that was effectively unable to do anything. This reflected the greatest fear of the founders: an overly powerful central government. The US Constitution moderated a bit and permitted the federal government more power but put strict checks on that power. The original structure was a Federal Republic where the principal decisionmaking happened at the state level. For instance, US senators were initially chosen by state legislatures. A Constitutional amendment changed it to popular election. I am not convinced that was a good move. It seems that since the beginning we have trended toward increasing federal government size, scope, and power.
What you suggest could be accomplished by eliminating income tax and going strictly to a model where state governments fund the federal government (by whatever means the voters of each state choose to meet their state's obligation), drastically reducing the size of the federal government, returning the Senate to its originally intended role as the "states' house", and perhaps a few other things. It would be less radical than what you suggest and more likely to be implementable.
Re:Boo-hoo by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 05:02 · Score: 1

Even a stopped Russian clock is right twice a day.
Re:Boo-hoo by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 05:03 · Score: 1

That would basically be an EU-type funding model -- that might actually work pretty well.
Re:Boo-hoo by Chas · 2018-09-01 05:55 · Score: 1

If you wanna protest, protest.
If you want to jack around the license of a software project that you are not the sole contributor to, that's not a protest.

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Re:Boo-hoo by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 06:19 · Score: 1

Sure we do: expatriate. Renounce citizenship. US citizenship isn't worth all that much anyway.
Re:Boo-hoo by religionofpeas · 2018-09-01 07:03 · Score: 1

Renounce citizenship
If you can afford the $2350 per person.
Re:Boo-hoo by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 07:13 · Score: 1

As a one-time fee, it's still cheaper than being continually robbed blind by the filth in DC.
Re:Boo-hoo by Paul+Carver · 2018-09-01 07:32 · Score: 1

due to poor life choices
Is this completely pointless snarkiness that you threw in because you're an ass or does Canada really pass judgement on your life choices to determine quality of health care?
I would have assumed that care would be dependent only on the medical condition, not a moral judgement of the person.
Re:Boo-hoo by guruevi · 2018-09-01 11:37 · Score: 1

Tell that to the people who had their leg amputated because getting a surgery scheduled took too long.

--
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Re:Boo-hoo by thegarbz · 2018-09-01 22:47 · Score: 1

The problem is that the US is so big that no one is really represented anymore.
No. The size is not the problem here. The problem is the single source of voice is not dependent on whom *you* vote for, but rather who ponies up the money or which corporate interest alters that voice after it is elected.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Re:Boo-hoo by HornWumpus · 2018-09-02 07:06 · Score: 1

The law changed in Canada. Private health care (outside the system) is now legal.
Because it's a human right to spend money on health care, rather than just dying while waiting for the 'free' version.
Canadian courts have acknowledged that their health care system is _killing_ people with delays. You should too.

--
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Re:Boo-hoo by HornWumpus · 2018-09-02 07:09 · Score: 1

'Democracy' has always been broken. The Athenians voted to make Socrates commit suicide for pissing them off with truths.
Constitutionally limited democracy is what prevents two wolves from outvoting the single sheep.

--
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Re:Boo-hoo by j-beda · 2018-09-08 07:50 · Score: 1

The law changed in Canada. Private health care (outside the system) is now legal.
Because it's a human right to spend money on health care, rather than just dying while waiting for the 'free' version.
Canadian courts have acknowledged that their health care system is _killing_ people with delays. You should too.
I don't know where you are getting this type of information, but it doesn't match the reality "on the street" north of the US Canada border.
I can't find any references to the courts acknowledging such things. Is there data that the US health care system has fewer deaths-per-capita due to people not receiving required treatment? My understanding was that there were significant number of people with no coverage for serious conditions (cancer, heart, etc.) - do none of them die?
Anyhow, surveys of the population show great support for the publicly funded medical system, warts and all, in comparison to private medical systems.

Slippery one-upmanship by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 02:55 · Score: 1

This overall is a very slippery slope if this had continued. Why not ban, any part of government under Trump, any part of gov’t not under Trump, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Republicans, Democrats, Socialist, pro immigration groups, anti immigration groups, religious/anti-religious groups, pro gun/ anti gun I could make a list for days of groups that polarize any community. I may or may not fit into one or more of the groups I listed or others that you could add to this list. Overall the extreme polarization is what makes people more polarized as everyone gets appalled that one group won’t compromise so the next group won’t compromise. If elected leaders would start to compromise again, we might get some traction in solving real issues.

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by plopez · 2018-09-01 02:59 · Score: 2

What's wrong with restricting how you want your work to be used? It is yours after all.

--
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+

Re:SJW Cancer by sabt-pestnu · 2018-09-01 03:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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.

They real question is... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 03:09 · Score: 1

...could you have stopped him? What would you do, write a sternly worded letter? Start a blog campaign. "Like" a protest on Facebook?

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 03:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

Feel free, but then it's no longer FOSS and is effectively removed from the open source community.

But the OP misses the real point. by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 03:22 · Score: 1

How are you going to stop Hitler from using it? The code can be easily downloaded from anywhere. A license clause will not stop him. He has this delusion that telling a man with a gun what to do will be effective. He is totally clueless how the real world works.

Re:But the OP misses the real point. by Chas · 2018-09-01 05:23 · Score: 1

The problem with vindictive clauses like this is "what if this person is wrong about what they're trying to prevent"? What if they have gone nuts?
"This license prevents Joe Piscopo from using our software. Because Joe Piscopo eats babies."
*Cue Joe Piscopo* HUH?!?!?!?
Again, OSS is political about ONE THING. The freedom to use software for all.
Can anyone who wants to use your software? Yes? MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Anything else is best avoided, as there are 7+ billion people out there on the planet. And very, VERY few share all of your biases.

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by sjames · 2018-09-01 03:23 · Score: 1

On the other hand, seperating small children from their parents and not even keeping enough information to ever bring them back together is extreme. If that's OK, why not help China root out American spies and help whoever hack the election?

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by malkavian · 2018-09-01 03:25 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

Re:Will he say the FBI or CIA can't use it? by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 03:27 · Score: 1

Good for him -- sounds like he does the work he needs to, then takes breaks and maybe travels. Unlike the average American who takes 1 week of vacation per year.

Free software is free by mveloso · 2018-09-01 03:42 · Score: 1

IF you want control over your software, close it.

Re:Free software is free by djinn6 · 2018-09-01 04:29 · Score: 1

It wasn't even his software. Most of the commits were from another guy.
Re:Free software is free by Tony+Isaac · 2018-09-02 02:18 · Score: 1

How does this concept square with copyleft? Isn't copyleft an attempt to control the terms of use for "free" software?

Re:standard practice, stand up for your principles by novakyu · 2018-09-01 03:43 · Score: 1

Except here, the principles should have been these.

Re:This is a cancer in OSS. by novakyu · 2018-09-01 03:50 · Score: 1

And if this sort of thing is something that matters to you, put in a morality clause somewhere, so that people know something like this is a firing offense (or an excommunicable offense) when they commit to that relationship (employer-employee, or core contributor to a project).

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by lgw · 2018-09-01 03:53 · Score: 1, Insightful

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.

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 03:53 · Score: 1

It's weird how no one cared about these "separations" during the Obama administration.

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 04:01 · Score: 1

On the other hand, seperating small children from their parents and not even keeping enough information to ever bring them back together is extreme. If that's OK, why not help China root out American spies and help whoever hack the election?

SepArating children from parents wouldn't be a problem if the activist judges had not forced ICE to place children is lesser restrictive accommodations with the Flores v Reno settlement. And of course, had the parents taken the legal routes to immigration, there would be no problem either. An alleged parent places a child in danger by crossing an international border illegally and then has the gall to complain when they are sent to detention and the child is required by court order to not be detained with them.

Eric's memory is imperfect by Bruce+Perens · 2018-09-01 04:12 · Score: 3, Informative

Eric was not one of the original authors of the Open Source Definition. His memory is imperfect, I doubt deliberately, we're just old. The OSD was created about 9 months before the founding of OSI as the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Eric wasn't a Debian developer. The only change upon forming OSI was the name of the document. Later on, OSD #10 was added (which IMO was not necessary as it's implied by OSD#6).

Also, Eric's call for shunning is a bit over the top. Just get with the values of Open Source and move on, or be very careful to call your non-Open-Source paradigm something other than Open Source.

Nor does it seem necessary to have expelled a developer, if he wished to remain with the project after the removal of an ill-thought-out license term. We can preserve the ethos without being draconian.

--
Bruce Perens.

Re:Eric's memory is imperfect by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 04:25 · Score: 1

He was removed from the project for violating the code of conduct he created. Classic case of hoisted on one's own petard.
Re:Eric's memory is imperfect by Bruce+Perens · 2018-09-01 05:13 · Score: 2

Well, if you really want to convince people not to do it, tar and feather him and place him in stocks in the town square, where anyone who dislikes him or just wants some kicks can come along and do whatever they like to him (that's how it worked) unless one of his friends stands there constantly to defend him.
Yeah, over the top.

--
Bruce Perens.
Re:Eric's memory is imperfect by novakyu · 2018-09-01 11:32 · Score: 1

Later on, OSD #10 was added (which IMO was not necessary as it's implied by OSD#6).
I thought #10 was definitely different from #6. #10 prevents someone (maybe an Intel employee) from saying "This license applies only for code written to be compiled and run on x86 architecture." One could argue this is not a field-of-endeavor restriction, and nothing else in OSD prevents an exclusion against porting.
Re:Eric's memory is imperfect by Bruce+Perens · 2018-09-01 13:55 · Score: 1

I sure could argue that porting is a field of endeavor, but there's not much point since #10 isn't going anywhere.

--
Bruce Perens.

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by djinn6 · 2018-09-01 04:15 · Score: 1

You're talking like there's no Chinese open source devs. Some of them may support the Chinese government, while others may be against spying in general.

If you only work with people who agree with you on every political topic, you'll be forever working alone.

Re:Will he say the FBI or CIA can't use it? by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 04:22 · Score: 1

If he can keep pulling it off, more power to him. There's no pride in working for the same organization 60 hours a week with a week's vaca every year until they kick you out unceremoniously at age 60. YOLO. Live a little.

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by ShanghaiBill · 2018-09-01 04:29 · Score: 1

"Where they come down is not my business."
— Werner Von Braun

Werner von Braun would have been nobody if Robert Goddard has not openly published his liquid fueled rocket tech: The V2 was another example of the success of open science, and the V2 tech led to Sputnik and Apollo, as well as all the ICBMs. This is what can happen when we all cooperate and work together.

Nitpick: von is not capitalized in German names.

Futile gesture by DRJlaw · 2018-09-01 04:34 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

And U.S. law, 28 USC 1498, specifically allows contractors for the Federal Government to use intellectual property for government projects whether they are licensed or not. Link discusses 28 USC 1498(a) (patent infringement), but 28 USC 1498(b) covers copyright infringement.

Oh sure, you can file an action in the Federal Court of Claims for "recovery of [your] reasonable and entire compensation as damages for such infringement," but since the licensing cost for the rest of the world is zero... you do the math.

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by cayenne8 · 2018-09-01 04:41 · Score: 1, Troll

I know....

I just do not know what has happened to this country...why do we no longer seem to want to do what was formerly considered "common sense"?

Why do people not want to guard our borders, like any sovereign nation should (and most do)?

If someone is here by illegally, they have by definition broken the law, and should be sent back asap.

Again, this is common sense, what has happened so recently to many in the US to now start being against this basic fundamental operation of our government?

Hell, one of the few, enumerated responsibilities of the Federal Govt. is the protection of our borders.

WTF?

I mean, I don't mind you coming to my country...just sign the fucking guest book on the way in, eh?

--
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........

Why was he removed? by aardvarkjoe · 2018-09-01 04:43 · Score: 3, Interesting

The aspect of the story that doesn't make sense to me is the revocation of the developer's access. If he had gone and made the license change without consulting anyone, that would make sense, but by all accounts the other lead developers agreed to the change. In that case they should all share responsibility for making the change.

Is there something else going on with this guy?

--

How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?

Re:Why was he removed? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 05:20 · Score: 1

According to
https://github.com/lerna/lerna/pull/1633
He was removed for violating the Code Of Conduct that he himself created. The specific violations are listed here:
https://github.com/lerna/lerna/issues/1630

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by jwhyche · 2018-09-01 04:43 · Score: 3

I totally agree with you. Bush Omega and Obama never should has enabled that policy to start with. How about this? When we arrest them we just toss their children into prison with them? But wait! Families need to be kept together so lets just toss granny in there with them. Just like they do in NK or old style USSR? How about that?

--
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.

Re:SJW Cancer by AmiMoJo · 2018-09-01 04:44 · Score: 1

Very timely, very relevant: https://youtu.be/l63nY0AYebI

Most of this meta-outrage is manufactured.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC

Re:Will he say the FBI or CIA can't use it? by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 04:50 · Score: 1

Since many employers treat workers in the US poorly, why is anyone upset when the tables are turned?

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by sjames · 2018-09-01 04:57 · Score: 1

If their children are to be detained also, like the immigrant children are, then why shouldn't they be detained together? However, I note this didn't happen under Bush or Obama.

I'll also note that when citizens are detained awaiting trial, their children aren't just shipped some place without sufficient documentation to reunite them.

Politics are in everything in life by jbn-o · 2018-09-01 05:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

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

Re:Politics are in everything in life by Aighearach · 2018-09-01 07:04 · Score: 1

If BSD wasn't political, nobody would have every heard of the Apache 2 license other than webserver developers.
I do agree there are apolitical licenses, but Apache 2 is the only one you listed.
This example seems to prove that trying to separate politics is foolhardy and just helps them to run rampant. Instead, we should assume that participants are political, and seek to actively remove political actions from decision-making on a perpetual basis.
Re:Politics are in everything in life by jeromio · 2018-09-02 04:00 · Score: 1

Agreed, upvote, "like", disseminate widely.
One can only claim to be "apolitical" if one exists in the upper reaches of unassailable privilege.

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by sjames · 2018-09-01 05:01 · Score: 1

It also wouldn't happen if ICE had put the slightest bit of effort into keeping track of whose child was whose and where they went.

You know, honoring a basic duty of care?

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by sjames · 2018-09-01 05:02 · Score: 1

So you support American developers helping the Chinese government find and shoot American operatives?

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by sjames · 2018-09-01 05:05 · Score: 1

Actually, no I don't. But even more, I don't want them incarcerated with no way to reunite them with their parents. But note they're still incarcerated now, it's just that they're in kiddie jail rather than a family oriented facility.

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by bobbutts · 2018-09-01 05:08 · Score: 4, Informative

It's because you're buying into the strawman argument about the D's wanting to have totally open borders. That's not anywhere near the policy Obama had, and not the policy Democrats in office or their voters want. What should be common sense is to treat immigrants and refugees humanely regardless of whether or not they are ultimately allowed entry.

Re:SJW Cancer by Chas · 2018-09-01 05:11 · Score: 3, Informative

No. It's cancer.

Kyle wasn't thrown under a bus.

He tried to make a major change to the licensing of software that wasn't entirely his own.
He was smacked for it. End of story.

Kyle's still free to fork "My Shitty, Politically Vindictive Learna Offshoot".

He's simply not being allowed to do it for the primary project.

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 05:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

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?

Re:SJW Cancer by Raenex · 2018-09-01 05:34 · Score: 1

Very timely, very relevant: https://youtu.be/l63nY0AYebI

What does a video about some overwrought outrage over a few tweets, over a trailer for a video game, have to do with this topic? We're talking about developers, that wield actual power over a software project, going against one of the fundamental principles of open source.

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 05:40 · Score: 1

What should be common sense is to treat immigrants and refugees humanely regardless of whether or not they are ultimately allowed entry.

How is treating people that intentionally go around legal procedure and willfully break the law as criminals, no different than citizen criminals, not humane?

What do you propose as a solution to adults who drag their innocent children across a border and commit a crime in the process? In the past they were simply released and tried again and again and again. What would you have done differently? Sent the children to prison with the adults? Not punish criminals at all? Make immigrant criminals a different class that are housed differently than citizen criminals?

ICE is doing the best job they can with the limitations they have. Saying anything else is useless politics.

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2018-09-01 05:53 · Score: 1

.What should be common sense is to treat immigrants and refugees humanely regardless of whether or not they are ultimately allowed entry.

Now that’s just crazy talk.

--
#DeleteChrome

Re:SJW Cancer by Raenex · 2018-09-01 05:56 · Score: 1

This wasn't a cancer. This was Kyle being thrown under the bus

Kyle is the cancer. The other developers wizened up, a welcome change in the software industry.

https://masr140.net/%d8%a3%d8%b3%d8%b9%d8%a7%d8%b1 by fbk_rodina · 2018-09-01 05:56 · Score: 1

https://masr140.net/%D8%A3%D8%...

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by Chas · 2018-09-01 05:56 · Score: 1

Because the project he did it to wasn't solely "his".

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Nice to see sanity won out here! by slasher999 · 2018-09-01 05:58 · Score: 1

Hilarious. Some self-rightous putz decides he doesn't like law enforcement and corporations and gets himself kicked off a project. It's about time we start holding idiots like this accountable.

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by Chas · 2018-09-01 06:00 · Score: 2

If their children are to be detained also, like the immigrant children are, then why shouldn't they be detained together?

Because the law was changed, years ago, so that children couldn't be incarcerated in adult facilities.

However, I note this didn't happen under Bush or Obama.

You are mistaken.

I'll also note that when citizens are detained awaiting trial, their children aren't just shipped some place without sufficient documentation to reunite them.

Those are citizens. Different rules apply to citizens.

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re:This is a cancer in OSS. by Chas · 2018-09-01 06:05 · Score: 1

You say this not knowing what went on behind the scenes at the software project.

What if I told you the person was given the opportunity to keep their position while willingly retracting the new licensing terms...and refused?

How does THAT change the narrative in your head?

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by Raenex · 2018-09-01 06:07 · Score: 2

It's because you're buying into the strawman argument about the D's wanting to have totally open borders.

The Democrats have become the party of illegal immigration and transgender bathroom "rights".

They support the "sanctuary" city/states. They cry when Trump calls MS13 animals. They act hysterical when Trump has the same policy as Obama. They are the ones against a wall, deportations, and an end to chain migration. They are the ones who are happy their white grandchildren children want to be brown.

Re:Let Me Get This Straight by Chas · 2018-09-01 06:12 · Score: 2

Because we're hallucinating when we hear protesters chanting "Ban ICE!" and "No ban. No wall. No borders at all."

Right?

We're imagining that Democratic leaders insist on mangling the language to the point where they can't even say the legal term "Illegal aliens". And they're more concerned about the illegal aliens than the people they murder...

Right?

As to your BS assertion about cracking down on people employing illegal immigrants.
What do you THINK was going on?

The manpower of ICE is limited.

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re: the list of banned evil collaborators by Chas · 2018-09-01 06:14 · Score: 1

Okay Abe Skrillex. Calm down.

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re:SJW Cancer by AmiMoJo · 2018-09-01 06:32 · Score: 1

It says right in the summary that the other developers agreed to the change, then changed their minds after the backlash.

As someone who has frequently complained about people reacting to outrage you should be supporting their right to speech free from consequences and criticism.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by religionofpeas · 2018-09-01 06:48 · Score: 1

Common sense therefore dictates that the ICE needs to do their job.

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by Aighearach · 2018-09-01 06:57 · Score: 1

Turn off the newsvertainment, you might still have a brain cell or two left to salvage.

And if you do manage an actual thought for a moment, consider that the views of your political enemies are probably not accurately explained to you on newsvertainment, leaving you just jousting at distant windmills.

People who don't want to "guard our borders?" Those are distant windmills that your favorite source of Newsvertainment is telling you are Liberaals. They're not. Find a Democrat and just ask them straight out if they support guarding the border, or not.

Re:Better for whom? by b0s0z0ku · 2018-09-01 07:17 · Score: 1

Yet the average middle-class Canadian isn't ruined by a car accident or a medical emergency. There are more middle-class and poor Canadians that benefit from their system than ultra-rich people who can afford to go to the US. The stuff that's done in the US is either: (a) elective -- things like getting knee replacement in a month instead of six months or (b) treatment for very rare diseases Either way, outcomes in Canada, for the average Canadian, are better than average outcomes in the US. You have to look at averages, not what the top 0.1% do.

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by Gadget_Guy · 2018-09-01 07:36 · Score: 1

And do the 'immigrants' treat the natives of the country properly? I mean if I come to another country, say Mexico, and I am a white Anglo, and I go around waving the USAian flag, refusing to speak or learn any Spanish, claim I am superior in every way to native Mexicans, whom i deride as weak and lazy, and then demand that their hospitals provide me with free medical care after I wind up in the hospital because I was drinking and driving and ran a family of Mexicans of the road, would you say the Mexicans were racist when they want me to go back to my own country?

I would say that you are racist for claiming that all illegal immigrants act like this. You have simply imagined a worst-case scenario and used this as your evidence that immigrants are bad.

Communism is a Grift by Jodka · 2018-09-01 07:42 · Score: 2

Bruce Perens wrote:

Communism isn't inherently evil, it's just that it has often come with totalitarianism.

Communism is a lie told by tyrants to grow and sustain political support for themselves.

Because falsehoods told to advance malevolent ends are categorically evil, Communism is inherently evil.

So Bruce, would you say it is an accurate characterization of your own beliefs that the lies and propaganda use by tyrants to gain power are not themselves evil? That it is exclusively the exercise of power for harmful ends which is evil? If so, what is your basis for that distinction? Additionally, would you make the same distinction for any other grift, such as an advance-fee scam; Are the deliberate falsehoods told to the mark not evil, but only the subsequent monetary transactions evil?

"It's not that advance-fee deals with Nigerians don't work, its just that they have never really been tried," says the mark.

--
Ceci n'est pas une signature.

Re:A blind eye (WHy I choose BSD) by Billly+Gates · 2018-09-01 07:54 · Score: 1

Agreed. Ice has been evil separating children for parents to make angry voters happy. However, what gives me a damn right to tell others what to do on their own computers?

Unless I am paying them I agree with the libertarians on this one. It is also why I am a firm believer in the BSD/MIT style license. If someone wants to use my code great. I shouldn't have to tell others what I want because they use a an #include statement. Most GPL users do not know the difference between copyleft and GPL which is infuriating too as the GPL will spread to other software by a linkage otherwise.

But it is the same principle. While I oppose evil things like most humans who are not psychopaths I do not approve others telling me what to do on my PC and likewise I will honor this in return.

--
http://saveie6.com/

Re:SJW Cacer by Megol · 2018-09-01 07:59 · Score: 1

Yet another definition of SJW. Should start collecting these...

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by Darinbob · 2018-09-01 09:42 · Score: 1

It's HOW you control the borders that matters.

name calling by nten · 2018-09-01 10:29 · Score: 1

Compassion is not the only virtue. Other virtues like fairness or loyalty can sometimes be more important. Letting those other virtues hold sway does not make someone a psychopath.

--
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.

You already have tyranny by rsilvergun · 2018-09-01 10:48 · Score: 1

don't pay your taxes and you'll go to jail. We accept a certain level of tyranny in exchange for the benefits of a functioning government and civilization.

You're right Communism doesn't work, but your reasons are wrong. It's because you never get passed the "Dictatorship of the Proles". Basically, when you do the large scale ownership transfer (transferring, let us remember, the _means_ of production, not the fruits of said production) inevitably a violent dictator inserts themselves into the chaos that follows and takes it all for them selves. Happened to Russia, happened to China. Communism is too radical a change all at once. Especially since that change is usually happening in the background of a major economic collapse (since that's usually what got folks to approve the change in the first place).

The solution is Democratic Socialism. Don't bother with the ownership change. Instead, regulate what folks can do with their property. Money is _power_. Never forget that. With enough money someone can and will control your access to food, shelter and medicine and with that they control _you_. To prevent that We form Democratic governments to regulate how much wealth individuals can have.

As for America vs Eastern Europe, that has more to do with your former country being severely damaged in WWII and America getting away scott free. America was able to consolidate it's wealth during the late 40s, 50s and 60s while the rest of the world recovered. It didn't help that Russia kept screwing with Eastern Europe the whole time (or that we were occasionally butting our heads in and causing trouble).

--
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/

Re:You already have tyranny by ChatHuant · 2018-09-01 14:21 · Score: 1

don't pay your taxes and you'll go to jail. We accept a certain level of tyranny in exchange for the benefits of a functioning government and civilization.

That's the kind of rhetoric that stops me from taking libertarians seriously. No, paying taxes is not tyranny, having to get a license to be allowed to drive doesn't make a country a dictatorship, and having to serve all your store's customers no matter what their race or sex isn't slavery either.

when you do the large scale ownership transfer (transferring, let us remember, the _means_ of production, not the fruits of said production) inevitably a violent dictator inserts themselves into the chaos that follows and takes it all for them selves.
You have things backwards. You don't expropriate the means of production first and then get a dictatorship. You get the dictatorship first, and use it to forcefully "transfer" the means of production. Remember that, according to Marx and Engels, dictatorship (of the proletariat) is a necessary stage in the transition to communism; Engels pointed to the Paris Commune as an example of dictatorship of the proletariat - and we know how well that worked out.

Re:Let Me Get This Straight by Chas · 2018-09-01 10:54 · Score: 1

The problem with saying illegal alien...

Is that it hurts someone's fee fees.

Period.

It is the correct legal term. Not only for adults who cross the border illegally, but for the child as well.
It doesn't automatically mean "career criminal". It means that they are in this country illegally. Perhaps not by choice, but that doesn't change the fact that they're here and should not be.

The rest of your argument is simply handwavium.

--

Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re: "I just send the rockets up" by reiterate · 2018-09-01 13:00 · Score: 1

Calm down, it's a perfectly valid reference to make. There should be a new term for you, the people that start chirping Godwin like a stuck record whenever you can. I don't like Nazis but you're just being annoying.

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by sjames · 2018-09-01 15:33 · Score: 1

Children may be fostered, but in the event the parent is found not guilty, there is no reason not to reunite them.

If we're going to repatriate the children (hint, wwe don't), then the parents can as well go with them.

Of course, in some cases per international treaties we owe the parents and their children a right to a hearing for asylum. At least some of them are NOT here illegally, their legality simply hasn't been determined yet.

You seem desperate to find some way that it is not gross negligence to remove a child from their parents without even documenting where the child ended up. Sorry, not buying it. There exists no theory where that is adequate to the duty of care.

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by sjames · 2018-09-01 15:34 · Score: 1

So detain the parents in a children's facility.

Re: "I just send the rockets up" by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 15:42 · Score: 1

Maybe they should fix their own shitty countries instead of sneaking into the US Illegally.

Re: Slippery one-upmanship by sjames · 2018-09-01 15:43 · Score: 1

Let's see, either a bunch of people are dreaming or you are. Wonder which it could be.....

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by sjames · 2018-09-01 15:48 · Score: 1

Failing to even know where the kids end up is pure negligence in any event, I hope you can agree with that. Quite a few of the kids pretrty much disappeared into the system with no documentation, no plan to figure out if the adults they arrived with are relatives and no ability to even figure out if they might have adult relatives legally in this country.

That is black and white evil no matter what you think the kid's proper disposition might be.

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by sjames · 2018-09-01 17:57 · Score: 1

It is a well understood legal concept that at some point negligence becomes criminal. I'm pretty sure sending a small child away and not knowing where is a good example. This is compounded when you sent the child away after involuntary seperation from a presumptive parent or guardian. Doing it as a matter of policy even when the child is old enough to clearly state what their relation is to the adults is worse. Then further chalking it up as a deterrence (that is, a punishment) tips it right over the cliff into evil.

There's really no room to talk around that.

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by thegarbz · 2018-09-01 22:27 · Score: 1

They cry when Trump calls MS13 animals.

If you think that's what anyone cried about then you weren't paying attention to the animal speech. But then I'm not surprised since you just ....

when Trump has the same policy as Obama

went full retard.

Re: "I just send the rockets up" by Anonymous Coward · 2018-09-01 23:07 · Score: 2, Informative

There is no human right to go to the United States. That is a privilege we may chose to offer or not. This has nothing to do with morality.

If the US was directly responsible for the horrible conditions others find themselves in then you might have an argument on morality grounds. But otherwise, no non-US citizens have a right to come to the United States or any other nation for that matter.

CAPTCHA: patriot (not kidding)

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by rtb61 · 2018-09-01 23:12 · Score: 1

Reality is, every venue is a venue for politics, why because your failure to participate can kill you, straight up. Politics is the single most important issue in any citizens life. Failure leads to war, where you die as a soldier, failure leads to poisoned water you pay for it's low quality drink it an die, failure leads to exclusion from health services, where you basically suffer and die, failure leads to crap law enforcers who shoot you for fun and you die. Your failure to participate in politics can and will kill you, that is just the way it is. Corporate main stream media lied to you for decades, claiming politics as a topic of discussion that should be avoided, so that you would not participate in politics and the corporations could basically kill you for fun and profit.

Should they discuss the uses of FOSS software upon a political basis, of course but you do not deny access, you deny you services, that is all. To be clear on immigration, I take a strictly democratic stance, put it to the public and what they decide as acceptable for immigration is what it will be (I would guess that the majority would be quite immigration restrictive, so be it).

As for immigrants coming from shitty poorly run countries, well, that is what they allow their country to be, so why will they make things better any where else. Likely they will make things worse because they accepted worse probably even supported worse. Test upon a individual basis and exclude those genetically predisposed to psychopathy and of low IQ. Your country will not get better if you bring in worse people than you current average. Genetics are what they are.

--
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by Raenex · 2018-09-01 23:15 · Score: 1

If you think that's what anyone cried about then you weren't paying attention to the animal speech

Trump was responding to a comment that explicitly mentioned MS13. That the libshits and you latched on to "animals" out of context is no surprise. Trump has been talking about MS13 for a long time. Maybe if you got out of your libshit media bubble you'd figure out you've been swimming in propaganda soup. Or maybe you like it that way.

But don't take my word for it. You can only hide the context for so long in the Internet age, so instead of just taking it out of context, the libshit media doubled down and then cried even after they acknowledged he was talking about MS13.

went full retard

It isn't the exact same policy, but separating families is not new. Obama initially detained families together. The courts ruled that the children couldn't be contained. So Obama just released "families" together (you know this policy just creates an incentive to traffic children, right?)

Obama also separated families, too, just not as much.

ICE is upholding the law against those breaking it by brainchill · 2018-09-02 02:57 · Score: 1

It's not about politics, it's about a federal law enforcement organization enforcing the laws of this country... It's their job and the whole purpose of their existence. It isn't their job to write laws, that's what congress does, if you don't like it lobby congress rather than complaining about ICE?

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by Cinnamon+Beige · 2018-09-02 03:56 · Score: 1

.What should be common sense is to treat immigrants and refugees humanely regardless of whether or not they are ultimately allowed entry.

Now that’s just crazy talk.

The feasibility of doing so depends on the ability to process the volume in which they arrive--of course, there is the option of running on a system where, instead of taking the time and effort to review everybody who wants in so they all have a chance, having cut-off and automatically rejecting anybody who arrives after the limit's been hit.

Of course, this could be also dealt with by ensuring ICE has the necessary resources to actually do their job in a timely and humane manner even when they suddenly have the proverbial firehouse turned on them. So in that light, cutting them off from resources (and harassing their employees) is perhaps not the brightest idea.

Finally a sensible response by ebvwfbw · 2018-09-02 05:37 · Score: 1

The whole ice thing is BS. Those women were being separated from their kids just like every other woman in the USA going to jail. They're criminals. They're doing what they're supposed to be doing. This is also what the liberal 9th circuit said had to be done.

So it's a lie wrapped up in a moral argument and people are too stupid to realize that. It's bullshit.

Re:"I just send the rockets up" by HornWumpus · 2018-09-02 06:27 · Score: 1

That's the Tom Lehrer quote anyhow.

--
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'

Re:Better for whom? by HornWumpus · 2018-09-02 07:03 · Score: 1

The 'Average' middle class American isn't either. You are clearly buying into someone's propaganda. Check that.

--
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by sjames · 2018-09-02 08:43 · Score: 1

It doesn't take criminal courts to choose not to associate with unsavory people. Only to impose criminal penalty.

But as far as I can tell, the facts at hand aren't contested.

Re:Slippery one-upmanship by sjames · 2018-09-04 11:21 · Score: 1

What word was that? We did have a problem of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children presenting themselves at the border. But they were not split from their parents with no idea how to reunite them by any part of the Obama administration, or indeed, any American.

It was not fine, but the U.S. didn't do it.

Re:SJW Cancer by sabt-pestnu · 2018-09-07 15:11 · Score: 1

Okay, let's go with cancer, then. It metastasized, the community excised the most visible lump, and the rest responded to chemo.

He was smacked for it. End of story.

And with that, you drive the bus over him, deliberately missing the folks who told him "yeah, you've got a good idea there, do it". Great driving there.

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