
OSOS: Block China from Using Open Source - daenz
https://github.com/amoffat/OSOS
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Communitivity
No, just no. I want Open Source to be a true meritocracy, irrespective of
creed, race, identity, country, etc. I think I am not alone in that.

If we start using Open Source as a political weapon, we've let the genii out
of their bottles, and can never put them back - we will have forever changed
how non-developers use Open Source.

Projects could then start asking things like "Are you pro-life?", "Are you
pro-choice", "Do you support impeachment?", "Do you support making America
great again?".

Taken to the extreme, projects could become Pro-X and their stance used as
campaign advertising fodder (e.g., Apache powers X% of the world's web, and
they stand behind candidate Y), users choose a project not because it is the
best technically or fits their need the best, but because it supports their
favorite cause, or because it echoes their favorite rallying cry of protest.

We would also ensure Open Source will not, can not, be used on government
programs. Government programs are not allowed to show favoritism to any vendor
or support any political cause or candidate. If a specific Open Source project
supports a particular cause or candidate, then choosing to use/contribute to
that project could be construed as favoritism, and many program managers will
shy away from even the hint of the appearance of favoritism.

Please do not support OSOS, or anything like it. Please do spread this caution
far and wide.

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heraclius
I think this is an important concern. Two possible responses follow, though I
don’t think that they are entirely adequate.

First of all, it’s not obvious why we should only consider technical
concerns—perhaps reduced performance is a price worth paying. One might even
say that technical performance is useless as a metric per se; technical
performance is useful insofar as it works for good ends, which is exactly the
sort of norm OSOS would work towards.

Second, it is possible to endorse some norms as above concerning who should
use software without endorsing _all possible norms_ , in the same way that we
have a nonzero number of relatively uncontentious free speech restrictions
(e.g., don’t shout fire, etc.) Now, whether OSOS is something that can be
justified in a similar fashion is yet to be seen, but it is certainly worth
trying.

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heraclius
I share the author’s concern about the spread of the party’s totalitarianism.
But one should think very carefully about whether this sort of action is
productive, and I do not see anything like the level of reflexion that would
be sensible in thinking about this; I hope that if this takes off such
discussion takes place before, perhaps here.

A small contribution, then:

1\. Open source components of VPNs help the spread of democracy, but wouldn’t
work under OSOS.

2\. Norms on communities like GitHub at the moment also exist in China because
programmers will have to use GitHub (for example); now communities that will
comply with CCP-imposed norms will spring up to replace them. And the Chinese
market is pretty big.

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est
Judging developers by origin of country is the same as judging people by
color. This is hate speech.

~~~
laike9m
+1

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robjan
The Chinese people and Chinese government are different things. Why
arbitrarily punish all of the citizens and organisations of one country?

Additionally this would punish anyone visiting China including humanitarian
organisations and diplomats.

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williamstein
Please no. My favorite new library [https://ant.design/](https://ant.design/)
is a contribution to open source from China.

~~~
robjan
A significant number of contributions towards React (Native) and its libraries
are from China. The ecosystem would be worse off if OSOS were included.

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simonblack
Easy fix. Download the program-source and then remove the China-block from the
source. Next!!

Who decides who is 'not allowed' to use the open-source program? It's a silly
concept, and very open to political abuse.

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verdverm
How does this compare or relate to the wave of projects moving to source
available?

How about the Chef / ICE debacle which found support here?

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laike9m
How about "ban Trump supporters from using Open Source projects", would it be
nicer?

See, this type of thing can be abused easily.

