
US ICE Contract with GitHub Sparks Developer Protests - throw0101a
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/ice-contract-github-sparks-developer-protests/604339/
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JanSt
Who is going to choose who the good / bad people / companies / institutions
are? Activists?

You cannot (even in good faith) deny certain groups access without undermining
our societies. E. g. denying certain groups human rights is not acceptable.
Even murderers have to have a fair trial and most countries don't allow the
death penalty because human rights apply to everyone.

It's the same with open source. Once you deny access to certain groups, it's
not _free_ anymore. It's politized. As a german I've learned a lot about where
exclusion of certain groups and people lead. Who is the good guys? From my
grandparents generation POV the bad guys where the "greedy jews" and they were
the good. From my POV the reverse is true.

Values have to be universal, even if you don't like the other side. You don't
have to like ICE, but either you stand with your values or you don't.

~~~
BitwiseFool
We have a system for determining these kinds of questions - the courts. It's
not the open source community's responsibility to make sure other
organizations are behaving ethically.

If people believe ICE has broken laws and violated human rights they should be
pursuing a trial, not attacking the organization's ability to host Git repos.

~~~
mschuster91
> If people believe ICE has broken laws and violated human rights they should
> be pursuing a trial

That would require a fair and balanced court system which the US lacks.

~~~
CompanionCuuube
This is the same kind of justification for taking the law into your own hands
because you don't think that the justice system will do its job.

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redisman
What is the contract for? The common open source licenses certainly don't fit
with the idea of blacklisting organizations from using them. ICE is probably
on the tamer end of governmental organizations using open source too, I'd
imagine every intelligence agency and terrorist organization in the world uses
some open source code and software.

~~~
mirimir
ICE uses a GitHub Enterprise Server.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
> “Just as Microsoft for more than three decades has licensed Microsoft Word
> without demanding to know what customers use it to write, we believe it
> would be wrong for GitHub to demand that software developers tell us what
> they are using our tools to do,” Friedman wrote. If you place restrictions
> on who can use open source, is it still open?

That is the whole beauty and danger of open source, in that it empowers
developers and users. It is up to the developers and users of open source to
decide how they use that power.

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BitwiseFool
I strongly believe in the four essential freedoms, especially "(0) The freedom
to run the program as you wish, for whatever purpose."

To blacklist organizations from using open source would violate this.

If we allow developers/contributors to add conditions on who can use their
code (ICE), or for what purposes it can be used (Can't be for immigration),
then we establish a bad precedent. Just think of how many other passionate
causes there are today. What if a conservative developer wants to prevent the
DNC from using their code?

If you believe open source code is being used maliciously, then you should use
the tools your society gives you to protest/shut it down rather than change
the meaning of open source.

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softwaredoug
> open source’s commitment to “inverting power structures and creating access
> and opportunities for everyone.”

I’m pretty sure the current reality is open source reinforcing power
structures. Only large companies with deep pockets can maintain open source,
and they do so to forward some strategy.

~~~
commandlinefan
Even if open source was committed to “inverting existing power structures” (I
don’t think it ever was), the only power structures it would ever be able to
influence would be profit-driven corporations: with open source equivalents to
commercial software, corporations have to work harder to compete and commit to
more transparency. Being able to see and modify software source code is
completely unrelated to government functions.

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tbrownaw
_In December, Schneeman signed an open letter alongside 2,000 other open-
source contributors, who called the ICE contract a betrayal of open source’s
commitment to “inverting power structures and creating access and
opportunities for everyone.”_

I'm pretty sure I remember an "even if an evil dictator wants to use it to
murder babies" as a quick sanity check for whether a proposed license is
actually open.

 _In response to the GitHub fracas, the developer Coraline Ada Ehmke
introduced the Hippocratic License—named for the Hippocratic oath—which
caveats traditional open-source licensing with restrictions on uses that
“actively and knowingly endanger, harm, or otherwise threaten the physical,
mental, economic, or general well-being of underprivileged individuals or
groups.” But the Open Source Initiative rejected it. “Giving everyone freedom
means giving evil people freedom, too,” reads its abridged definition of open
source._

Yep.

~~~
Miner49er
The obvious problem here is that in this case open source software is being
used to take away other people's freedoms.

So who's freedom wins out? ICE's freedom to use open source code, or ICE's
victims' freedom?

The activists think that the victims' freedom should win, and I'd argue that's
the case. ICE is using open source software to prevent other people from using
open source software by locking them up.

The freedom to use open source software should stop at limiting other people's
freedom to use it.

"Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins"

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> The freedom to use open source software should stop at limiting other
> people's freedom to use it.

Since the people protesting ICE's use of open source software, are trying to
limit ICE's freedom to use open source software, then they should not be able
to use open source software.

~~~
Miner49er
Fair enough point, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the real world.

It's like saying, "the guys killing Nazis are just as bad as the Nazis -
they're both killing people."

I mean sure, but if nobody killed the Nazis in WWII where would we be today?

Or another example, kidnapping is illegal, but it's good for a police officer
to "kidnap" (arrest) a kidnapper to get them stop kidnapping, right? The way
your looking at it, the police officer is just as bad as the original
kidnapper.

~~~
CompanionCuuube
Your example is bad because it mistakes arrest for kidnapping, when the two
are different actions.

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scarejunba
> ... _called the ICE contract a betrayal of open source’s commitment to
> “inverting power structures and creating access and opportunities for
> everyone.”_

Hmm, interesting. I always saw open-source from a freedom and power angle. I
have a program, I should be able to edit it. I never saw it in a social
justice angle of "inverting power structures". It may well be the case that
having Linux be GPL helps Amazon more than me and entrenches power structures
and I'd still not be upset because it does help me.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
The open source movement is explicitly about power: who gets to (legally)
copy/see/modify/distribute/etc.

So it's always fun to see these demands to "keep politics out of it". If you
did not see that is was nothing but politics before, it's because you don't
notice the politics when you agree with them.

That doesn't mean the analogy you are quoting is entirely valid or meaningful:
OSS is pretty close to communism in it's "from each what they can, to each
according to their needs". But it's easy to see that zero marginal costs are
required for this to work.

~~~
scarejunba
Oh no, I'm not asking to "keep politics out of it". The politics are most
definitely part of it, but like everything else, they very narrowly specify
the politics: "Code must be free. If you have a binary, you should have the
right to edit it.". That's a really wise political angle and I'm grateful for
all the people who made it possible.

But it doesn't take a position on abortion or immigration or anything and I
prefer it that way.

To be clear, I recognize the right for free people to protest companies. I
recognize the right for employees to protest their employers' dealings with
companies.

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ab_testing
This is so silly. So activists don't want ICE to use Github. Great, they can
just use

\- Gitlab \- Google Cloud Code \- Bitbucket \- Sourceforge \- Azure Repos \-
Oracle Developer Cloud \- IBM Cloud \- AWS Code Commit \- Adobe Cloud Manager
Repository

There are so many options and a lot of these companies love to work with the
US Government

~~~
fourstar
It’s not about just that for these kind of people. What they want to do is
parade around and display (virtual signal) that they are morally superior.
It’s almost poetic, really. They’re upset that an organization known for
deporting illegal aliens is doing their job. That’s really what it’s about.
They want open borders and think everyone is entitled to live in the US.
Judging from the photo posted, it’s exactly the kind of demographic I’d
expect. This is #woke culture in a nutshell. I fully support any tech company
wanting to work with the government.

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dang
Many threads:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=github%20ice%20comments%3E10&sort=byDate&type=story)

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threatofrain
What do these GitHub protesters imagine is the end-game? ICE goes to GitLab?

~~~
commandlinefan
Or just use Git without Github - Git is free and open source. Or use
Subversion. All these protesters are actually doing is _hurting_ open source
by removing a revenue source that could be funneled into improving other open
source projects. Unless they’re going to follow this line of thinking to its
logical conclusion of creating a special NGGPL (non-government GPL) license
and preventing government agencies from using open source projects.

