
To fight ‘evil’ ICE, an engineer pulled his code off GitHub - donohoe
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/20/20876495/github-seth-vargo-pulled-code-chef-ice-deportations-trump-administration
======
ultrarunner
"I do not believe that it is appropriate, practical, or within our mission to
examine specific government projects with the purpose of selecting which U.S.
agencies we should or should not do business."

This strikes me as a tone-deaf and transparently greedy response. I'm a little
shocked that rather than taking a skeptical stance on the actual evil of ICE's
actions, this CEO seems to accept it and argue that morality has no place in
business.

Yes it is appropriate to make decisions about with whom you do business.

Yes it is practical to examine the direct outcomes of your company's
contributions.

If it's not within your mission to make ethical business decisions maybe
you're one of the bad guys.

~~~
Chris2048
"tone-deaf" is the new "cultural fit" \- fits any situation without
explanation.

What _is_ the "evil" of ICE's actions? FUD about "cages" that where fine when
it was Obama doing it?

------
ssivark
Maybe a good time to discuss the importance of software licenses, particularly
copyleft? It's funny somehow folks running businesses always talk about
applying proprietary licensing for their outputs assuming they have perfect
control over their inputs.

------
Justsignedup
Can someone expain please? Wouldn't the devs just have a local copy? Or I
guess their prod builds all crashed trying to install the dependency?

~~~
ultrarunner
It appears that he deleted a listing from RubyGems, a (the?) package
distribution platform for Ruby. Yes they probably have several copies, but now
Bundler won't work until they re-host & re-register the gem. Deleting from
RubyGems was probably more impactful than removing it from Github.

I'm unfamiliar with how Chef works, but I wouldn't be surprised if a `bundle
install` was part of the workflow. Maybe someone else with more experience
here can fill in some gaps.

------
flyinglizard
Is the outcry against ICE happening due to its operating methods or is it
contesting the legitimacy of ICE altogether?

~~~
viraptor
It can realistically be only against the methods. Even before ICE existed,
other people had similar roles, just distributed in different departments. If
ICE was scrapped, police/DHS would have to take over at least some of their
current responsibilities.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Which is why I don’t understand efforts to disband ICE. People in the US
illegally will still be deported, it’s just a change in who will do the
deporting. DHS could absorb ICE, rebadge those folks, and now DHS is handling
deportations.

~~~
bdhess
The argument is that ICE doesn’t treat its detainees humanely, because the
institutional culture within ICE is pervasively rotten beyond repair.

The hope is that by disbanding ICE and handing its responsibilities over to
new management with a better track record, we might get a better outcome.

I don’t think the proponents of this plan would support simply rebadging
current ICE employees without some kind of filtering process.

(I don’t have a strong opinion on the matter, just restating the arguments as
I understand them.)

------
chkaloon
Fork?

