5 ms·

If you contribute to open source software then you’re contributing to military projects.

robin_reala 8y ago
That’s the standard argument, and yes, it’s true. There’s a difference between actively working on a defined project and putting some stuff out into the open though, and that at least for me is a reasonable border.
- ethbro 8y ago
  To me this is a non-trivial distinction. Especially with dual-use technology, e.g. open source infrastructure, open accessibility moots some qualms about empowering a specific military at the expense of others. (On the other hand, in terms of wars not happening and pure global peace and stability, there are arguments for elevating between 1 and 5 powers above others)
berti 8y ago
A side-effect, rather than the primary goal. There is a not-so-subtle difference.
smcl 8y ago
So this person shouldn't have any quandaries working on military projects, because they might have contributed a bugfix to some code in libcurl or some other library that is used somewhere in the vast US military? Seems like an awfully weak argument.
adrianN 8y ago
If you're paying taxes you're also contributing to military projects. There is a difference between working on a weapons system and working on an operating system that can also be used in weapons.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
webkike 8y ago
God dammit, I knew my open source game framework was going to be used for nefarious purposes, how could I have been so short sighted?
- rdtsc 8y ago
  You maybe joking but military loves them some games for training purposes. So ironically enough having a nice gaming platform actually gives you good chances of contributing (unwittingly) to military projects.
  - webkike 8y ago
    That's a good point!
- XalvinX 8y ago
  Just kill yourself now.
  - sctb 8y ago
    Joking or not, commenting like this will get your account banned. Could you please re-read the guidelines? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
letsgetphysITal 8y ago
Contributing to something which could be used by the military is different to contributing to something which will be used by the military specifically.
- Crontab 8y ago
  IMO this is the correct answer.
cs02rm0 8y ago
I'm not quite sure why this is downvoted, although I understand the nuance, it seems an interesting and related point. Out of interest, are there open source licenses that prevent use in military projects? ISTR reading something recently about it being legally questionable to discriminate between who can accept a license, but that was in the context of allowing open source for non-commercial purposes.
- robin_reala 8y ago
  Crockford’s original JSON licence banned the use of the technology for evil, but IBM’s lawyers knew that a bunch of their projects couldn’t be guaranteed to be 100% evil-free and negotiated an exemption.
- hsivonen 8y ago
  By definition, a license that has Field of Use restrictions is not an Open Source license. Creative Commons NonCommercial licenses, for example, are neither Open Source nor Free Software licenses.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    I imagine that someone who wants to prevent use of their work by the military would not be concerned over whether something is technically not open source or not.
- palotasb 8y ago
  I don't think the idea of free software and banning specific uses is compatible. OSI also says that they require no such discrimination: https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd (points 5, 6)
- r3bl 8y ago
  > Out of interest, are there open source licenses that prevent use in military projects? This question is an oxymoron. Both the definition of open source (by the Open Source Initiative) and the definition of free software (by the Free Software Foundation) explicitly forbid discriminating against any person or a group of people for software to be considered as open source / free software.
acchow 8y ago
And if you contribute to science, you're contributing to military projects. If you've taught kindergarten or middle school, you've probably helped raise a soldier. Yeah ok.
- wolfgke 8y ago
  > If you've taught kindergarten or middle school, you've probably helped raise a soldier. I believe that on HN you perhaps talk to the wrong audience for this argument. If the teacher really had the "hacker spirit" in teaching, the pupils will be too freethinking (as in hacker) to be suitable soldiers.
  - pixl97 8y ago
    Ah, HackerNews' other greatest sin "If someone's freethinking, they'll think exactly like me"
    - wolfgke 8y ago
      > "If someone's freethinking, they'll think exactly like me" I claim that my point nevertheless stands. I was explicitly talking about "hacker spirit". If you read up on the hacker ethics > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacker_ethic&oldid=841926692 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacker_ethic&oldi... you will find many points that will make such a person a really unsuitable soldier, for example "Mistrust authority — promote decentralization", which is at least in my worldview quite the opposite of the life as a soldier, where obedience, chain of command etc. are central. The same holds for "All information should be free", which is quite in the spirit of Snowden and Assange, but quite the opposite of the values of being a soldier, where military secrets are (for good or bad) of importance.
      - pixl97 8y ago
        >If the teacher really had the "hacker spirit" in teaching, the pupils will be too freethinking This is the comment I was shooting at. I don't believe this. Instead I believe something far more terrifying. "Society manages complexity by the occasional cull of the free thinker" Lots of smart people can bring a lot of good change to a society and culture, but one needs to be very careful to think the majority of the population in that society will accept those changes, and the faster they occur, the more resentment builds. Suddenly you have politicians and activists pining for the 'good old days'. Suddenly a nice authoritarian figure pops up and tells the masses that he can fix all their problems. There are ample examples in history to see where this leads.
Derbasti 8y ago
Also, to world peace. And crime. And law enforcement. And... humanity.
- sslayer 8y ago
  Yes, until people understand the nature of duality, they struggle with simple concepts. If I choose to not protect myself , am I enabling murders and evil to flourish? Life and death, peace and war, these things are necessary for the engine of reality to continue to cycle. Living itself is a fight against death- would you deny death it due?
Karishma1234 8y ago
If you are in Oil industry you are helping military projects. Irrelevant because 99% of the use for that activity is non-military. In such cases military has million options if you refuse.
jiveturkey 8y ago
Because the GPL (and other such) is a license, that can apparently have almost arbitrary restrictions, can there exist a NMPL -- non-military public license -- that excludes military use? For a current and real example, much commercial software is licensed under terms that exclude use in nuclear or lifesaving critical applications. I'm not sure how one enforces such a license. Let's be real, even a successful lawsuit isn't going to remove said software from the military's hands. And to the extent it is honored, it has the negative effect of driving up the cost of developing military software, which of course comes out normal people's pockets. But it might be an interesting way to take up a principled stance.

That’s the standard argument, and yes, it’s true. There’s a difference between actively working on a defined project and putting some stuff out into the open though, and that at least for me is a reasonable border.

ethbro 8y ago
To me this is a non-trivial distinction. Especially with dual-use technology, e.g. open source infrastructure, open accessibility moots some qualms about empowering a specific military at the expense of others. (On the other hand, in terms of wars not happening and pure global peace and stability, there are arguments for elevating between 1 and 5 powers above others)

berti 8y ago

A side-effect, rather than the primary goal. There is a not-so-subtle difference.

smcl 8y ago

So this person shouldn't have any quandaries working on military projects, because they might have contributed a bugfix to some code in libcurl or some other library that is used somewhere in the vast US military? Seems like an awfully weak argument.

adrianN 8y ago

If you're paying taxes you're also contributing to military projects. There is a difference between working on a weapons system and working on an operating system that can also be used in weapons.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

webkike 8y ago

God dammit, I knew my open source game framework was going to be used for nefarious purposes, how could I have been so short sighted?

rdtsc 8y ago
You maybe joking but military loves them some games for training purposes. So ironically enough having a nice gaming platform actually gives you good chances of contributing (unwittingly) to military projects.
- webkike 8y ago
  That's a good point!
XalvinX 8y ago
Just kill yourself now.
- sctb 8y ago
  Joking or not, commenting like this will get your account banned. Could you please re-read the guidelines? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

letsgetphysITal 8y ago

Contributing to something which could be used by the military is different to contributing to something which will be used by the military specifically.

Crontab 8y ago
IMO this is the correct answer.

cs02rm0 8y ago

I'm not quite sure why this is downvoted, although I understand the nuance, it seems an interesting and related point. Out of interest, are there open source licenses that prevent use in military projects? ISTR reading something recently about it being legally questionable to discriminate between who can accept a license, but that was in the context of allowing open source for non-commercial purposes.

robin_reala 8y ago
Crockford’s original JSON licence banned the use of the technology for evil, but IBM’s lawyers knew that a bunch of their projects couldn’t be guaranteed to be 100% evil-free and negotiated an exemption.
hsivonen 8y ago
By definition, a license that has Field of Use restrictions is not an Open Source license. Creative Commons NonCommercial licenses, for example, are neither Open Source nor Free Software licenses.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  I imagine that someone who wants to prevent use of their work by the military would not be concerned over whether something is technically not open source or not.
palotasb 8y ago
I don't think the idea of free software and banning specific uses is compatible. OSI also says that they require no such discrimination: https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd (points 5, 6)
r3bl 8y ago
> Out of interest, are there open source licenses that prevent use in military projects? This question is an oxymoron. Both the definition of open source (by the Open Source Initiative) and the definition of free software (by the Free Software Foundation) explicitly forbid discriminating against any person or a group of people for software to be considered as open source / free software.

acchow 8y ago

And if you contribute to science, you're contributing to military projects. If you've taught kindergarten or middle school, you've probably helped raise a soldier. Yeah ok.

wolfgke 8y ago
> If you've taught kindergarten or middle school, you've probably helped raise a soldier. I believe that on HN you perhaps talk to the wrong audience for this argument. If the teacher really had the "hacker spirit" in teaching, the pupils will be too freethinking (as in hacker) to be suitable soldiers.
- pixl97 8y ago
  Ah, HackerNews' other greatest sin "If someone's freethinking, they'll think exactly like me"
  - wolfgke 8y ago
    > "If someone's freethinking, they'll think exactly like me" I claim that my point nevertheless stands. I was explicitly talking about "hacker spirit". If you read up on the hacker ethics > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacker_ethic&oldid=841926692 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacker_ethic&oldi... you will find many points that will make such a person a really unsuitable soldier, for example "Mistrust authority — promote decentralization", which is at least in my worldview quite the opposite of the life as a soldier, where obedience, chain of command etc. are central. The same holds for "All information should be free", which is quite in the spirit of Snowden and Assange, but quite the opposite of the values of being a soldier, where military secrets are (for good or bad) of importance.
    - pixl97 8y ago
      >If the teacher really had the "hacker spirit" in teaching, the pupils will be too freethinking This is the comment I was shooting at. I don't believe this. Instead I believe something far more terrifying. "Society manages complexity by the occasional cull of the free thinker" Lots of smart people can bring a lot of good change to a society and culture, but one needs to be very careful to think the majority of the population in that society will accept those changes, and the faster they occur, the more resentment builds. Suddenly you have politicians and activists pining for the 'good old days'. Suddenly a nice authoritarian figure pops up and tells the masses that he can fix all their problems. There are ample examples in history to see where this leads.

Derbasti 8y ago

Also, to world peace. And crime. And law enforcement. And... humanity.

sslayer 8y ago
Yes, until people understand the nature of duality, they struggle with simple concepts. If I choose to not protect myself , am I enabling murders and evil to flourish? Life and death, peace and war, these things are necessary for the engine of reality to continue to cycle. Living itself is a fight against death- would you deny death it due?

Karishma1234 8y ago

If you are in Oil industry you are helping military projects. Irrelevant because 99% of the use for that activity is non-military. In such cases military has million options if you refuse.

jiveturkey 8y ago

Because the GPL (and other such) is a license, that can apparently have almost arbitrary restrictions, can there exist a NMPL -- non-military public license -- that excludes military use? For a current and real example, much commercial software is licensed under terms that exclude use in nuclear or lifesaving critical applications. I'm not sure how one enforces such a license. Let's be real, even a successful lawsuit isn't going to remove said software from the military's hands. And to the extent it is honored, it has the negative effect of driving up the cost of developing military software, which of course comes out normal people's pockets. But it might be an interesting way to take up a principled stance.