4 ms·

The main goal is less to hurt the companies that are supporting ICE by not allowing them to use an open source project, but actually bring a lot more awareness

by augbog 8y ago

The main goal is less to hurt the companies that are supporting ICE by not allowing them to use an open source project, but actually bring a lot more awareness that these companies DO IN FACT support ICE. I had no idea Palantir was working on the technology to help deport people https://theintercept.com/2017/03/02/palantir-provides-the-engine-for-donald-trumps-deportation-machine/ https://theintercept.com/2017/03/02/palantir-provides-the-en...

jancsika 8y ago
I'm honestly glad you are now aware of that fact. Now that we are both aware, let's talk about their license. Is it now a non-free license? How does it affect their current non-Palantir user base? Is it enforceable? Was it meant to be enforceable? Are there ways in which a license written by people who aren't themselves lawyers can come back to bite them? This entire digression goes away completely if they put the relevant information nearly anywhere else. Their front page, README.md, change log, etc. Hell, they could even put it as a "did you know" comment in the body of the code. They could do any or all of them and get just as much or more notoriety as they did by ruining their open source/free software compatible license.
- jsgo 8y ago
  part that gives me pause, even though I'm 100% okay with being against the current policy of separation: what next? Totally silly, but what if it comes out that some food company is engaging in behavior that is deemed immoral. Lerna then tacks that onto the next revision of itself. But I, myself, really like food company's product and don't feel the controversy is warranted. Then what? I understand the motivation with wanting to protest in the best way you can, but I think in this case, it is going to do more harm than good.
  - jancsika 8y ago
    My point is that the license is the absolute worst place to put anything-- including a protest-- because licensing issues are way outside the expertise of most programmers. For example, if they put the same information in a comment in the code, then whatever flame war might ensue would at least be fully on the social implications of it. Nobody will worry about the comment accidentally getting interpreted improperly by various JS engines. Nobody will talk about how the big company they work for will not touch code that has certain comments because the comment department advised them those comments are radioactive. Troglodytes won't pop up to poorly recite what they think they read on the wall about comments and maximizing freedom. All of that and more will happen when you write anything non-standard in a license for a FLOSS project. It's a dog-whistle to every programmer out there who has dreamed of pretending to be a lawyer. I offer into evidence the ratio of ICE-related posts to licensing-desiderata-related posts in this thread. If you've really got so much energy to waste that your thinking about writing your own custom license blurb, just go reverse-engineer a baseband OS or something.
    - jancsika 8y ago
      And now apparently the license has been reverted to MIT: https://github.com/lerna/lerna/pull/1633 https://github.com/lerna/lerna/pull/1633 Someone had very decent aims-- protesting ICE-- and executed it in the wrong scope-- a license change. If you read the comments on that issue you'll see at least one person takes that as a good lesson for avoiding the very decent aims in open source projects. That is unfortunate, and IMO a good reason to avoid mucking around with licenses at all.
ConanRus 8y ago
And what exactly wrong with supporting ICE?

by augbog 8y ago

jancsika 8y ago

I'm honestly glad you are now aware of that fact. Now that we are both aware, let's talk about their license. Is it now a non-free license? How does it affect their current non-Palantir user base? Is it enforceable? Was it meant to be enforceable? Are there ways in which a license written by people who aren't themselves lawyers can come back to bite them? This entire digression goes away completely if they put the relevant information nearly anywhere else. Their front page, README.md, change log, etc. Hell, they could even put it as a "did you know" comment in the body of the code. They could do any or all of them and get just as much or more notoriety as they did by ruining their open source/free software compatible license.

jsgo 8y ago
part that gives me pause, even though I'm 100% okay with being against the current policy of separation: what next? Totally silly, but what if it comes out that some food company is engaging in behavior that is deemed immoral. Lerna then tacks that onto the next revision of itself. But I, myself, really like food company's product and don't feel the controversy is warranted. Then what? I understand the motivation with wanting to protest in the best way you can, but I think in this case, it is going to do more harm than good.
- jancsika 8y ago
  My point is that the license is the absolute worst place to put anything-- including a protest-- because licensing issues are way outside the expertise of most programmers. For example, if they put the same information in a comment in the code, then whatever flame war might ensue would at least be fully on the social implications of it. Nobody will worry about the comment accidentally getting interpreted improperly by various JS engines. Nobody will talk about how the big company they work for will not touch code that has certain comments because the comment department advised them those comments are radioactive. Troglodytes won't pop up to poorly recite what they think they read on the wall about comments and maximizing freedom. All of that and more will happen when you write anything non-standard in a license for a FLOSS project. It's a dog-whistle to every programmer out there who has dreamed of pretending to be a lawyer. I offer into evidence the ratio of ICE-related posts to licensing-desiderata-related posts in this thread. If you've really got so much energy to waste that your thinking about writing your own custom license blurb, just go reverse-engineer a baseband OS or something.
  - jancsika 8y ago
    And now apparently the license has been reverted to MIT: https://github.com/lerna/lerna/pull/1633 https://github.com/lerna/lerna/pull/1633 Someone had very decent aims-- protesting ICE-- and executed it in the wrong scope-- a license change. If you read the comments on that issue you'll see at least one person takes that as a good lesson for avoiding the very decent aims in open source projects. That is unfortunate, and IMO a good reason to avoid mucking around with licenses at all.

ConanRus 8y ago

And what exactly wrong with supporting ICE?