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Well, if you're writing an FOSS project that happens to be picked up by the Chinese you're SOL. It's not as if the PRC has a history of giving a shit about your

Well, if you're writing an FOSS project that happens to be picked up by the Chinese you're SOL. It's not as if the PRC has a history of giving a shit about your IP. If you're talking about writing bespoke software for them, that's a different matter than this particular situation.

DuskStar 7y ago
> Well, if you're writing an FOSS project that happens to be picked up by the Chinese you're SOL. It's not as if the PRC has a history of giving a shit about your IP. Not to mention, if it's FOSS they can respect your IP and still use it - after all, you did give them (and everyone else) a license...
jrochkind1 7y ago
As far as I can tell, what happened here is Chef the company went beyond writing FOSS that happened to be picked up by ICE, they have some business relationship with ICE where they get paid. I'm not clear on the nature of it, from this article. Seth Vargo, was a former employee... and maybe also kept contributing FOSS after no longer being an employee? Unclear. It's not quite either of your situations, but more like the bespoke software I'd say. At any rate, if I wrote FOSS that happened to be used by ICE in a significant way, I'd feel really sad and confused and not sure what to think or what to do -- I'm not sure what the solution to this situation is, but I wouldn't feel good about it. If I worked for CEO Crist/Chef Inc. -- I'd quit. Cause that shit is disgusting. If I was Vargo, doing some combination of writing code for an employer on the job, and maybe also just contributing open source to the project after that, maybe cause it was a cool/interesting project/community he liked... but then discovering that Chef Inc. and Barry Crist were _using the code I wrote to make money by helping ICE with their information systems_.... I'd be fucking mad as hell. I'm not sure anything can be done about it legally in the long term, if the code was released open source. But I understand the anger and attempt to be as disruptive as possible. Cause Fuck That Shit.

DuskStar 7y ago

> Well, if you're writing an FOSS project that happens to be picked up by the Chinese you're SOL. It's not as if the PRC has a history of giving a shit about your IP. Not to mention, if it's FOSS they can respect your IP and still use it - after all, you did give them (and everyone else) a license...

jrochkind1 7y ago

As far as I can tell, what happened here is Chef the company went beyond writing FOSS that happened to be picked up by ICE, they have some business relationship with ICE where they get paid. I'm not clear on the nature of it, from this article. Seth Vargo, was a former employee... and maybe also kept contributing FOSS after no longer being an employee? Unclear. It's not quite either of your situations, but more like the bespoke software I'd say. At any rate, if I wrote FOSS that happened to be used by ICE in a significant way, I'd feel really sad and confused and not sure what to think or what to do -- I'm not sure what the solution to this situation is, but I wouldn't feel good about it. If I worked for CEO Crist/Chef Inc. -- I'd quit. Cause that shit is disgusting. If I was Vargo, doing some combination of writing code for an employer on the job, and maybe also just contributing open source to the project after that, maybe cause it was a cool/interesting project/community he liked... but then discovering that Chef Inc. and Barry Crist were _using the code I wrote to make money by helping ICE with their information systems_.... I'd be fucking mad as hell. I'm not sure anything can be done about it legally in the long term, if the code was released open source. But I understand the anger and attempt to be as disruptive as possible. Cause Fuck That Shit.