21 ms·

Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract

145 points by jna_sh 7y ago

calvinbhai 7y ago
If the report is to be believed, why do these developers think so high and mighty about themselves? If they are so concerned, team up, pool money and buy enough MS stocks (like an activist investor) and direct Microsoft's actions. Until then, Microsoft and Satya Nadella must do what is best for their stock holders not to activists of any kind. If any of the devs / employees are not happy with the direction MS is heading, leave the employer. If enough devs leave, MS may tweak it's approach.
- LiNeXT 7y ago
  They don't care quite enough to give up their inflated Bay Area salary or stock options.
- Brain_Thief 7y ago
  Ah, the ancient and exhausted "if you don't like it then leave" argument has finally made its appearance. How could none of us have realized that the obvious solution to disagreeing with a policy in our organization / community / government is to just silently give up and leave? Obviously a peaceful letter of dissent would be completely outside the bounds of rational behavior! And besides, if a concerned group REALLY wanted to change things and not just whine they would simply raise billions of dollars to accrue a significant block of voting shares in one of the world's largest corporations to change policy via board action!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rocky1138 7y ago
> [GitHub] plays an increasingly indispensable role in projects that require collaborating around code. This is just not true and I warn everyone from believing this is the case. GitHub is based on git which can be hosted anywhere and by anyone. The features which GitHub provide above and beyond git can be replicated with some work (either by switching to Gitlab, which you can host yourself, or using one of the other alternatives like Gitea) if you want to. Is GitHub useful? Yeah! Is it indispensable? No!
shiohime 7y ago
Wow, some open source developers trying to flex on GH for not appealing to their woke politics that get amplified by their own media bubbles. This kind of behavior really is becoming incredibly tiresome. I look forward to GH not caring, and seeing these devs continue to use their platform despite the hollow threats of possibly pulling their repos, which they clearly won't go through the trouble of doing. Even if they follow through with it nothing of value is lost.
foobarandgrill 7y ago
I call for them to not do that. So Developer calls for GitHub to ignore the SJWs.
- whiddershins 7y ago
  I join with you
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    +1
  - vnchr 7y ago
    Another 43 developers and that’s more than the article says are calling to cancel
- hart_russell 7y ago
  Another developer here. I also call for ignoring the SJWs
- adamch 7y ago
  Is it a SJW stance to not want children forcibly removed from their parents, kept in cages, and sexually abused by guards who were hired without sufficient vetting? Or is it just a SJW stance to not want your 8 hours of labor to help run those camps more efficiently, so that greater numbers of people can be detained?
  - c0nducktr 7y ago
    Or an SJW stance to not want the government creating fake universities with the purpose of entrapping people legally in the US in order to deport them. https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2019/11/27/ice-set-up-fake-university-then-arrested-people-it-gave-student-visas/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2019/11/27/ice-se...
    - EduardoBautista 7y ago
major505 7y ago
Is bullshit if Microsoft accepts this, but there`s always alternatives to github. So, in the end nothing of value is gonna be lost.
- astrodust 7y ago
  ICE deserves to use the shittiest possible software, not the best.
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    Even if I agreed with you, wouldn't that mean that the immigrants would be treated even worse than you claim they're being treated now?
    - astrodust 7y ago
      They separated thousands of families with zero plan for tracking them. Tell me how it could be worse because of software.
      - Rebelgecko 7y ago
        Wouldn't software or some sort of database be the best way to track them? I imagine ICE would be even worse if everything was pen and paper.
        astrodust 7y ago
        Sure, some kind of software might be better, but they didn't even bother to write things down. This was a deliberate decision to not track and software won't help.
      - ben_w 7y ago
        if rejectApplication = true { … in C — and yes, the single equals is deliberate.
andonisus 7y ago
Github provides software lifecycle management services. It is apolitical. I do not believe we should be trying to police the providers of apolitical software.
- aalleavitch 7y ago
  This is bullshit, nothing is apolitical. To pretend otherwise is the height of dishonesty. Claiming that there are no political consequences for your actions is simply burying your head in the sand. You have a measurable effect on the world around you. If you do something, you are responsible for the effect it has on the world around you. You don't get to just dump toxic waste into the environment and claim it's an externality so it's not your problem. Your political effect on the world is just as real as any other effect you have on the environment, you are responsible.
  - andonisus 7y ago
    There are political consequences for everything we do. I never said there weren't any. All I said was that I don't think we should be concerned with the politics of selling apolitical software.
    - aalleavitch 7y ago
      Right? Imagine the horror of companies having to take strong ethical stances on the use of their software and how their company influences the world around them. If companies had to care about ensuring that the fruits of their labor had impacts that were in accordance with the moral beliefs of their employees, that might even cut into shareholder profits. The terror!
      - dang 7y ago
        Would you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 7y ago
romaaeterna 7y ago
The LA Times has a (pay)-wall that keeps me from illegally reading their content, so I don't know what this article says. But I personally think that uncontrolled migration flows lead to horrific human trafficking problems. The rapes and murders that get committed along this flow because we don't control our border as well as we did 20 years ago are unconscionable. Yes, the next generation will vote Democrat, due to America's birthright citizen situation. But is that really worth the cost? Github should help ICE do the best job that it can.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  "because we don't control our border as well as we did 20 years ago are unconscionable." From what I understand we actually control our border much harder than we did 20 or even 30 years ago.
  - romaaeterna 7y ago
    It's possible that your understanding is incorrect: https://imgur.com/4yyWYuM https://imgur.com/4yyWYuM And remember that the numbers in the above graph aren't even population adjusted. This doesn't cover the Trump years, but deportations are even lower under Trump than Obama.
    - bitcurious 7y ago
      Your graph says little about border control and a lot about enforcement inside the US, which ironically can be partially explained by harsher border control. In southern states it used to be the case that Mexican workers would come over for day labor, or for the harvest season, and then leave to lead their lives in Mexico. Once border control got a bit more serious people started coming to stay.
      - romaaeterna 7y ago
        That's not a great description of immigration history to the US. See for example the Eisenhower administration efforts in this regard as far back as the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback
hexsprite 7y ago
44 Developers. This does not represent the majority.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  They certainly don't represent me. Governments need to function, and they need software to do it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
paulintrognon 7y ago
I have trouble understanding from this article what the problem is with ICE (I'm from outside the US). The developpers disagree with the whole purpose of ICE, because they trakc refugees, so they don't want github to have anything to do with them, is that correct?
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  "Track refugees" is an extremely charitable summary. I'd recommend reading the open letter [1] on GitHub and following some of the links. A short excerpt (with lots of links in the letter): > ICE conducts random violent raids throughout the United States, invades communities and workplaces with military equipment, detains busses and trains, and arrests people solely on the basis of their perceived nationality, skin color, or native language. Their agents lurk outside of schools in order to abduct the children of immigrants and force their families to surrender themselves into custody. ICE imprisons people in deplorable and unsanitary conditions and denies them medical care. [1] https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0
  - netule 7y ago
    I think you forgot to include the actual link to the GitHub repo: https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0
    - jakelazaroff 7y ago
      Whoops, yes I did. Updated! Thanks.
- hokumguru 7y ago
  Essentially. Although illegal immigration is but one of the many responsibilities of ICE they are heavily criticized and often demonized for their... interesting way of handling certain situations (such as the detention camps on our southern border) The dislike of ICE appears much more prominent in more left-leaning areas such as the coastal cities. As with any topic there are many moderates on either side with their own opinions and also more vocal, radical, opinions as well.
jakelazaroff 7y ago
To anyone dissatisfied with the ethical lapses of GitHub and GitLab, check out sourcehut [1]. It's an independent Git/Mercurial host (plus builds, issue tracking and a bunch of other features) made by Drew DeVault (creator of sway). Their business model is "customers first, investors never" [2] (I have no affiliation — I was just impressed by it when I moved a couple repos over after getting frustrated with GitHub and GitLab.) [1] https://sourcehut.org https://sourcehut.org [2] https://sourcehut.org/blog/2019-10-23-srht-puts-users-first/ https://sourcehut.org/blog/2019-10-23-srht-puts-users-first/
- castlecrasher2 7y ago
  Thanks for the link. I eagerly await the time they take a contract I can impose my personal moral outrage on.
sremani 7y ago
>> signed by 44 developers at the time of publication This detail is in the article, but the headline feels like embellishment by omission.
LiNeXT 7y ago
Because being anti-ICE is the current "woke" Silicon Valley hive mind stance to have.
- cyphar 7y ago
  It's probably more because of the concentration camps.
  - LiNeXT 7y ago
    What concentration camps?
    - cyphar 7y ago
      https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentration-camps-southern-border-migrant-detention-facilities-trump/ https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentratio...
      - LiNeXT 7y ago
        Nice try. Concentration camp is an extremely loaded term and using it in this context serves absolutely no productive purpose.
        iron0013 7y ago
        It's an extremely accurate term, and using it in this context serves the purpose of not minimizing the importance of their being the sites of atrocities and internationally-decried human rights violations.
        cryoshon 7y ago
        actually, it serves the purpose of riling people to action perfectly because it captures the scale and nature of the detainment centers at a time when information coming out of those centers is extremely limited and the state of a hearty share of the public rhetoric is that the people contained within the camps are subhuman. the camps serve no productive purpose, yet here we are with a bunch of them in the country anyway.
SolaceQuantum 7y ago
What I find super interesting is that software development activism is not a new phenomenon (Eg. FOSS, letsencrypt, dragonfly) but that the activism has spread as the scope of technology has spread. Who you work for and where you work is itself a political act, which reminds me of being a “scab” (aiding anti-union efforts by accepting employment from a company who is trying to continue functioning during an ongoing labor strike, thereby weakening the union effort) which must’ve also been highly controversial at the time! I don’t really know what will come from this but I’m super interested in seeing what will happen.
- throwaway520215 7y ago
  > Who you work for and where you work is itself a political act This is correct, however, it does not follow that developers have the right to join an organization and force their political demands on management and ownership. Don't like working for a company that collaborates with your government? You're in luck! You're free to leave your job at any time and won't be penalized for it.
  - SauciestGNU 7y ago
    >it does not follow that developers have the right to join an organization and force their political demands on management and ownership It actually does follow that they have a right to do that, as doing that is explicitly protected by US labor law as a concerted organizing activity.
    - throwaway520215 7y ago
      Wrong https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2016/07/politics-in-the-workplace-what-must-employers-allo https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2016/07/polit... Anyone at GitHub participating in this can be fired at any time.
      - SauciestGNU 7y ago
        Your own link proves you wrong. Starting with the following quote and proceeding from there, explaining exactly how what githubbers are doing would be protected: >As interpreted by the NLRB, employee communications are "concerted" not only when he or she acts with or on the authority of other employees but also when the employee seeks to initiate, induce or prepare for group action or brings truly group complaints to management.
jklfuoiuew 7y ago
We need to open all the borders. Shut down ICE, the Police and the Army. And finally, dismantle capitalism. Only then we will be free from violence, racial discrimination and economic oppression.
- culot 7y ago
  Once that is accomplished you'd be living in a land of warlord fiefdoms. No women or children would ever be safe unless protected by strongmen. Society would stagnate into a dark age. You might as well move to Afghanistan.
- shrewduser 7y ago
  even if all these things go against the wishes of the people? doesn't sound very democratic. you could always try building your anti capitalist utopia in a socialist country, although i feel like the dismantling of borders will be redundant because no one will ever want to go there.
  - castlecrasher2 7y ago
    I honestly can't tell if it's satire or not. Poe's Law gets stronger every day.
    - mizzack 7y ago
      Can't spell prole without P O E. Is there a term for Poe commies?
jklfuoiuew 7y ago
Notable signers: David Heinemeier Hansson, @dhh (Ruby on Rails) Tatiana Mac, @TatianaMac (Self-Defined Dictionary)
- gatherhunterer 7y ago
  The downvotes on this comment are evidence of which side is offended by factual information presented without bias.
  - sdinsn 7y ago
    > evidence of which side is offended by factual information No, the downvotes are from people who don't decide their entire existence based on the opinions of 44 developers. I couldn't care less if Jesus returns and wants Github to cancel their contract too
    - gatherhunterer 7y ago
      The above comment is just basic information on two people who have signed, nothing more and nothing less. You are offended by a simple fact.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
shrewduser 7y ago
I can't help but find this kind of thing horribly undemocratic, The tyranny of a loud few, Take your arguments to the people and contact your representative. This is just using the media to short circuit the democratic process and i think it hurts business and the economy. We live in a system of laws and it has created a lot of certainty for actors within the system.
- openasocket 7y ago
  Calling for a boycott is undemocratic? It's a pretty standard form of protest, dating back centuries.
  - subjectsigma 7y ago
    Interpreting the GP comment charitably: let's say every single GitHub employee opposed ICE (which isn't true, but just pretend) and decided to drop the contract. I have no idea how much this would impact ICE but in our hypothetical scenario let's say a lot. This means an incredibly small percentage of the total population gets to decide whether a legal govt agency functions correctly for the next few months or so, even if the entire rest of the country relies on and supported the agency. I personally believe that GitHub can do whatever they feel is right because they're a private company, but if this were the case, isn't that pretty undemocratic?
    - drewbug01 7y ago
      Your hypothetical situation implies that software produced by GitHub is vital to the operating of this agency, and that there is no other way to do it. If you accept that, your argument looks somewhat compelling. But I don't think that's a claim we should accept - frankly, there are plenty of alternatives to GitHub. Moreover, there are plenty of alternatives to git itself. They are viable and in-use today - git has not always existed and will not always be the tool of choice. And continuing further down the stack... people wrote software even before version control existed as we know it today. You do not need version control to write software (although, I'm sure we both agree it's a good idea). Even if we accept that ICE needs software to do its job - which I don't personally think is true, but neither of us can really claim to know - it's categorically untrue that they need GitHub specifically. They have a myriad of ways they could accomplish their goals without GitHub. But there's another element of your argument we should discuss, and it's one I've heard from CEOs recently - that it's somehow "undemocratic" for a company to deny software to the government, because it privileges the voices of a minority of people. That argument makes very little sense to me. It first conflates "democracy" with a company declining to do business with the government. Democracy is a form of government - the actions of businesses are not and cannot be "undemocratic" - they aren't the government. Setting aside rhetorical annoyances, though - the claim you're making is that a company's actions are depriving the majority electorate of what they voted for, and that they voted for ICE in its current form. I don't think the majority of the country voted on it, and even if we assume they did indirectly via the presidential election ... it's not a contested fact that the current president lost the popular vote. We can't even say a "majority" of people support this without contorting ourselves, or without redefining "majority" to mean "the majority of electoral college votes"... and we get into seriously absurd territory there. Yet we can even dig deeper: if we accept that it's somehow "undemocratic" for a company to deny services to the government - we must also accept the counter-claim that all companies must provide services to the government upon request. They're two sides of the same coin - if you cannot refuse, then you must. That's a scary thing, in my mind - and I do not want to live in a country where a company cannot legally refuse to do business with the government. Current legal theory in the US doesn't support that, and I hope it doesn't change. And finally - even if we accept all of the claims you make (the few explicit ones made, and the many implicit ones that must be made to support the explicit claims): why on earth couldn't the government write the software itself? The federal government employs hundreds of software developers. More than GitHub! If GitHub's software is required, and the agency cannot function without it, and there is no alternative available to the government in the market - what stops them from writing the software themselves?
llamataboot 7y ago
Whether you agree with it or not, it is /absolutely appropriate/ to pressure corporations to not do business with other companies or organizations or governments you find morally reprehensible. If it was Boeing providing bombers to the PRC to use against civilian populations, many people inside and outside of Boeing would be pressuring that contract to be cancelled. What exactly is the problem with applying pressure to get a corporation to stop taking money from an organization/corporation/government/person that you find immoral? The company doesn't have to /care/. The company can go after their almighty dollars for their shareholder if they want. And people can then choose to target that company in different ways, or target other companies that do business with that company, etc. Boycotts, strikes, sabotage, sit-ins, work slowdowns, etc has all been used to pressure companies to take actions because of political reasons.
- helen___keller 7y ago
  Agreed, but > sabotage Not sure about this one, this sounds a tad illegal
  - criddell 7y ago
    It's just civil disobedience, isn't it?
  - llamataboot 7y ago
    sure, and github could press charges. People have been getting arrested dismantling US war machinery for decades, etc. I'm not saying it's legal, I'm not even commenting on whether I agree, I'm just saying the "it's not appropriate to pressure a company for political views, companies should be off limits from politics" doesn't hold water.
    - Goladus 7y ago
      > I'm just saying the "it's not appropriate to pressure a company for political views, companies should be off limits from politics" You haven't actually presented a supporting argument for it, though. What exactly is the problem with applying pressure to get a corporation to stop taking money from an organization/corporation/government/person that you find immoral? You are interfering with their freedom of association. You must weigh the morality of that violation vs what you hope to gain. It's not an obvious answer and is why the example of Boeing selling bombers actively being used to bomb civilians is misleading and why I objected to it.
cronix 7y ago
I'm sure they'll also be disheartened to know that their OS and other softwares like SQL Server are being used by various militaries around the world to kill people. And terrorists. How many terrorists are in MS databases? How can they sleep at night by creating these nefarious tools? How many other open source projects are used in ways the authors didn't intend? Lots of military hardware running mysql and the like. "MySQL Cluster is used by the US Navy to power the flight deck and operations management system on US Navy aircraft carriers.[1] I wonder how many men, women and children were killed by aircraft launched from those carriers powered by mysql. "The Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) alone hosts 665 SQL Server databases and, of course, NCMI is just part of the DOD ecosystem. As a public affairs spokesperson for the Defense Information Systems Agency said, “[SQL Server] supports hundreds of applications, including email, content management, document management, enterprise search, business intelligence and workflow management.”"[2] [1] https://www.mysql.com/industry/government/ https://www.mysql.com/industry/government/ [2] https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2016/03/army-and-navy-use-sql-server-and-battlefield https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2016/03/army-and-navy-us... Grow up, kids. You can't control what others do with your tech. In fact, you helped to create this world. Your works are being used for evil. And "this" is the battle you choose to fight? You're SJW hypocrites.
- Brain_Thief 7y ago
  What, exactly, is hypocritical about these developers' actions? If a person wants their organization / community / country to change then they should encourage that change through non-violent means. It seems to me that by calling for their employer to discontinue business with an entity that they find unacceptable the Github employees in question are doing just that. In fact, their actions come across as quite sincere, and certainly appear to be far more productive and well-reasoned than your insult-laden criticism of them would imply.
- archagon 7y ago
  “SJW hypocrites,” really? Sounds like you’re the one who needs to do some growing. In the meantime, I’ll strongly consider releasing all my OSS under a license that prohibits police and military use in the future.
- 7y ago
ummonk 7y ago
Note that pretty much everything terrible (e.g. family separations, warrantless searches) is done by DHS and its other constituents like CBP, not ICE specifically.
microcolonel 7y ago
If ICE goes off and deploys their own on-prem GitLab, or goes to sourcehut or something, what moral difference does it make?
- minimuffins 7y ago
  It makes some small difference in ICE's reputation, maybe a dent in public opinion. If ICE are treated as a pariah by mainstream commercial institutions it may counteract the "normalization" of what they do. Github is large and pretty well known. Their choice, either way, will set an example.
  - _-david-_ 7y ago
    It would put more of a dent in Github's reputation. Why would you go with a company that may pull your contract when you haven't changed what you do in 20 years? Github signed the contact knowing what ICE does and didn't care years ago. Now its suddenly an issue.
    - minimuffins 7y ago
      ICE has changed what it does in the last 20 years as others have pointed out. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21706133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21706133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704192 I doubt anyone really thinks ICE in 2003 is actually the same as ICE in 2019. Not anyone who's paying any attention.
      - _-david-_ 7y ago
        I was not talking about specific cases / abuses. I was talking about policy. ICE patrolled the border. ICE stopped people illegally crossing the border. ICE jailed people suspected of crossing the border. ICE separated children. Nothing has changed in that regards. The other issue is that the posts don't say if things are actually getting better. For example the first claim is "The Intercept published a report by the DHS Office of Inspector General revealing that 1,224 sexual abuse complaints while in immigration custody were filed between January 2010 and June 2017." We need to see the rates before 2010 or we need to see the rate for each year. Based on what that person posted we cannot draw any conclusions if things are actually improving or not. If things are improving then people shouldn't really be boycotting.
bfung 7y ago
A nuance here to tease out is that there are alternatives to github with low barriers of entry, unlike data analytic capabilities like google or FB. At worst, ICE can mail around zip archives as source control like the old days. It doesn’t give them new capabilities like some signal processing service. Basically, the devs here don’t have a compelling case - quit and start their own scm hub and pick their own customers. If they can achieve a business as such, then props.
- helen___keller 7y ago
  I feel like it may be the other way around? If GitHub was the exclusive provider of some important service - like a utility - I would feel strongly that they should continue to offer the service despite political differences (even if not strictly classified as a utility). On the other hand, since there are plenty of alternatives, there's no huge & lasting damage that could result from Github choosing not to have a particular customer - and as such they should have more freedom to deny any particular customer. As such, I think it's should be fine, ethically speaking, to discontinue a professional relationship with ICE should Github management decide that continuing a relationship with ICE is counter to their values or something, in which case the devs do have a case they can try to make (that ICE is counter to their values).
no_opinions 7y ago
What is the actual complaint they have about ICE? Is it the immigration policy, the immigration court system? individual agents/employees? Doesn't every country have a counterpart to ICE that handles immigration rules? Are there any countries that allow people to come and go without identifying themselves and having permission? How is requiring identification and a visa (authorization) human rights abuse? If that's the standard for human rights abuse, then how can we own/lease/operate a car, have a bank account, rent an apartment, have an email account, access the internet, and so on? Isn't identification and permission justified merely for the sake of bureaucracy? How else would you be able to keep an email inbox and go back to it without someone saying its you, and/or the mail being lost? Maybe immigration policies could be improved, what specifically is it that could be done better?
- helen___keller 7y ago
  I don't can't answer your question about "the actual complaint" because I am not one of the developers/protesters, but I'd just like to note you're building a lot of arguments against potential straw men. Perhaps you should more actively seek out the opposing opinion before you build arguments against them.
- kyleblarson 7y ago
  Asking for actual supporting details from the virtue signalers is a no no.
- cmcaine 7y ago
  The letter is here if you'd like to read it: https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0
sdinsn 7y ago
How can I join the call for GitHub to not cancel its ICE contract? I'm happy that GitHub works with our government
LiNeXT 7y ago
RMS has the answer: "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0)."
odiroot 7y ago
What a silly hill to die on. What's wrong with Github doing work for ICE?

145 points by jna_sh 7y ago

If the report is to be believed, why do these developers think so high and mighty about themselves? If they are so concerned, team up, pool money and buy enough MS stocks (like an activist investor) and direct Microsoft's actions. Until then, Microsoft and Satya Nadella must do what is best for their stock holders not to activists of any kind. If any of the devs / employees are not happy with the direction MS is heading, leave the employer. If enough devs leave, MS may tweak it's approach.

LiNeXT 7y ago
They don't care quite enough to give up their inflated Bay Area salary or stock options.
Brain_Thief 7y ago
Ah, the ancient and exhausted "if you don't like it then leave" argument has finally made its appearance. How could none of us have realized that the obvious solution to disagreeing with a policy in our organization / community / government is to just silently give up and leave? Obviously a peaceful letter of dissent would be completely outside the bounds of rational behavior! And besides, if a concerned group REALLY wanted to change things and not just whine they would simply raise billions of dollars to accrue a significant block of voting shares in one of the world's largest corporations to change policy via board action!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rocky1138 7y ago

> [GitHub] plays an increasingly indispensable role in projects that require collaborating around code. This is just not true and I warn everyone from believing this is the case. GitHub is based on git which can be hosted anywhere and by anyone. The features which GitHub provide above and beyond git can be replicated with some work (either by switching to Gitlab, which you can host yourself, or using one of the other alternatives like Gitea) if you want to. Is GitHub useful? Yeah! Is it indispensable? No!

shiohime 7y ago

Wow, some open source developers trying to flex on GH for not appealing to their woke politics that get amplified by their own media bubbles. This kind of behavior really is becoming incredibly tiresome. I look forward to GH not caring, and seeing these devs continue to use their platform despite the hollow threats of possibly pulling their repos, which they clearly won't go through the trouble of doing. Even if they follow through with it nothing of value is lost.

foobarandgrill 7y ago

I call for them to not do that. So Developer calls for GitHub to ignore the SJWs.

whiddershins 7y ago
I join with you
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
  +1
- vnchr 7y ago
  Another 43 developers and that’s more than the article says are calling to cancel
hart_russell 7y ago
Another developer here. I also call for ignoring the SJWs
adamch 7y ago
Is it a SJW stance to not want children forcibly removed from their parents, kept in cages, and sexually abused by guards who were hired without sufficient vetting? Or is it just a SJW stance to not want your 8 hours of labor to help run those camps more efficiently, so that greater numbers of people can be detained?
- c0nducktr 7y ago
  Or an SJW stance to not want the government creating fake universities with the purpose of entrapping people legally in the US in order to deport them. https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2019/11/27/ice-set-up-fake-university-then-arrested-people-it-gave-student-visas/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2019/11/27/ice-se...
  - EduardoBautista 7y ago

major505 7y ago

Is bullshit if Microsoft accepts this, but there`s always alternatives to github. So, in the end nothing of value is gonna be lost.

astrodust 7y ago
ICE deserves to use the shittiest possible software, not the best.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  Even if I agreed with you, wouldn't that mean that the immigrants would be treated even worse than you claim they're being treated now?
  - astrodust 7y ago
    They separated thousands of families with zero plan for tracking them. Tell me how it could be worse because of software.
    - Rebelgecko 7y ago
      Wouldn't software or some sort of database be the best way to track them? I imagine ICE would be even worse if everything was pen and paper.
      - astrodust 7y ago
        Sure, some kind of software might be better, but they didn't even bother to write things down. This was a deliberate decision to not track and software won't help.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      if rejectApplication = true { … in C — and yes, the single equals is deliberate.

andonisus 7y ago

Github provides software lifecycle management services. It is apolitical. I do not believe we should be trying to police the providers of apolitical software.

aalleavitch 7y ago
This is bullshit, nothing is apolitical. To pretend otherwise is the height of dishonesty. Claiming that there are no political consequences for your actions is simply burying your head in the sand. You have a measurable effect on the world around you. If you do something, you are responsible for the effect it has on the world around you. You don't get to just dump toxic waste into the environment and claim it's an externality so it's not your problem. Your political effect on the world is just as real as any other effect you have on the environment, you are responsible.
- andonisus 7y ago
  There are political consequences for everything we do. I never said there weren't any. All I said was that I don't think we should be concerned with the politics of selling apolitical software.
  - aalleavitch 7y ago
    Right? Imagine the horror of companies having to take strong ethical stances on the use of their software and how their company influences the world around them. If companies had to care about ensuring that the fruits of their labor had impacts that were in accordance with the moral beliefs of their employees, that might even cut into shareholder profits. The terror!
    - dang 7y ago
      Would you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
7y ago

romaaeterna 7y ago

The LA Times has a (pay)-wall that keeps me from illegally reading their content, so I don't know what this article says. But I personally think that uncontrolled migration flows lead to horrific human trafficking problems. The rapes and murders that get committed along this flow because we don't control our border as well as we did 20 years ago are unconscionable. Yes, the next generation will vote Democrat, due to America's birthright citizen situation. But is that really worth the cost? Github should help ICE do the best job that it can.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago
"because we don't control our border as well as we did 20 years ago are unconscionable." From what I understand we actually control our border much harder than we did 20 or even 30 years ago.
- romaaeterna 7y ago
  It's possible that your understanding is incorrect: https://imgur.com/4yyWYuM https://imgur.com/4yyWYuM And remember that the numbers in the above graph aren't even population adjusted. This doesn't cover the Trump years, but deportations are even lower under Trump than Obama.
  - bitcurious 7y ago
    Your graph says little about border control and a lot about enforcement inside the US, which ironically can be partially explained by harsher border control. In southern states it used to be the case that Mexican workers would come over for day labor, or for the harvest season, and then leave to lead their lives in Mexico. Once border control got a bit more serious people started coming to stay.
    - romaaeterna 7y ago
      That's not a great description of immigration history to the US. See for example the Eisenhower administration efforts in this regard as far back as the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback

hexsprite 7y ago

44 Developers. This does not represent the majority.

commandlinefan 7y ago
They certainly don't represent me. Governments need to function, and they need software to do it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

paulintrognon 7y ago

I have trouble understanding from this article what the problem is with ICE (I'm from outside the US). The developpers disagree with the whole purpose of ICE, because they trakc refugees, so they don't want github to have anything to do with them, is that correct?

jakelazaroff 7y ago
"Track refugees" is an extremely charitable summary. I'd recommend reading the open letter [1] on GitHub and following some of the links. A short excerpt (with lots of links in the letter): > ICE conducts random violent raids throughout the United States, invades communities and workplaces with military equipment, detains busses and trains, and arrests people solely on the basis of their perceived nationality, skin color, or native language. Their agents lurk outside of schools in order to abduct the children of immigrants and force their families to surrender themselves into custody. ICE imprisons people in deplorable and unsanitary conditions and denies them medical care. [1] https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0
- netule 7y ago
  I think you forgot to include the actual link to the GitHub repo: https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    Whoops, yes I did. Updated! Thanks.
hokumguru 7y ago
Essentially. Although illegal immigration is but one of the many responsibilities of ICE they are heavily criticized and often demonized for their... interesting way of handling certain situations (such as the detention camps on our southern border) The dislike of ICE appears much more prominent in more left-leaning areas such as the coastal cities. As with any topic there are many moderates on either side with their own opinions and also more vocal, radical, opinions as well.

jakelazaroff 7y ago

To anyone dissatisfied with the ethical lapses of GitHub and GitLab, check out sourcehut [1]. It's an independent Git/Mercurial host (plus builds, issue tracking and a bunch of other features) made by Drew DeVault (creator of sway). Their business model is "customers first, investors never" [2] (I have no affiliation — I was just impressed by it when I moved a couple repos over after getting frustrated with GitHub and GitLab.) [1] https://sourcehut.org https://sourcehut.org [2] https://sourcehut.org/blog/2019-10-23-srht-puts-users-first/ https://sourcehut.org/blog/2019-10-23-srht-puts-users-first/

castlecrasher2 7y ago
Thanks for the link. I eagerly await the time they take a contract I can impose my personal moral outrage on.

sremani 7y ago

>> signed by 44 developers at the time of publication This detail is in the article, but the headline feels like embellishment by omission.

LiNeXT 7y ago

Because being anti-ICE is the current "woke" Silicon Valley hive mind stance to have.

cyphar 7y ago
It's probably more because of the concentration camps.
- LiNeXT 7y ago
  What concentration camps?
  - cyphar 7y ago
    https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentration-camps-southern-border-migrant-detention-facilities-trump/ https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentratio...
    - LiNeXT 7y ago
      Nice try. Concentration camp is an extremely loaded term and using it in this context serves absolutely no productive purpose.
      - iron0013 7y ago
        It's an extremely accurate term, and using it in this context serves the purpose of not minimizing the importance of their being the sites of atrocities and internationally-decried human rights violations.
      - cryoshon 7y ago
        actually, it serves the purpose of riling people to action perfectly because it captures the scale and nature of the detainment centers at a time when information coming out of those centers is extremely limited and the state of a hearty share of the public rhetoric is that the people contained within the camps are subhuman. the camps serve no productive purpose, yet here we are with a bunch of them in the country anyway.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago

What I find super interesting is that software development activism is not a new phenomenon (Eg. FOSS, letsencrypt, dragonfly) but that the activism has spread as the scope of technology has spread. Who you work for and where you work is itself a political act, which reminds me of being a “scab” (aiding anti-union efforts by accepting employment from a company who is trying to continue functioning during an ongoing labor strike, thereby weakening the union effort) which must’ve also been highly controversial at the time! I don’t really know what will come from this but I’m super interested in seeing what will happen.

throwaway520215 7y ago
> Who you work for and where you work is itself a political act This is correct, however, it does not follow that developers have the right to join an organization and force their political demands on management and ownership. Don't like working for a company that collaborates with your government? You're in luck! You're free to leave your job at any time and won't be penalized for it.
- SauciestGNU 7y ago
  >it does not follow that developers have the right to join an organization and force their political demands on management and ownership It actually does follow that they have a right to do that, as doing that is explicitly protected by US labor law as a concerted organizing activity.
  - throwaway520215 7y ago
    Wrong https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2016/07/politics-in-the-workplace-what-must-employers-allo https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2016/07/polit... Anyone at GitHub participating in this can be fired at any time.
    - SauciestGNU 7y ago
      Your own link proves you wrong. Starting with the following quote and proceeding from there, explaining exactly how what githubbers are doing would be protected: >As interpreted by the NLRB, employee communications are "concerted" not only when he or she acts with or on the authority of other employees but also when the employee seeks to initiate, induce or prepare for group action or brings truly group complaints to management.

jklfuoiuew 7y ago

We need to open all the borders. Shut down ICE, the Police and the Army. And finally, dismantle capitalism. Only then we will be free from violence, racial discrimination and economic oppression.

culot 7y ago
Once that is accomplished you'd be living in a land of warlord fiefdoms. No women or children would ever be safe unless protected by strongmen. Society would stagnate into a dark age. You might as well move to Afghanistan.
shrewduser 7y ago
even if all these things go against the wishes of the people? doesn't sound very democratic. you could always try building your anti capitalist utopia in a socialist country, although i feel like the dismantling of borders will be redundant because no one will ever want to go there.
- castlecrasher2 7y ago
  I honestly can't tell if it's satire or not. Poe's Law gets stronger every day.
  - mizzack 7y ago
    Can't spell prole without P O E. Is there a term for Poe commies?

jklfuoiuew 7y ago

Notable signers: David Heinemeier Hansson, @dhh (Ruby on Rails) Tatiana Mac, @TatianaMac (Self-Defined Dictionary)

gatherhunterer 7y ago
The downvotes on this comment are evidence of which side is offended by factual information presented without bias.
- sdinsn 7y ago
  > evidence of which side is offended by factual information No, the downvotes are from people who don't decide their entire existence based on the opinions of 44 developers. I couldn't care less if Jesus returns and wants Github to cancel their contract too
  - gatherhunterer 7y ago
    The above comment is just basic information on two people who have signed, nothing more and nothing less. You are offended by a simple fact.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

shrewduser 7y ago

I can't help but find this kind of thing horribly undemocratic, The tyranny of a loud few, Take your arguments to the people and contact your representative. This is just using the media to short circuit the democratic process and i think it hurts business and the economy. We live in a system of laws and it has created a lot of certainty for actors within the system.

openasocket 7y ago
Calling for a boycott is undemocratic? It's a pretty standard form of protest, dating back centuries.
- subjectsigma 7y ago
  Interpreting the GP comment charitably: let's say every single GitHub employee opposed ICE (which isn't true, but just pretend) and decided to drop the contract. I have no idea how much this would impact ICE but in our hypothetical scenario let's say a lot. This means an incredibly small percentage of the total population gets to decide whether a legal govt agency functions correctly for the next few months or so, even if the entire rest of the country relies on and supported the agency. I personally believe that GitHub can do whatever they feel is right because they're a private company, but if this were the case, isn't that pretty undemocratic?
  - drewbug01 7y ago
    Your hypothetical situation implies that software produced by GitHub is vital to the operating of this agency, and that there is no other way to do it. If you accept that, your argument looks somewhat compelling. But I don't think that's a claim we should accept - frankly, there are plenty of alternatives to GitHub. Moreover, there are plenty of alternatives to git itself. They are viable and in-use today - git has not always existed and will not always be the tool of choice. And continuing further down the stack... people wrote software even before version control existed as we know it today. You do not need version control to write software (although, I'm sure we both agree it's a good idea). Even if we accept that ICE needs software to do its job - which I don't personally think is true, but neither of us can really claim to know - it's categorically untrue that they need GitHub specifically. They have a myriad of ways they could accomplish their goals without GitHub. But there's another element of your argument we should discuss, and it's one I've heard from CEOs recently - that it's somehow "undemocratic" for a company to deny software to the government, because it privileges the voices of a minority of people. That argument makes very little sense to me. It first conflates "democracy" with a company declining to do business with the government. Democracy is a form of government - the actions of businesses are not and cannot be "undemocratic" - they aren't the government. Setting aside rhetorical annoyances, though - the claim you're making is that a company's actions are depriving the majority electorate of what they voted for, and that they voted for ICE in its current form. I don't think the majority of the country voted on it, and even if we assume they did indirectly via the presidential election ... it's not a contested fact that the current president lost the popular vote. We can't even say a "majority" of people support this without contorting ourselves, or without redefining "majority" to mean "the majority of electoral college votes"... and we get into seriously absurd territory there. Yet we can even dig deeper: if we accept that it's somehow "undemocratic" for a company to deny services to the government - we must also accept the counter-claim that all companies must provide services to the government upon request. They're two sides of the same coin - if you cannot refuse, then you must. That's a scary thing, in my mind - and I do not want to live in a country where a company cannot legally refuse to do business with the government. Current legal theory in the US doesn't support that, and I hope it doesn't change. And finally - even if we accept all of the claims you make (the few explicit ones made, and the many implicit ones that must be made to support the explicit claims): why on earth couldn't the government write the software itself? The federal government employs hundreds of software developers. More than GitHub! If GitHub's software is required, and the agency cannot function without it, and there is no alternative available to the government in the market - what stops them from writing the software themselves?

llamataboot 7y ago

Whether you agree with it or not, it is /absolutely appropriate/ to pressure corporations to not do business with other companies or organizations or governments you find morally reprehensible. If it was Boeing providing bombers to the PRC to use against civilian populations, many people inside and outside of Boeing would be pressuring that contract to be cancelled. What exactly is the problem with applying pressure to get a corporation to stop taking money from an organization/corporation/government/person that you find immoral? The company doesn't have to /care/. The company can go after their almighty dollars for their shareholder if they want. And people can then choose to target that company in different ways, or target other companies that do business with that company, etc. Boycotts, strikes, sabotage, sit-ins, work slowdowns, etc has all been used to pressure companies to take actions because of political reasons.

helen___keller 7y ago
Agreed, but > sabotage Not sure about this one, this sounds a tad illegal
- criddell 7y ago
  It's just civil disobedience, isn't it?
- llamataboot 7y ago
  sure, and github could press charges. People have been getting arrested dismantling US war machinery for decades, etc. I'm not saying it's legal, I'm not even commenting on whether I agree, I'm just saying the "it's not appropriate to pressure a company for political views, companies should be off limits from politics" doesn't hold water.
  - Goladus 7y ago
    > I'm just saying the "it's not appropriate to pressure a company for political views, companies should be off limits from politics" You haven't actually presented a supporting argument for it, though. What exactly is the problem with applying pressure to get a corporation to stop taking money from an organization/corporation/government/person that you find immoral? You are interfering with their freedom of association. You must weigh the morality of that violation vs what you hope to gain. It's not an obvious answer and is why the example of Boeing selling bombers actively being used to bomb civilians is misleading and why I objected to it.

cronix 7y ago

I'm sure they'll also be disheartened to know that their OS and other softwares like SQL Server are being used by various militaries around the world to kill people. And terrorists. How many terrorists are in MS databases? How can they sleep at night by creating these nefarious tools? How many other open source projects are used in ways the authors didn't intend? Lots of military hardware running mysql and the like. "MySQL Cluster is used by the US Navy to power the flight deck and operations management system on US Navy aircraft carriers.[1] I wonder how many men, women and children were killed by aircraft launched from those carriers powered by mysql. "The Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) alone hosts 665 SQL Server databases and, of course, NCMI is just part of the DOD ecosystem. As a public affairs spokesperson for the Defense Information Systems Agency said, “[SQL Server] supports hundreds of applications, including email, content management, document management, enterprise search, business intelligence and workflow management.”"[2] [1] https://www.mysql.com/industry/government/ https://www.mysql.com/industry/government/ [2] https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2016/03/army-and-navy-use-sql-server-and-battlefield https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2016/03/army-and-navy-us... Grow up, kids. You can't control what others do with your tech. In fact, you helped to create this world. Your works are being used for evil. And "this" is the battle you choose to fight? You're SJW hypocrites.

Brain_Thief 7y ago
What, exactly, is hypocritical about these developers' actions? If a person wants their organization / community / country to change then they should encourage that change through non-violent means. It seems to me that by calling for their employer to discontinue business with an entity that they find unacceptable the Github employees in question are doing just that. In fact, their actions come across as quite sincere, and certainly appear to be far more productive and well-reasoned than your insult-laden criticism of them would imply.
archagon 7y ago
“SJW hypocrites,” really? Sounds like you’re the one who needs to do some growing. In the meantime, I’ll strongly consider releasing all my OSS under a license that prohibits police and military use in the future.
7y ago

ummonk 7y ago

Note that pretty much everything terrible (e.g. family separations, warrantless searches) is done by DHS and its other constituents like CBP, not ICE specifically.

microcolonel 7y ago

If ICE goes off and deploys their own on-prem GitLab, or goes to sourcehut or something, what moral difference does it make?

minimuffins 7y ago
It makes some small difference in ICE's reputation, maybe a dent in public opinion. If ICE are treated as a pariah by mainstream commercial institutions it may counteract the "normalization" of what they do. Github is large and pretty well known. Their choice, either way, will set an example.
- _-david-_ 7y ago
  It would put more of a dent in Github's reputation. Why would you go with a company that may pull your contract when you haven't changed what you do in 20 years? Github signed the contact knowing what ICE does and didn't care years ago. Now its suddenly an issue.
  - minimuffins 7y ago
    ICE has changed what it does in the last 20 years as others have pointed out. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21706133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21706133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704192 I doubt anyone really thinks ICE in 2003 is actually the same as ICE in 2019. Not anyone who's paying any attention.
    - _-david-_ 7y ago
      I was not talking about specific cases / abuses. I was talking about policy. ICE patrolled the border. ICE stopped people illegally crossing the border. ICE jailed people suspected of crossing the border. ICE separated children. Nothing has changed in that regards. The other issue is that the posts don't say if things are actually getting better. For example the first claim is "The Intercept published a report by the DHS Office of Inspector General revealing that 1,224 sexual abuse complaints while in immigration custody were filed between January 2010 and June 2017." We need to see the rates before 2010 or we need to see the rate for each year. Based on what that person posted we cannot draw any conclusions if things are actually improving or not. If things are improving then people shouldn't really be boycotting.

bfung 7y ago

A nuance here to tease out is that there are alternatives to github with low barriers of entry, unlike data analytic capabilities like google or FB. At worst, ICE can mail around zip archives as source control like the old days. It doesn’t give them new capabilities like some signal processing service. Basically, the devs here don’t have a compelling case - quit and start their own scm hub and pick their own customers. If they can achieve a business as such, then props.

helen___keller 7y ago
I feel like it may be the other way around? If GitHub was the exclusive provider of some important service - like a utility - I would feel strongly that they should continue to offer the service despite political differences (even if not strictly classified as a utility). On the other hand, since there are plenty of alternatives, there's no huge & lasting damage that could result from Github choosing not to have a particular customer - and as such they should have more freedom to deny any particular customer. As such, I think it's should be fine, ethically speaking, to discontinue a professional relationship with ICE should Github management decide that continuing a relationship with ICE is counter to their values or something, in which case the devs do have a case they can try to make (that ICE is counter to their values).

no_opinions 7y ago

What is the actual complaint they have about ICE? Is it the immigration policy, the immigration court system? individual agents/employees? Doesn't every country have a counterpart to ICE that handles immigration rules? Are there any countries that allow people to come and go without identifying themselves and having permission? How is requiring identification and a visa (authorization) human rights abuse? If that's the standard for human rights abuse, then how can we own/lease/operate a car, have a bank account, rent an apartment, have an email account, access the internet, and so on? Isn't identification and permission justified merely for the sake of bureaucracy? How else would you be able to keep an email inbox and go back to it without someone saying its you, and/or the mail being lost? Maybe immigration policies could be improved, what specifically is it that could be done better?

helen___keller 7y ago
I don't can't answer your question about "the actual complaint" because I am not one of the developers/protesters, but I'd just like to note you're building a lot of arguments against potential straw men. Perhaps you should more actively seek out the opposing opinion before you build arguments against them.
kyleblarson 7y ago
Asking for actual supporting details from the virtue signalers is a no no.
cmcaine 7y ago
The letter is here if you'd like to read it: https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0

sdinsn 7y ago

How can I join the call for GitHub to not cancel its ICE contract? I'm happy that GitHub works with our government

LiNeXT 7y ago

RMS has the answer: "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0)."

odiroot 7y ago

What a silly hill to die on. What's wrong with Github doing work for ICE?