6 ms·

An open letter to GitHub from the maintainers of open source projects

76 points by dr_linux 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
decebalus1 7y ago
Honestly, who gives a shit? The whole free market deal everyone is preaching about should just fix the problem. Git is decentralized. If you have a political/ethical problem with Github, move your stuff to Gitlab or host it yourself. It's not a big deal. Although I share some of the feelings in that letter, Github is free to do whatever it wants and we are (still) free to take our business wherever we want.
- qwerty110291 7y ago
  GitHub is a near monopolist. Several large projects like Python have been moved to GitHub under eager participation of Microsoft employees. Open source is no longer free, so we do not have a choice.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    If most people choose to take their business to one firm, instead of the alternatives available to them, that may be bad but there's not a monopoly under the textbook definition.
  - decebalus1 7y ago
    > GitHub is a near monopolist. Several large projects like Python have been moved to GitHub No. No no no no. Stop using Git like SVN. Fork the projects if you don't agree with the maintainers choosing to stay with Github. Don't ask nicely, write manifests, sign petitions, etc.. fucking act!
- antoineMoPa 7y ago
  «Honestly, who gives a shit?» -> Good question, I think you'll find list of people who give a shit in the link.
- firethief 7y ago
  The free market deal some people apparently still preach about relies on the people being informed, and on the people giving a shit; what you're seeing is part of the former, and evidence of the latter.
- staticassertion 7y ago
  Isn't this basically just a threat to do exactly what you're saying?
- mirekrusin 7y ago
  How do "open source maintainers" know they also don't contribute to ICE? Do their license prohibit ICE from using software they've written?
013a 7y ago
These open source projects certainly love the very high quality, free services Github offers them, until they start learning how the sausage is made. ICE has done, and continues to do some terrible things. Horrible, horrible things; all legal things, but nonetheless horrible. But, frankly, if its legal, I am much less comfortable with Github's users subverting the US legal system by backdooring their moral code into products these legal entities rely on. Go to your senators. Go out and vote. Go protest. It's not that hard, but it is much harder than signing your name on a petition.
- tom_ 7y ago
  Signing a petition is legal too?
- firethief 7y ago
  Surely you can't be equating boycotting a company with "subverting the US legal system". What am I missing here?
- watwut 7y ago
  > Go to your senators. Go out and vote. Go protest. This is the protest. This is one form of how protest looks like.
- staticassertion 7y ago
  No one is subverting the legal system lol what the fuck "go protest" what do you think you're reading?
- switzer 7y ago
  Increasingly people (esp. Millennials) consider ethics and values toward the top when deciding whether to purchase or use a product. Why wouldn't they get together and shame a company when that company acts against their own moral values? Is the best possible solution to wait until the first Tuesday in November and hope for the best? I am sure many will also vote, call their elected officials, go to a protest. They'll also sign online petitions.
  - 7y ago
lidHanteyk 7y ago
So many of these folks were forced by their communities of users to move to Github from their old, bespoke infrastructures. I can understand the bitterness.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
jedberg 7y ago
As a side note to the letter, it's interesting to watch how pull requests are used to add signatures in alphabetical order. That's actually a really interesting exercise to watch.
- kgwxd 7y ago
  Shouldn't they have instructions on how send a pull request without a GitHub account? I'm already boycotting for an unrelated reason.
sarcasmatwork 7y ago
Where was this during the Obama admin which actually had worse conditions? MSM/These folks are not accurately describing what is happening at the border. There was a mass exodus (https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/10/25/organizer-admits-caravan-is-a-mass-exodus-from-central-america-to-u-s/ https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/10/25/organizer-admi...) that is coming to our border and Mexico was allowing it, but now have stopped (https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/13/mexico-migrant-caravan-us/ https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/13/mexico-migrant-caravan-us...) the caravan. Obama separated kids too, and said DONT BRING your kids to the border, but now Trump is to blame. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-01/fact-check-did-obama-detain-90000-children-border https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-01/fact-check-did-oba... Not a fan of WaPo, but another example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/06/11/angry-that-ice-is-ripping-families-apart-dont-just-blame-trump-blame-clinton-bush-and-obama-too/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/... Why are kids separated? Because pedo's: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration-enforcement-separating-kids-at-border/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration-e...
- staticassertion 7y ago
  https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-announces-zero-tolerance-policy-criminal-illegal-entry https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-announces-ze... To act like nothing has changed under Trump is ignorant. To pretend that it would matter is disingenuous. No administration is called out in this repository. Saying "Well, it's too late, because you didn't complain about it under the last administration" is meaningless.
  - squidsurfer 7y ago
    No, it is meaningful. It shows that the signatories are virtue signaling based on political animus, and dont care one bit for any supposed victims, severely hurting their credibility.
    - staticassertion 7y ago
      It's not meaningful. a) It's not even true. I pointed to a literal policy for this administration, which has been absolutely central to the controversy. b) Even if it were the case, your issue is with the media, not the protestors. If I find out tomorrow that there's a problem, it is not really important to me that the problem began under X or Y administration, but that it persists under the current one. c) You claim simultaneously that the media is biased and only covering the topic now, but then somehow blame people for only learning about the issue and caring about it now. Your issue is with the media, and that's fine, but it's not relevant to this at all. If you want to put the media on blast go nuts, this topic has nothing to do with the media or this administration.
samatman 7y ago
Yikes! It’s terrible that BitMover is doing things with BitKeeper which are against the interests of the open source community. Someone should develop a distributed version control system...
cronix 7y ago
Sounds like a great time to start your own woke git service. So you have maybe 10-15 open source packages in your product, at a minimum. I guess we're at such an intolerant point now that all 10-15 of those companies political policies and viewpoints must align with your own - to use their software/service. I guess we've politicized code now. Has anyone looked at the political system of discourse lately? Keep that shit out of code, or we're doomed as a profession.
- staticassertion 7y ago
  "Keep that shit out of code", you say, while software services take millions of dollars in government contracts, and spend millions more lobbying. Like ???????????
  - ratsmack 7y ago
    Taking a government contract is not the same as politicizing code.
    - hacknat 7y ago
      To you. Peoples' politics are, definitionally, subjective.
    - rexpop 7y ago
      It absolutely is. Government is the reification of politics, and technologies facilitate this reification–or don't.
  - rexpop 7y ago
    This is a crucial point. Status quo sycophants tell us to "take politics outside," but what they mean is "take YOUR politics outside, and make more room for MINE." Politics is money and power. Tech is money and power. Tech is politics. And anyone who says otherwise is trying to undermine your power by obscuring this reality.
    - 7y ago
kristiandupont 7y ago
I probably share political stance with most of the people signing this and it's a very interesting type of dilemma that I haven't thought quite through just yet but I think I disagree with this. It's common for especially B2C corporations to have highly documented CSR policies. They will not work with suppliers that perform testing on animals. Or employ child workers. And they will not work with suppliers who have suppliers that do those things. The entire chain is potentially audited. I approve of this concept and I vote with my wallet. This situation, however, is different. Whereas companies choose suppliers, they don't really choose customers. At least by some definition, the customers choose them. I know that this gets muddy because sales, but still. And I don't like the idea that companies should start auditing their customers. What if some company that deals with ICE uses Github? Or say someone who used to work at ICE formed a company -- is that company in the clear? Doesn't seem like a viable direction to me.
batterystd 7y ago
An intelligent comment on there: https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0/issues/215#issuecomment-562239055 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0/issues/215#issue...
squidsurfer 7y ago
Wonder if these social justice keyboard warriors know that most of the stuff at ICE that they are upset about happened under Obama. Where was the outrage then?
malvosenior 7y ago
> At the core of the open source ethos is the idea of liberty. Open source is about inverting power structures and creating access and opportunities for everyone. I think the core idea of open source is that code should be shared for free. Not shared for free (with people I politically agree with). By policing who can use software, the author's of this letter are very much going against the spirit of open source. It should not be the position of the tool maker to dictate who can use the tool they create. Once you put it out in the world, people you don't agree with will use your software (if you're lucky enough to have users that is). I see no difference in slamming Github for having a customer certain activists don't like vs the MPAA cracking down on DeCSS.
- Pete_D 7y ago
  > By policing who can use software, the author's of this letter are very much going against the spirit of open source. I'd be inclined to agree, but it's a little weird in this case because GitHub itself is proprietary software, so they've always been in the business of policing who can use it. Contrast: if ICE were using GitLab and GitLab decided to pull the contract, ICE could just (well, "just") self-host and be on their way. Open source in practice was always more about the freedom to walk away than about collaboration, and this is reflected in the licenses. Exit rather than voice, if you will.
- anarchodev 7y ago
  Yes, the idea of liberty (for everyone to use free software regardless of intent) and the liberty of immigrants in the US to live without harassment and terrorism of their communities are indeed in conflict. So you have to choose one. By not choosing one, you're choosing the existing system -- ICE uses this software to accomplish these goals. We're not trying to infringe on ICE/CBP's ability to use popular open-source software. We're simply asking some companies not to help them with support contracts. Hope this helps!
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    As stated I choose the liberty of everyone to use free software regardless of intent. > By not choosing one, you're choosing the existing system It's become quite popular to say that being ok with the status quo is a political position. And while I couldn't disagree more, I've always believed in free software and I'll proudly stand by that status quo as my political position if that's how others want to view it.
squidsurfer 7y ago
Letter forgot to mention all the killers and rapists ICE removes form USA and keeping America SAFE #498 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0/issues/498 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0/issues/498 This issue makes a very good point!
dang 7y ago
This was discussed extensively a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21703631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21703631. Unfortunately it also turned into a flamewar with many users disregarding the site guidelines. Please read and follow those when commenting here, no matter how strongly you feel about political questions. Indeed, when strong feelings are present, that's when we need to follow them the most. That's the point of this rule: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

76 points by dr_linux 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Honestly, who gives a shit? The whole free market deal everyone is preaching about should just fix the problem. Git is decentralized. If you have a political/ethical problem with Github, move your stuff to Gitlab or host it yourself. It's not a big deal. Although I share some of the feelings in that letter, Github is free to do whatever it wants and we are (still) free to take our business wherever we want.

qwerty110291 7y ago
GitHub is a near monopolist. Several large projects like Python have been moved to GitHub under eager participation of Microsoft employees. Open source is no longer free, so we do not have a choice.
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  If most people choose to take their business to one firm, instead of the alternatives available to them, that may be bad but there's not a monopoly under the textbook definition.
- decebalus1 7y ago
  > GitHub is a near monopolist. Several large projects like Python have been moved to GitHub No. No no no no. Stop using Git like SVN. Fork the projects if you don't agree with the maintainers choosing to stay with Github. Don't ask nicely, write manifests, sign petitions, etc.. fucking act!
antoineMoPa 7y ago
«Honestly, who gives a shit?» -> Good question, I think you'll find list of people who give a shit in the link.
firethief 7y ago
The free market deal some people apparently still preach about relies on the people being informed, and on the people giving a shit; what you're seeing is part of the former, and evidence of the latter.
staticassertion 7y ago
Isn't this basically just a threat to do exactly what you're saying?
mirekrusin 7y ago
How do "open source maintainers" know they also don't contribute to ICE? Do their license prohibit ICE from using software they've written?

013a 7y ago

These open source projects certainly love the very high quality, free services Github offers them, until they start learning how the sausage is made. ICE has done, and continues to do some terrible things. Horrible, horrible things; all legal things, but nonetheless horrible. But, frankly, if its legal, I am much less comfortable with Github's users subverting the US legal system by backdooring their moral code into products these legal entities rely on. Go to your senators. Go out and vote. Go protest. It's not that hard, but it is much harder than signing your name on a petition.

tom_ 7y ago
Signing a petition is legal too?
firethief 7y ago
Surely you can't be equating boycotting a company with "subverting the US legal system". What am I missing here?
watwut 7y ago
> Go to your senators. Go out and vote. Go protest. This is the protest. This is one form of how protest looks like.
staticassertion 7y ago
No one is subverting the legal system lol what the fuck "go protest" what do you think you're reading?
switzer 7y ago
Increasingly people (esp. Millennials) consider ethics and values toward the top when deciding whether to purchase or use a product. Why wouldn't they get together and shame a company when that company acts against their own moral values? Is the best possible solution to wait until the first Tuesday in November and hope for the best? I am sure many will also vote, call their elected officials, go to a protest. They'll also sign online petitions.
- 7y ago

lidHanteyk 7y ago

So many of these folks were forced by their communities of users to move to Github from their old, bespoke infrastructures. I can understand the bitterness.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

jedberg 7y ago

As a side note to the letter, it's interesting to watch how pull requests are used to add signatures in alphabetical order. That's actually a really interesting exercise to watch.

kgwxd 7y ago
Shouldn't they have instructions on how send a pull request without a GitHub account? I'm already boycotting for an unrelated reason.

sarcasmatwork 7y ago

Where was this during the Obama admin which actually had worse conditions? MSM/These folks are not accurately describing what is happening at the border. There was a mass exodus (https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/10/25/organizer-admits-caravan-is-a-mass-exodus-from-central-america-to-u-s/ https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/10/25/organizer-admi...) that is coming to our border and Mexico was allowing it, but now have stopped (https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/13/mexico-migrant-caravan-us/ https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/13/mexico-migrant-caravan-us...) the caravan. Obama separated kids too, and said DONT BRING your kids to the border, but now Trump is to blame. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-01/fact-check-did-obama-detain-90000-children-border https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-01/fact-check-did-oba... Not a fan of WaPo, but another example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/06/11/angry-that-ice-is-ripping-families-apart-dont-just-blame-trump-blame-clinton-bush-and-obama-too/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/... Why are kids separated? Because pedo's: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration-enforcement-separating-kids-at-border/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration-e...

staticassertion 7y ago
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-announces-zero-tolerance-policy-criminal-illegal-entry https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-announces-ze... To act like nothing has changed under Trump is ignorant. To pretend that it would matter is disingenuous. No administration is called out in this repository. Saying "Well, it's too late, because you didn't complain about it under the last administration" is meaningless.
- squidsurfer 7y ago
  No, it is meaningful. It shows that the signatories are virtue signaling based on political animus, and dont care one bit for any supposed victims, severely hurting their credibility.
  - staticassertion 7y ago
    It's not meaningful. a) It's not even true. I pointed to a literal policy for this administration, which has been absolutely central to the controversy. b) Even if it were the case, your issue is with the media, not the protestors. If I find out tomorrow that there's a problem, it is not really important to me that the problem began under X or Y administration, but that it persists under the current one. c) You claim simultaneously that the media is biased and only covering the topic now, but then somehow blame people for only learning about the issue and caring about it now. Your issue is with the media, and that's fine, but it's not relevant to this at all. If you want to put the media on blast go nuts, this topic has nothing to do with the media or this administration.

samatman 7y ago

Yikes! It’s terrible that BitMover is doing things with BitKeeper which are against the interests of the open source community. Someone should develop a distributed version control system...

cronix 7y ago

Sounds like a great time to start your own woke git service. So you have maybe 10-15 open source packages in your product, at a minimum. I guess we're at such an intolerant point now that all 10-15 of those companies political policies and viewpoints must align with your own - to use their software/service. I guess we've politicized code now. Has anyone looked at the political system of discourse lately? Keep that shit out of code, or we're doomed as a profession.

staticassertion 7y ago
"Keep that shit out of code", you say, while software services take millions of dollars in government contracts, and spend millions more lobbying. Like ???????????
- ratsmack 7y ago
  Taking a government contract is not the same as politicizing code.
  - hacknat 7y ago
    To you. Peoples' politics are, definitionally, subjective.
  - rexpop 7y ago
    It absolutely is. Government is the reification of politics, and technologies facilitate this reification–or don't.
- rexpop 7y ago
  This is a crucial point. Status quo sycophants tell us to "take politics outside," but what they mean is "take YOUR politics outside, and make more room for MINE." Politics is money and power. Tech is money and power. Tech is politics. And anyone who says otherwise is trying to undermine your power by obscuring this reality.
  - 7y ago

kristiandupont 7y ago

I probably share political stance with most of the people signing this and it's a very interesting type of dilemma that I haven't thought quite through just yet but I think I disagree with this. It's common for especially B2C corporations to have highly documented CSR policies. They will not work with suppliers that perform testing on animals. Or employ child workers. And they will not work with suppliers who have suppliers that do those things. The entire chain is potentially audited. I approve of this concept and I vote with my wallet. This situation, however, is different. Whereas companies choose suppliers, they don't really choose customers. At least by some definition, the customers choose them. I know that this gets muddy because sales, but still. And I don't like the idea that companies should start auditing their customers. What if some company that deals with ICE uses Github? Or say someone who used to work at ICE formed a company -- is that company in the clear? Doesn't seem like a viable direction to me.

batterystd 7y ago

An intelligent comment on there: https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0/issues/215#issuecomment-562239055 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0/issues/215#issue...

squidsurfer 7y ago

Wonder if these social justice keyboard warriors know that most of the stuff at ICE that they are upset about happened under Obama. Where was the outrage then?

malvosenior 7y ago

> At the core of the open source ethos is the idea of liberty. Open source is about inverting power structures and creating access and opportunities for everyone. I think the core idea of open source is that code should be shared for free. Not shared for free (with people I politically agree with). By policing who can use software, the author's of this letter are very much going against the spirit of open source. It should not be the position of the tool maker to dictate who can use the tool they create. Once you put it out in the world, people you don't agree with will use your software (if you're lucky enough to have users that is). I see no difference in slamming Github for having a customer certain activists don't like vs the MPAA cracking down on DeCSS.

Pete_D 7y ago
> By policing who can use software, the author's of this letter are very much going against the spirit of open source. I'd be inclined to agree, but it's a little weird in this case because GitHub itself is proprietary software, so they've always been in the business of policing who can use it. Contrast: if ICE were using GitLab and GitLab decided to pull the contract, ICE could just (well, "just") self-host and be on their way. Open source in practice was always more about the freedom to walk away than about collaboration, and this is reflected in the licenses. Exit rather than voice, if you will.
anarchodev 7y ago
Yes, the idea of liberty (for everyone to use free software regardless of intent) and the liberty of immigrants in the US to live without harassment and terrorism of their communities are indeed in conflict. So you have to choose one. By not choosing one, you're choosing the existing system -- ICE uses this software to accomplish these goals. We're not trying to infringe on ICE/CBP's ability to use popular open-source software. We're simply asking some companies not to help them with support contracts. Hope this helps!
- malvosenior 7y ago
  As stated I choose the liberty of everyone to use free software regardless of intent. > By not choosing one, you're choosing the existing system It's become quite popular to say that being ok with the status quo is a political position. And while I couldn't disagree more, I've always believed in free software and I'll proudly stand by that status quo as my political position if that's how others want to view it.

squidsurfer 7y ago

Letter forgot to mention all the killers and rapists ICE removes form USA and keeping America SAFE #498 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0/issues/498 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0/issues/498 This issue makes a very good point!

dang 7y ago

This was discussed extensively a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21703631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21703631. Unfortunately it also turned into a flamewar with many users disregarding the site guidelines. Please read and follow those when commenting here, no matter how strongly you feel about political questions. Indeed, when strong feelings are present, that's when we need to follow them the most. That's the point of this rule: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html