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? it's removed because the US government told Github to do so. the US government tells lots of people to do lots of things. it told Phil Zimmerman to stop shi

? it's removed because the US government told Github to do so. the US government tells lots of people to do lots of things. it told Phil Zimmerman to stop shipping PGP for a while. Debian and OpenBSD refused to do any crypto work in the US at all for like a decade because of this. it arrested Dmitry Sklyarov for the crime of angering Adobe. you're conflating "tech hive mind" with "most big tech companies are based in the US for tax/regulatory/staffing/VC reasons and so the US government will kill things that threaten it's goals".

jrm4 4y ago
I'm not talking about the part that the US Government's doing, I'm talking about the way in which "tech oriented* people respond. Back then it was much more "The internet routes around censorship, lets get to work" and today it's just like "Oh no what will we do without this code on Github?"
- etchalon 4y ago
  We built the internet without Github, and yet, no one can do work on the internet without access to Github. Programmers have gotten so weirdly lazy.
- danaris 4y ago
  There have always been "tech oriented" people who were mainstream rule-followers. There have always been "tech oriented" people who were iconoclastic anarchists. In the early days, before CS curricula were as widespread and mature as they are now, a lot more people who knew how to program were self-taught, which self-selects for a much more independent type of person. For what I suspect were cultural reasons (but don't have solid data on), they were also much more likely to be the type of person who is on the fringes of society, in the counter-culture, or at least something of a social outcast. I honestly doubt that the absolute number of anarchist- and libertarian-inclined "tech oriented" people has dropped since the '80s and '90s. It's just that there are now orders of magnitude more people who have some reasonable amount of tech understanding, many of whom are very much part of the mainstream and unwilling to put their comfortable lives at risk just to stick it to the man.
  - jrm4 4y ago
    Absolutely right, excellent point. This is one of those things that I logically know to be true and yet doesn't stick with me ... emotionally? Something like that. I'm mid-40s and I do some side contract work and game/Discord with late-20s/early 30's people and folks will be talking about something annoying or unjust, and I'm completely unjustifiably disappointed that no one ever even thinks to mention "hey, we could skirt the rules and just go full hacker on this." (Note: no one ever do anything illegal, I'm more talking the sentiment than actually inciting naughtiness)
  - eternalban 4y ago
    It's an interesting observation but we're not talking about 'sticking to the man' here. The actual situation is that 'the man' and an obliging publisher is taking publicly published free speech and removing it and blacklisting an author. You certainly need not be in the "fringe" or a "social outcast" to object to this state of affairs, which seem to infringe on certain god given liberties (or so we were told). In fact many "dead white men" of excellent repute at the time were rather insistent on these rights. So if demanding our rights is now the condition of the "fringe", the inevitable conclusion is that we live in the gestate state of an emerging tyranny.
DennisP 4y ago
> it's removed because the US government told Github to do so. Actually I don't think they did, and if they had it'd be a First Amendment violation because the courts ruled that source code is protected speech.
- sharemywin 4y ago
  The courts also ruled abortions were private medial matters. Was there some precedent you wanted to rest that legal right on? or some interpretation of the constitution you wanted to base your argument on?
  - DennisP 4y ago
    The case was Bernstein vs. US. If you want their reasoning, the text of the decision is probably available somewhere. https://www.eff.org/cases/bernstein-v-us-dept-justice https://www.eff.org/cases/bernstein-v-us-dept-justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States
    - bananapub 4y ago
      ? clearly free speech is not an absolute right in the US, as evidenced by the endless court- and government-sanctioned infringements of it. so, it's not surprising if another bit is, especially as abstruse as "why can't a company host source code that is enabling money laundering by North Korea"
      - DennisP 4y ago
        Well in the case of source code I'd say the protection is pretty strong, considering the courts allowed publication of code that the government considered a munition: > The Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (the ITAR regulatory scheme) required Bernstein to submit his ideas about cryptography to the government for review, to register as an arms dealer, and to apply for and obtain from the government a license to publish his ideas. Failure to do so would result in severe civil and criminal penalties. > ...the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that software source code was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional.

jrm4 4y ago

I'm not talking about the part that the US Government's doing, I'm talking about the way in which "tech oriented* people respond. Back then it was much more "The internet routes around censorship, lets get to work" and today it's just like "Oh no what will we do without this code on Github?"

etchalon 4y ago
We built the internet without Github, and yet, no one can do work on the internet without access to Github. Programmers have gotten so weirdly lazy.
danaris 4y ago
There have always been "tech oriented" people who were mainstream rule-followers. There have always been "tech oriented" people who were iconoclastic anarchists. In the early days, before CS curricula were as widespread and mature as they are now, a lot more people who knew how to program were self-taught, which self-selects for a much more independent type of person. For what I suspect were cultural reasons (but don't have solid data on), they were also much more likely to be the type of person who is on the fringes of society, in the counter-culture, or at least something of a social outcast. I honestly doubt that the absolute number of anarchist- and libertarian-inclined "tech oriented" people has dropped since the '80s and '90s. It's just that there are now orders of magnitude more people who have some reasonable amount of tech understanding, many of whom are very much part of the mainstream and unwilling to put their comfortable lives at risk just to stick it to the man.
- jrm4 4y ago
  Absolutely right, excellent point. This is one of those things that I logically know to be true and yet doesn't stick with me ... emotionally? Something like that. I'm mid-40s and I do some side contract work and game/Discord with late-20s/early 30's people and folks will be talking about something annoying or unjust, and I'm completely unjustifiably disappointed that no one ever even thinks to mention "hey, we could skirt the rules and just go full hacker on this." (Note: no one ever do anything illegal, I'm more talking the sentiment than actually inciting naughtiness)
- eternalban 4y ago
  It's an interesting observation but we're not talking about 'sticking to the man' here. The actual situation is that 'the man' and an obliging publisher is taking publicly published free speech and removing it and blacklisting an author. You certainly need not be in the "fringe" or a "social outcast" to object to this state of affairs, which seem to infringe on certain god given liberties (or so we were told). In fact many "dead white men" of excellent repute at the time were rather insistent on these rights. So if demanding our rights is now the condition of the "fringe", the inevitable conclusion is that we live in the gestate state of an emerging tyranny.

DennisP 4y ago

> it's removed because the US government told Github to do so. Actually I don't think they did, and if they had it'd be a First Amendment violation because the courts ruled that source code is protected speech.

sharemywin 4y ago
The courts also ruled abortions were private medial matters. Was there some precedent you wanted to rest that legal right on? or some interpretation of the constitution you wanted to base your argument on?
- DennisP 4y ago
  The case was Bernstein vs. US. If you want their reasoning, the text of the decision is probably available somewhere. https://www.eff.org/cases/bernstein-v-us-dept-justice https://www.eff.org/cases/bernstein-v-us-dept-justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States
  - bananapub 4y ago
    ? clearly free speech is not an absolute right in the US, as evidenced by the endless court- and government-sanctioned infringements of it. so, it's not surprising if another bit is, especially as abstruse as "why can't a company host source code that is enabling money laundering by North Korea"
    - DennisP 4y ago
      Well in the case of source code I'd say the protection is pretty strong, considering the courts allowed publication of code that the government considered a munition: > The Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (the ITAR regulatory scheme) required Bernstein to submit his ideas about cryptography to the government for review, to register as an arms dealer, and to apply for and obtain from the government a license to publish his ideas. Failure to do so would result in severe civil and criminal penalties. > ...the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that software source code was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional.