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> Whoever decides to murder their neighbhours. To what extent can most people actually move the needle of their government's actions? As a thought experiment,

> Whoever decides to murder their neighbhours. To what extent can most people actually move the needle of their government's actions? As a thought experiment, consider a world where all Americans are banned from contributing to software projects because of the long and dismal history of US foreign policy - which involves murdering people so far from US borders as to make such murder fundamentally questionable at a national security level. While Americans protested the Vietnam and Iraq wars, these wars took place regardless. So how do you establish collective responsibility? Does the fact that the protests took place make Americans immune from consequences? Or should it only matter if citizen movements can stop a government? In either case, you would find most of the G-20 responsible for some atrocity or the other. The tragedy of the Russia situation is that it is a wholly unjust war, which should be penalised, but the logic and apparatus that would penalise it would also penalise most major nations. It is beyond the scope of HN to create a world order that would repair things. But just because the UNSC is broken, need not mean that the open source ecosystem be left to rot as well.

krisoft 2y ago
> To what extent can most people actually move the needle of their government's actions? I’m not unsimpathic to this argument. In wars innocent people gets hurt. Sometimes that means your name is removed from a text file, sometimes it means that your family is blown up in a missile attack. Either way the solution is the same: stop the war and take the troops home. I’m not going to adress the textbook whataboutism line by line. Generaly i’m easy to convince that a lot more negative consequences should have followed a lot of attrocities. If you think you caught me in some contradiction by selecting examples then you are wrong.
- instagraham 2y ago
  It matters because software projects are border-agnostic. There are people who benefit from code, and people who benefit from having people contribute to code. You drew the line on who gets to be a part of this, Geopoliticising something ostensibly unpolitical. If you want a rule of law in code, you’ll need more than a framework that only punishes Russia. Otherwise it’s no longer open source, it’s America-source. For what it’s worth I’d favour a host of military and economic measures against Russia. I think the only way this war stops is with military aid, maybe even intervention. I’m not here to defend Russia. I just don’t see what you expect Russians to do by nuking them from a Linux maintainer list. It’s a net loss for all of us to keep their coders out of open source. If we’re gonna do that with a logic that somehow spares America but punishes everyone else, then we just create a precedent that makes the whole ecosystem worse for a lot of people with nothing to do with this.
  - krisoft 2y ago
    > I just don’t see what you expect Russians to do by nuking them from a Linux maintainer list. Finding alternative employment with a non-sactioned company would be a start.
    - instagraham 2y ago
      i agree that's not an unreasonable ask. but if code is to serve geopolitics, then we'll get a lot more (and tougher) situations like this to grapple with. perhaps it's just that I wish code was left neutral.
    - mardifoufs 2y ago
      I think you're under the false impression that the removals were aimed at specific contributors from specific corporations. Which isn't the case by the way.

krisoft 2y ago

> To what extent can most people actually move the needle of their government's actions? I’m not unsimpathic to this argument. In wars innocent people gets hurt. Sometimes that means your name is removed from a text file, sometimes it means that your family is blown up in a missile attack. Either way the solution is the same: stop the war and take the troops home. I’m not going to adress the textbook whataboutism line by line. Generaly i’m easy to convince that a lot more negative consequences should have followed a lot of attrocities. If you think you caught me in some contradiction by selecting examples then you are wrong.

instagraham 2y ago
It matters because software projects are border-agnostic. There are people who benefit from code, and people who benefit from having people contribute to code. You drew the line on who gets to be a part of this, Geopoliticising something ostensibly unpolitical. If you want a rule of law in code, you’ll need more than a framework that only punishes Russia. Otherwise it’s no longer open source, it’s America-source. For what it’s worth I’d favour a host of military and economic measures against Russia. I think the only way this war stops is with military aid, maybe even intervention. I’m not here to defend Russia. I just don’t see what you expect Russians to do by nuking them from a Linux maintainer list. It’s a net loss for all of us to keep their coders out of open source. If we’re gonna do that with a logic that somehow spares America but punishes everyone else, then we just create a precedent that makes the whole ecosystem worse for a lot of people with nothing to do with this.
- krisoft 2y ago
  > I just don’t see what you expect Russians to do by nuking them from a Linux maintainer list. Finding alternative employment with a non-sactioned company would be a start.
  - instagraham 2y ago
    i agree that's not an unreasonable ask. but if code is to serve geopolitics, then we'll get a lot more (and tougher) situations like this to grapple with. perhaps it's just that I wish code was left neutral.
  - mardifoufs 2y ago
    I think you're under the false impression that the removals were aimed at specific contributors from specific corporations. Which isn't the case by the way.