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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
In our increasingly politicized world, it has become popular to chant "all software is political." Software builds the systems that free or constrain us, the thinking goes, and so we should withhold it from bad people. This is the thinking that has led Microsoft employees and others to decry contracts tech companies have with ICE (US Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement), insisting that their software only be sold to people they like.
[...] Over the years we as an open source community have experimented with all sorts of stupid ideas, like efforts to block anyone from using code for commercial purposes unless they pay. Each time, we've realized that as good a goal as it is for developers to get paid, for example, the destruction caused by closing off the code to uses we don't like ends up ruining the foundations upon which open source rests.
This is dramatically more important, however, when it comes to attempts to politicize open source software.
As developer Chris Cordle stated, "Nobody wins" and the "whole idea [undergirding open source] dies" ... "if an author arbitrarily picks and chooses who can and can't use it based on whoever Twittersphere is mad at this week." It doesn't matter if there is tremendous cause for that anger. Open source dies when it becomes politicized.
Source: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-politicizing-open-source-is-a-terrible-idea/
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday September 12 2018, @05:01PM (8 children)
My thoughts exactly.
Feels to me a bit like saying we have to allow a slave market because the sellers have a right to free speech. Sure, they absolutely do, but their speech isn't really relevant to the issue at hand. If I'm writing code that's designed to help people maintain control over their computing devices, why is it so noble to then allow the NSA to use that same code for mass surveillance and other attacks against these same users? Granted, they're likely to do it anyway, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do what you can to discourage that usage...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 12 2018, @05:30PM (4 children)
It seems mete to me for developers to release their code to the public as OSS, and say, "I send this project out into the world in the hope that it will feed the hungry and cure the sick," but leave it at that. Now, if somebody comes along and uses that code for some other, nefarious purpose, then that's on the user, not on the dev.
Software is a tool, like any other tool.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday September 12 2018, @06:13PM (3 children)
Right, it's just a tool, like a table saw.
And when table saws are cutting peoples fingers off, the people designing the things don't just sit back and say "Read the manual; use a finger guard; it's not our fault it's just a tool" -- no, they go and invent technology that detects when the blade touches skin and destroys the blade rather than allowing it to harm someone.
If you know your tool is causing problems, you should do something about it rather than burying your head in the sand and claiming it's none of your business. Take some goddamn responsibility for the shit you create.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 12 2018, @07:38PM
This is a disingenuous comparison. In the table saw example, you enhance the saw with guards for everyone; you don't release a new version of the saw and only sell it to people you like.
In my mind the issue is actually, "Don't write software that can obviously be used for bad, instead of writing software that can obviously be used for bad and then try to limit who can use it."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:48PM
Not only is that not why the sawstop was developed, what you would know if you had ever used one, is that the sawstop feature has a disable switch and doesn't stop intentional nefarious usage. Let me guess, you also want to sue gun makers when their tools are misused?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @09:28AM
Working on software for metal milling machines (CNC machines). Our software will make the machine cut your entire body in two halves if you go sit in the chamber. It will behead you in no time. Your body will be in pieces if you do so. Don't do this. It's a bad idea, and it's a lot of bloody cleaning up afterwards too. Sure by default the machine wont operate unless the chamber is closed. But some of those millingmachines can fit and mill an entire car and (much much) more (milling motors for shipping industry) . With you in it. And can mill the entire car, including you, into pieces and chips. The machine will not care and its power might not even register the additional resistance caused by your body.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday September 12 2018, @05:38PM (2 children)
Slavery "ended[1]", not because of a license agreement but the guns of the British Navy. Expecting dirt world slavers to honor a license agreement is stupid, if you care about ending slavery and human trafficking you support sending men with guns and close air support to help the slavers transition to a "post living state."
[1] Slavery did not, of course, actually end. It probably never will end entirely. It did mostly end within the reach of Naval bombardment but that isn't the same thing. In fact, today in $current_year, there are more slaves than at any previous point in history, although as a percentage they are fewer than the norm.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday September 12 2018, @06:07PM
Right, it ended because people stood up and fought for the ideas they believed in, rather than sitting back and deciding that it wasn't their problem and that they should just remain neutral.
A license isn't the only way to do that in software; not even the best way; but it IS one weapon in the arsenal.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday September 12 2018, @06:20PM
Parent:
Reality:
There are plenty of slaves to go around. Plenty of law extant with no rational social value whatsoever (many of those laws having to do with unjustifiable interference in personal / consensual choice) to make more slaves, too.
* Google [google.com] puked up the 2013 numbers at the top to a request for the 2018 US prison population.