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Open Source Politics

Open Source Devs Reverse Decision to Block ICE Contractors From Using Software (vice.com) 427

An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard: Less than 24 hours after a software developer revoked access to Lerna, a popular open-source software management program, for any organization that contracted with U.S. immigrations and Customs Enforcement, access has been restored for any organization that wishes to use it and the developer has been removed from the project... The modified version specifically banned 16 organizations, including Microsoft, Palantir, Amazon, Northeastern University, Johns Hopkins University, Dell, Xerox, LinkedIn, and UPS... Although open-source developer Jamie Kyle acknowledged that it's "part of the deal" that anyone "can use open source for evil," he told me he couldn't stand to see the software he helped develop get used by companies contracting with ICE.

Kyle's modification of Lerna's license was originally assented to by other lead developers on the project, but the decision polarized the open-source community. Some applauded his principled stand against ICE's human rights violations, while others condemned his violation of the spirit of open-source software. Eric Raymond, the founder of the Open Source Initiative and one of the authors of the standard-bearing Open Source Definition, said Kyle's decision violated the fifth clause of the definition, which prohibits discrimination against people or groups. "Lerna has defected from the open-source community and should be shunned by anyone who values the health of that community," Raymond wrote in a blog post on his website.

The core contributor who eventually removed Kyle also apologized for Kyle's licensing change, calling it a "rash decision" (which was also "unenforceable.")

Eric Raymond had called the decision "destructive of one of the deep norms that keeps the open source community functional -- keeping politics separated from our work."
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Open Source Devs Reverse Decision to Block ICE Contractors From Using Software

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  • by dcollins ( 135727 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @09:43AM (#57236758) Homepage

    "Everything is politics." -- Thomas Mann

    • by malkavian ( 9512 )

      That's something a politician would have you believe.. Politics is the glue that fits disparate pieces together, but it should stay the hell out of doing the actual work for those pieces.
      "Everything is actually science, just the politicians do it badly." -- Me.

  • by CRB9000 ( 647092 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @09:48AM (#57236768)
    ...so you open the software and you make it available to all, but what makes OSS companies money is the support and other services that are value adds. If you say your biggest payers are now cut off, you aren't going to last. Imagine if Walmart decided trailer park dwellers and fat people were no longer allowed to shop there...
  • A blind eye (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Its funny how we allow countries with communism, dictatorships, genocide, censorship use open source, but we must ban ICE. Trumpâ(TM)s command on ice is just horrible, but if there is any glimmer of compassion with the ICE agents, why suppress it?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Trump Derangement Syndrome is real.

    • Re:A blind eye (Score:4, Insightful)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @10:03AM (#57236846)

      Another reason to keep politics out of software dev. Your bad guy isn't the always other community member's bad guy. If we let everyone exert their grudge on software licenses, no one would be able to use that software.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's impossible to separate politics from daily life, because politics is how we manage our daily lives. I say this as someone who was driven from their home, their family, their country of birth by politics.

        But sometimes you also have to recognize that there are other issues. In this case the integrity of free software really matters. I take a hard line on it, I'm a strong supporter of the GPL and its principals, even when they meant that software can be used for evil.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 )

      It's funny how you conflate an economic paradigm with various social evils. Communism isn't inherently evil, it's just that it has often come with totalitarianism. Capitalism doesn't have a great record for social good either.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Chas ( 5144 )

        Said by a man living in one of the countries that is the greatest beneficiary of Capitalism lifting a huge portion of the planet out of abject poverty...

        Is Capitalism perfect? Of course not.
        But, carefully overseen, it's still a damn sight better than anything else humans have tried in the entirety of their history.

      • No, Bruce. Capitalism arises spontaneously whenever you give people a few basic freedoms. The only way to make communism/socialism work is to take those freedoms away. So the only way that you can argue that communism is not inherently evil is to say that it is not evil to take away such things as the right to detemine for yourself what you will do for a living and the right control the products of your own hands (which is the right to own property), the right to enter into mutually beneficial contracts,

        • Open Source is a commons which grants freedom. Specific individuals would be "more free" if it was a gift rather than sharing with rules, but the rules tend to make everybody more free.

          So, we have this conflict of individualism vs. collectivism. I submit that it's better to make everyone more free than it is to make some people very free and other people mainly subject to them. This means the 1% vs. everyone else in today's "capitalism", which is probably more accurately described as a sort of economic feud

      • Re:A blind eye (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ChatHuant ( 801522 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @02:41PM (#57238160)

        Communism isn't inherently evil, it's just that it has often come with totalitarianism.

        Sorry, Bruce, but you're wrong.

        Communism is inherently evil; it can't work without tyranny, because it relies on idealized people who selflessly put the interest of the society above their own. This is not how real people behave. Capitalism relies on people following their impulses (even supposedly negative ones, like greed). It channels those impulses them in directions that benefit others, for example by rewarding people who produce or create new stuff. Communism wants to completely repress those impulses, so it has to force people to behave contrary to their natural inclinations. It has to indoctrinate people to follow the ideology, so freedom of speech and the free flow of ideas are forbidden. Also, communist countries don't reward producers or creators - at best, they should be happy they contributed to the betterment of society. At worst, they are regarded as exploiters, and repressed.

        I have first hand knowledge of both systems - I lived more than half my life in an Eastern European country that was theoretically "building a Communist society", and then moved to capitalist America. The difference is huge. And I know some people will come up with the "no true Communism" argument - but those are mostly folks who have never experienced life in a communist country, and can't really understand the realities there.

        I believe the best balance is a Canadian or Western-Europe style of capitalism, with strong laws and strong social support. American-style capitalism has become, IMHO, too unregulated and too influenced by money. However, with all its warts, it's miles better than any communist country.

      • Bruce Perens wrote:

        Communism isn't inherently evil, it's just that it has often come with totalitarianism.

        Communism is a lie told by tyrants to grow and sustain political support for themselves.

        Because falsehoods told to advance malevolent ends are categorically evil, Communism is inherently evil.

        So Bruce, would you say it is an accurate characterization of your own beliefs that the lies and propaganda use by tyrants to gain power are not themselves evil? That it is exclusively the exercise of power for harmful ends which is evil? If so, what is your basis for that distinction? Additionall

  • by iCEBaLM ( 34905 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @09:52AM (#57236782)

    Eric Raymond had called the decision "destructive of one of the deep norms that keeps the open source community functional -- keeping politics separated from our work."

    Should politics be separated from our work? I'm not convinced it should be. The whole idea of open source / free software is political in nature as it is a means to keep power and control of a users computing with them and not in the hands of any outside entity such as a corporation or government.

    So let's take this to the extreme: If computing and Linux were around in WW2, should we have let Hitler use Linux? What if Hitler's use of Linux was the deciding factor in NAZI Germany winning the war?

    • by plopez ( 54068 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @09:57AM (#57236814) Journal

      Computing was available. IBM sold tabulation machines and rented technicians to run them to the SS for use in the concentration camps.

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        Much to their profit and shame.

      • Not really... IBM's local subsidiary was nationalized and thus taken out of their control years before the concentration camps opened so IBM couldn't have helped the nazis with the holocaust even if they wanted to.
    • by plopez ( 54068 )

      Not should, can.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 01, 2018 @10:08AM (#57236858)

      Yes. If Hitler wanted to use Linux, he should have the freedom to use Linux. It's not our job as software developers to save the world.
      Sure, we can't completely remove politics from out work, but the current open source model does an excellent job of drawing the line.
      We want freedom in software, and that freedom is extended to everyone, including evil people, unfortunately. That's the politics of open source. Anything else is a slippery slope that will be detrimental to the entire community.
      If we deny Nazis from using Linux today, we can deny the Russians from using it tomorrow, then we can deny rich people from using it. And why stop there? Why allow people who think pineapple on pizza is acceptable to use Linux?

      • by Raenex ( 947668 )

        Why allow people who think pineapple on pizza is acceptable to use Linux?

        Don't knock it until you've tried it. I used to think the same, but ham and pineapple pizza is awesome.

    • by malkavian ( 9512 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @10:21AM (#57236904)

      Yes, politics should be kept the hell away from work in an open group.
      In your example, a significant amount of developers would actually have been on the German side, so they'd be developing away like crazy on their fork (possibly as closed source extensions for their own personal use as a military in some cases), which is allowable anyway.
      When in peace time you have an "agenda", and you try and poison open solutions by disallowing groups based on political belief (which is often poorly informed), then you're often just enshrining ignorant bigotry.

      Take the ICE case; this is a completely underfunded organisation, trying to do the best it can to juggle a lot of conflicting factors (people trying to game the system, people abusing the system, and genuine people that need to follow particular paths and have them filtered away from the ones trying to game the system), and look after the people as well as it can with the funds. Individuals in it may have unpleasant attributes, but what organisation doesn't? The majority are trying to do a job well.
      Denying them access because politics is only going to make matters worse for the end recipients, piss off people in the middle as it could muck about with them doing their job, and they'll see the reduction in care they're able to give, which sure as hell isn't going to endear the open source movement to them..

      The options in a movement that explicitly states "this is open, available to everyone" are to either put the work in, knowing that you may disagree with some end uses, but the majority case is that you're benefitting people in general, or you can withhold your work, and not be part of that movement.
      Good on ESR; I count this as a sane move. It's a shame the guy was the one thrown under the bus for what seemed to be a general consensus; if they were good at what they did, then a good old rollicking, learn from being stupid (and against the license you were working under), and getting on with the work would have been my preference. And all the senior staff that agreed with it should have been rollicked.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward


      So let's take this to the extreme: If computing and Linux were around in WW2, should we have let Hitler use Linux?

      Do you _really_ think Hitler, and Nazi Germany are going to obey your little license agreement in that little readme during a war? Get serious here.

      What if Hitler's use of Linux was the deciding factor in NAZI Germany winning the war?

      Then I guess Linus gets the gas chamber? This is one of the stupidest questions I've heard in a long time. You might as well ask "If The Beatles has been around

    • by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @10:46AM (#57236992)

      Eric Raymond had called the decision "destructive of one of the deep norms that keeps the open source community functional -- keeping politics separated from our work."

      Should politics be separated from our work? I'm not convinced it should be. The whole idea of open source / free software is political in nature as it is a means to keep power and control of a users computing with them and not in the hands of any outside entity such as a corporation or government.

      I think it's a good idea to keep them separated. The problem with your movement or organization taking a political stance is partisans start fighting back. Just look what's happened to science, AGW has big political implications and the moment it was embraced by "one side" the other side basically became an anti-science political movement. If Open Source gets rebranded as a left wing political philosophy you're going to start seeing legislation targeted at stopping those Libera^H^H^H Open Source people from writing code that controls important infrastructure.

      The other big issue is that the Open Source community doesn't necessarily agree on politics outside of the idea of Open Source, and the Open Source community by it's nature tends to take political philosophy a bit more seriously than most. So branding community as a left-wing thing could really split the community. And you don't really want to get into discussions on whether to ban ICE while allowing the Chinese government.

      So let's take this to the extreme: If computing and Linux were around in WW2, should we have let Hitler use Linux? What if Hitler's use of Linux was the deciding factor in NAZI Germany winning the war?

      Ignoring the question of how you could stop him from using Linux...

      Yes. I'm willing to sacrifice many of my principles to fight NAZIs.

      • by lgw ( 121541 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @11:03AM (#57237056) Journal

        he problem with your movement or organization taking a political stance is partisans start fighting back. Just look what's happened to science, AGW has big political implications and the moment it was embraced by "one side" the other side basically became an anti-science political movement.

        What he said. The right has been saying to the left for a decade or so now "you keep changing the rules, but you're not going to like the new rules". Politicizing everything seems fun until you start realizing the other side can do it to. And, right now in the US, if you're on the left, you might ponder: hmm, the right has all the political power and seems to be on the rise.

        Politicizing everything: think about how it will play out.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          That's not how I recall it happening. The GOP rigged the vote with voter suppression and gerrymandering. After a couple of decades it's really paying off, but even so they only have a small majority and their president lost the popular vote.

      • by Kohath ( 38547 )

        The other big issue is that the Open Source community doesn't necessarily agree on politics...

        The modern response to that is to bully people into agreeing or keeping quiet (and voting for Trump because he stands up to people who try to bully him).

      • by Chas ( 5144 )

        Ignoring the question of how you could stop him from using Linux...

        Yes. I'm willing to sacrifice many of my principles to fight NAZIs.

        Now onto the real problem.

        *Parades 1000 random people in front of you*

        Now. Pick out the "nazi".

    • The underlying fundamental premise behind open source is that since software has zero cost of duplication and distribution, its benefit to society is maximized by making it free to copy and distribute. Thus maximizing the number of people who can benefit from using it.

      If you then start stipulating reasons (other than self-preservation) for why you should be able to restrict people's ability to copy and distribute open source software, you're saying that software's benefit to society can be increased by
  • Don't be a tool (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @09:54AM (#57236790)

    Letting yourself get emotionally manipulated by so-called news media is never wise. Their stories are just stories. They aren't about you. Don't be a tool -- don't let the news media control your life, or your actions, or whether you're happy or sad. They haven't earned it. They don't care about you. They won't be there for you when you need help. Your life means nothing to them.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They aren't about you.

      Not sure I get your meaning here. Isn't caring about other people a pretty fundamental and important part of humanity? In fact people who really don't care about others are called psychopaths.

      Surely that's not what you meant, but I feel like caring about the activities of ICE is important and a good thing. Especially when your actions at the voting booth directly lead to those actions and their effect on other people's lives.

      • by Kohath ( 38547 )

        Not sure I get your meaning here. Isn't caring about other people a pretty fundamental and important part of humanity? In fact people who really don't care about others are called psychopaths.

        Pretending to care and making political noise isn't caring. Actually, genuinely helping individual people is caring. You have caring confused with posing and pretending.

        Surely that's not what you meant, but I feel like caring about the activities of ICE is important and a good thing.

        You don't know about "the activities of ICE". You only know stories. You don't know which stories are true or false or 40% true/60% false. You don't know all the stories the news media decided not to tell you -- to hide them from you.

        Especially when your actions at the voting booth directly lead to those actions and their effect on other people's lives.

        Not really. How do they? Because we're pretending laws might somehow change? Because we're fantasizin

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Pretending to care and making political noise isn't caring. Actually, genuinely helping individual people is caring.

          Trying to effect political change will help more people than trying to help one or two individually. Also, claiming that any sentiment you don't like is posturing (or "virtue signalling" in newspeak) is not an argument, it's just an out of hand dismissal.

          You don't know which stories are true or false or 40% true/60% false.

          Claiming that the truth is unknowable because all media lies all the time is a standard post-truth tactic to avoid criticism and generate apathy by making misdeeds easier to ignore.

          Because we're pretending laws might somehow change?

          It didn't even take a change in the law for ICE to start separating children

          • by Kohath ( 38547 )

            Pretending to care and making political noise isn't caring. Actually, genuinely helping individual people is caring.

            Trying to effect political change will help more people than trying to help one or two individually. Also, claiming that any sentiment you don't like is posturing (or "virtue signalling" in newspeak) is not an argument, it's just an out of hand dismissal.

            No it won't. You're just fantasizing . Because actually helping an individual costs you time or your own money, but fantasies don't cost you anything. You've helped no one, while declaring yourself a hero for having an emotion and waving a flag (and keeping your time and your money -- the things that genuinely help actual, individual people -- all to yourself).

            You don't know which stories are true or false or 40% true/60% false.

            Claiming that the truth is unknowable because all media lies all the time is a standard post-truth tactic to avoid criticism and generate apathy by making misdeeds easier to ignore.

            Nevertheless, you still don't know.

            Because we're pretending laws might somehow change?

            It didn't even take a change in the law for ICE to start separating children from their parents, and it didn't take a chance in the law to stop it either. You argue that trying for political change is ineffective, when clearly it was effective in that case.

            And you're encouraging people to keep walking children across the desert at night to be used as bargaining chip

          • by Chas ( 5144 )

            Trying to effect political change iwll help more people

            Unless you happen to be wrong or misled.

            So if you wind up harming people en-masse, then what?

            Claiming that the truth is unknowable

            The truth isn't unknowable. You simply haven't done the research to discover the truth for yourself. You're relying on hearsay.

            It didn't even take a change in the law for ICE to start separating children from their parents, and it didn't take a chance in the law to stop it either. You argue that trying for political change is ineffective, when clearly it was effective in that case.

            They started well before Trump took office. Because what's ALSO happening down on the border is CHILD TRAFFICKING. People picking up kids at the border, claiming to be the parents, and using loopholes in the law to escape. A change, years back, made this harder. As attempts are now mad

  • by t0y ( 700664 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @09:54AM (#57236794)
    The same guy made a huge drama when Microsoft bought GitHub:
    https://twitter.com/jamiebuild... [twitter.com]
    https://github.com/Microsoft/w... [github.com]
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Did you actually read those links? He is complaining about Microsoft violating the MIT licence that Lerna was released under, not about them buying GitHub.

      It seems that Microsoft created their own fork of Lerna called "Rush" that was substantially the same. If the code wasn't copied and refactored directly it was at least heavily based off Lerna. The MIT licence states that the copyright message must remain on such code, so if he is right (and a quick scan at the version he was talking about before Microsof

  • Boo-hoo (Score:4, Insightful)

    by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @09:55AM (#57236796)
    You're contracting with ICE if you live in the US. They're part of the law enforcement arm of the government and the government is a representation of you (US citizens). Vote or stop paying taxes if you don't want to support ICE, better yet, move out of the US. Us immigrants spent a lot of time and effort to never run afoul of ICE, not sure why some people have such trouble with them.
    • by Kohath ( 38547 )

      Us immigrants spent a lot of time and effort to never run afoul of ICE, not sure why some people have such trouble with them.

      1. Mostly, they don't. If one event happens and the story is retold 10,000 times, it's still one event, not 10,000 of them. Specific activist groups are making noise to advance a political agenda. They want power. And claiming victimhood has been a route to power.

      (It won't work this time because voters probably can't be persuaded that a foreign national who snuck in or overstayed a visa matters more than all the people who didn't. Who knows though.)

      2. People mainly have trouble because they decided to

      • by guruevi ( 827432 )
        Ever tried getting healthcare in Canada?
        • As a citizen or legal resident with a serious problem, it's far faster and easier than in the USA. If you need a knee replacement due to poor life choices, you may have to wait a few months, no big deal -- your issue isn't immediately life threatening.
        • by Kohath ( 38547 )

          Ever tried getting healthcare in Canada?

          No. I hear it's bad. I also hear it's good. So I don't know whether it's bad or good.

          I can guess though: It's a human institution, so it can't be perfect. It's a government-run institution with a limited budget, so it has to be subject to distinct tradeoffs -- meaning you might get what you need, eventually, but you probably won't get exactly what you want. Canada's government seems less incompetent and corrupt than US governments, so that likely helps.

          Once you get your Canadian passport, you can come

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Protest is an important part of democracy. Trying to suppress protest by suggesting that people should not do it is anti-democratic.

      Democracy is a balance. Direct democracy is a bad idea because it leads to the tyranny of the majority, so we have representative democracy. Sometimes the representation is broken though, as it currently is in the highly polarized United States. In which case protest is an important balance, and important way to address issues without resorting to civil war or direct attacks on

      • by Chas ( 5144 )

        If you wanna protest, protest.

        If you want to jack around the license of a software project that you are not the sole contributor to, that's not a protest.

  • IF you want control over your software, close it.

  • by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Saturday September 01, 2018 @11:12AM (#57237094) Homepage Journal

    Eric was not one of the original authors of the Open Source Definition. His memory is imperfect, I doubt deliberately, we're just old. The OSD was created about 9 months before the founding of OSI as the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Eric wasn't a Debian developer. The only change upon forming OSI was the name of the document. Later on, OSD #10 was added (which IMO was not necessary as it's implied by OSD#6).

    Also, Eric's call for shunning is a bit over the top. Just get with the values of Open Source and move on, or be very careful to call your non-Open-Source paradigm something other than Open Source.

    Nor does it seem necessary to have expelled a developer, if he wished to remain with the project after the removal of an ill-thought-out license term. We can preserve the ethos without being draconian.

  • Futile gesture (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DRJlaw ( 946416 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @11:34AM (#57237190)

    The modified version specifically banned 16 organizations, including Microsoft, Palantir, Amazon, Northeastern University, Johns Hopkins University, Dell, Xerox, LinkedIn, and UPS... Although open-source developer Jamie Kyle acknowledged that it's "part of the deal" that anyone "can use open source for evil," he told me he couldn't stand to see the software he helped develop get used by companies contracting with ICE.

    And U.S. law, 28 USC 1498 [gtpac.org], specifically allows contractors for the Federal Government to use intellectual property for government projects whether they are licensed or not. Link discusses 28 USC 1498(a) (patent infringement), but 28 USC 1498(b) covers copyright infringement.

    Oh sure, you can file an action in the Federal Court of Claims for "recovery of [your] reasonable and entire compensation as damages for such infringement," but since the licensing cost for the rest of the world is zero... you do the math.

  • Why was he removed? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by aardvarkjoe ( 156801 ) on Saturday September 01, 2018 @11:43AM (#57237244)

    The aspect of the story that doesn't make sense to me is the revocation of the developer's access. If he had gone and made the license change without consulting anyone, that would make sense, but by all accounts the other lead developers agreed to the change. In that case they should all share responsibility for making the change.

    Is there something else going on with this guy?

  • Hilarious. Some self-rightous putz decides he doesn't like law enforcement and corporations and gets himself kicked off a project. It's about time we start holding idiots like this accountable.

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