I for one am going through quite a culture shock. I always assumed the nature of FOSS software made it immune to be confined within the policies of nations; I guess if one day the government of USA starts to think that its a security concers for china to use and contribute to core opensource software created by its citizens or based in their boundaries, they might strongarm FOSS communities and projects to make their software exclude them in someway or worse declare GPL software a threat to national security.
Well, in theory open source is immune to all that. However, the country a project is registered at, matters. That’s why the RISC-V project, for example, took its headquarters from the US to Switzerland. For that exact reason: so no country could strong arm it, especially since Chinese were the major contributors to the project (Switzerland is not 100% neutral, but it’s more neutral than other countries).
Everything be it software or anything else is beholden only to those who is the highest bidder. Being FOSS doesn’t change anything. This has been true for some time now that Linux and TLF is duty bound to businesses running it.
It had been covert till now, it is the overtness of this action which is surprising to most. I for one am surprised it didnt happen sooner.
It changed my view on how true to their ideas some people are.
Nothing is devoid of global politics.
No, only of Linux
So like what happened
Nothing is devoid of global politics.
Russian maintainers were unceremoniously kicked out citing compliance issues.
Recently, Linux removed several people from their organization that have Russian email addresses. Linus made a statement that confirmed this was done intentionally. I believe that there was some mention of following sanctions on Russia due to the war. I haven’t looked into the details of it all, so take my analysis with a grain of salt. From what I understand, it sounded like it was only Russian maintainers that were removed and normal users submitting code from Russia can still contribute. Maintainers have elevated permissions and can control what code gets accepted into a project, meaning that a bad actor could allow some malicious code to sneak past. This may have also contributed to the decision since this type of attack has happened before and Russia seems like a likely culprit. The reactions to this change have been varied. Some people feel it is somewhat justified or reasonable, some people think that it means it is no longer open source, and some people think it is unfairly punishing Russian civilians (it is worth noting that that is part of the point of sanctions).
No
Just this one. The philosophy is still there, Linus and TLF have abandoned it with great hubris. I am very disappointed in them.
I’m thinking about that conspiracy theory of Linus having been made an offer one can’t refuse, when some time ago he took a vacation and returned with news about seeing the error of his ways.
It almost coincided with Stallman being canceled for one of his usual highly socially unacceptable, but in principle consistent opinions. With most of the attackers being frankly some new random corporate-associated people, not very active in real communities.
Maybe I’ll re-read J4F and compare Linus from there to these events. Canary and all.
EDIT: Before you downvote this for the mush in my head (thx Linus) propagating conspiracy theories, offers one can’t refuse are not exactly an impossible thing. And WWII radio games, where, having captured an enemy station’s operator, one of the sides could either imitate their style in transmissions or just force them to transmit what it wanted.
I mean he has accepted a position as a luminary at the x86 ecosystem advisory group the most dominant and proprietary instruction set ever formed by companies with vested interest to keeping it in use and prevent competition (RISC-V & ARM) from catching up.
No.
Not really, open source projects don’t necessarily have to be open to all contributors and I was aware of this already. They have to be open to anyone doing what they want with the code, by definition, which is good, but they don’t have to allow everyone to contribute to upstream. I’m not sure if there’s any particular defence against this being used in a discriminatory manner, but I do think this effect is significantly mitigated by the decentralised nature of open source and the fact that it’s not too uncommon for forks to become preferred over the original, the fact that open source projects rise and fall in popularity, etc.
I wonder if there’s some way to manage an open source project so that it’s not subject to particular national laws in this way.
It’s not decentralized on the level of project development, the visible proof of which is what we’ve seen happen.
How many times have you seen two branches of a significant project to coexist with comparable popularity?
I wonder if there’s some way to manage an open source project so that it’s not subject to particular national laws in this way.
Yes. Pseudonymous software development. I’ve seen Ross Ulbricht’s name today, so we also know the risks.
Naturally this is closer to some underground warez than to copyleft, because the legal ways of protecting copylefted information against appropriation will not be available. A different paradigm.
If someone really wants to use the contribution of the expelled maintainers they can just make their own fork. Part of the Free in FOSS is the freedom to associate or not associate with contributors.
Yes, bad actors can exist everywhere, it doesn’t really help anything but fragment the project and harm it, do we need multiple directed forks ? Fuck no it will be best if everyone can monitor and contribute, I kind of think of it as they do peer reviewing in research and shit, it’s always better when more people can view it, that will leave less room for biasing and frankly detect bad actors easily
I get that it’s a nice daydream to think of open source projects as existing in some kind of independent, ethereal vacuum just because the code is out there and accessible from any place on Earth. But every software project is (mostly?) dependent on the jurisdiction in one country, in this case it’s the US, and so their laws about sanctions and so on apply. And yes, this means that unless conflicts/wars between nations happen to cease, that we will eventually have completely separated blocks of politics/culture/military and also IT. Globalization is over. China will have their own stuff, Russia will have their own stuff, and US+EU will have their own stuff. And none of those countries should continue using high-tech products made by the other because they could be sabotaged and it might be hard to find, so it’s best to not use them at all and just cook your own stuff. It’s unfortunate, but bound to happen in the current state of the political world.
Yes. There is an extremely arbitrary distinction made between the USA and Russia. Both are known for injecting spyware. China is somehow still okay? It makes no sense.
Not to mention the elephant in the room by not banning another certain country actively committing war crimes.
All software should be safety checked. Where the maintainer is from should be irrelevant.
But the most weird aspect is the timing. Why now and not a few years ago?
All part of the current US/NATO approved Overton Window, friend.
*Overton
Ha. Autocorrect strikes again! Fixed it and Thanks, for pointing it out.
There is an extremely arbitrary distinction made between the USA and Russia.
Your world view seems to be highly influenced by propaganda. It’s very easy to draw a distinction between these two countries. Let me start with an easy one:
Russia is a dictatorship, the US is a democracy.
Read about Operation Condor. Its actions, repercussions and number of deaths due to it, and continue to pretend the USA follows Democratic Values™. And this is just but one example.
They are just better at PR than most. You are walking proof of it.
A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink
“I have to admit, I’m always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.
“Thank you,” the KGB says. “We do our best but truly, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them.”
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. “Thank you friend, but you must be confused… There’s no propaganda in America.”
The commenter says as he repeats other propaganda.
The US is not and has never been a democracy. The US is an oligarchy.
Read The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
At best, it was for a while a Representative Democracy. Where people gave their vote to other people to vote for them.
The fact that most Americans think the US is not an oligarchy, today, is a testament to the power of the State and their corporate media to propagandized their own citizens. It is very rich for them to point to other country’s Oligarchies and somehow absolutely fail to see their own. Or worse, call it some weird type of conspiracy to call out or point out reality.
I mean, it is not like it is not obvious if one takes a step back or two and looks at it objectively.
Your world view seems to be highly influenced by propaganda. A country ruled by two identical genocidal capitalist parties isn’t a “democracy”; it’s a capitalist dictatorship.
Any party genuinely wanting to advance working class causes will not be allowed to come to power through it (they won’t be funded by the capitalist backers that fund/control the two ruling parties to begin with), and anyone in power that happens to hurt the country’s imperial prowess will be disposed of by the ruling parties, the way JFK was assassinated for wanting to abolish the CIA and reducing US troops in the Middle East.
US is a democracy
Lmfao
Modern Russia is a shitty liberal “democracy” just as incompetent as the US’s
No, it’s not. But the US is closer to it than some Americans think.
I see why some people block lenny.ml. Many there put everything through a high-standard threshold function.
high-standard
If these mods here actually had high standards they would be banning the shitlibs on this thread
-
You’re replying to someone from db0
-
Lemmy.ml is not the only place that believes the US isn’t a democracy.
-
The US is an oligarchy. It’s one of the things agreed by philosophers, including my teacher. The current controversy in the left surrounding the elections obviously proves this point.
- Oops. That’s… interesting.
- Maybe, but we at least get to select which oligarchs we prefer. In Russia, you select from Putin, Pootin, and Puteen.
-
America: we need military bases all over the world to surpress their population and steal their natural resources. This is why we must Israel grow to expand our foothold in the middle east even at the cost of a genocide. We also overthrow democracies to replace them with authoritarian dictators when convenient to us.
You: Democracy!
People don’t realize that the US founders explicitly modeled their new state on the Roman empire, with an expansionist aristocracy / slaveocracy controlling the state. The debates on this in the federalist papers are very explicit, as is the way they structured its government. Hell even half the buildings in washington DC are modelled after roman architecture.
well yeah, how does us being democracy change the fact that they basically did almost everything that Russia did
“basically”
You’ll be surprised if you actually challenge your convictions.
Are you sure you want to compare how many wars the US has waged compared to Russia and how many people they’ve murdered each?
That commenter is doing you a favour by implying it’s anywhere close.
I did, and I found that the US does WORSE shit than Russia sometimes.
Russia ain’t good. Neither is the US. Get your head out of your ass.
Heard about what Russia has been doing in the occupied parts of Ukraine?
Heard about what the US did in Afghanistan? US soldiers raped a LOT of children before and after murdering their entire families.
Aaaaah hahahahaha i wish i could see your face while you were typing out this “lesson” omg. Sheeeeheehee i can’t, i can’t! were you proud of yourself when you hit reply, like “aw yeah gottem”?
Yes. If FOSS projects bend the knee to shitty laws just because “they are the law”, then FOSS is free labor for corporations with no gains for the people.
That’s the point of FOSS as copyleft, to use the law to protect “free and open” information. This allows bigger projects, because contributors don’t have to keep their heads down.
At the same time maybe this is a downside, not an upside. As the reason why it has all gotten so big and complex and corporate-influenced.
It really is. Relying on a government good will to protect people best interests may be the point of failure of FOSS. I hope not but I’m less and less optimistic about the future
The usual consequences to not following the law are not in your favor.
If your goal in contributing to FOSS is to go to prison, there are a lot better avenues to achieve that.
Law aren’t always right and governments don’t always do the best neither for the world nor for its citizens. Open source projects and corporations shouldn’t rely on any government, they shouldn’t do the biddings on governments — either “good” or “bad” — and act in people best interests.
Of course this is a pipe dream and what we got is more free work for companies with none the benefits
Which corporation are you talking about here?
Nearly every single corporation with an online presence uses free software from the foss community.
America™
