Diseased Open Source Software Community - it's about ethics in Code of Conducts

[D.Va]

Have you examined your foss privilege?

https://toot.cafe/@sivy/100593885080927092

Are the people who use mastodon even real. How do they use this shit

 

[D.Va]

jamiebuilds aka the "Microsoft Drop ICE" guy is back again, where he successfully merged a modified MIT license into some JS project:

Lerna is "A tool for managing JavaScript projects with multiple packages," or in laymans terms, a tool for people who thought writing a behemoth project in pure JS was going to be a good idea, and now need to split up their project into multiple repositories because of the usual JavaScript module fetishism.

I'm doubting the effectiveness of this based on battling court costs alone -- nothing is going to stop these companies from using older versions of the software with the previous license anyway, and they might as well stick with that while they port that untyped, single-process monstrosity to a better architecture. I would think the EFF would consider the ramifications of funding court battles over licenses like these.

Y'know what, let's look more into Jamie and what motivated him to do this, because this guy is fucking insane:

About a week ago he opened an issue on the tslint repository, where he threw a tantrum over them using his dependencies.

So let's dissect this: according to the the article he links, Palantir was awarded a $41m contract with ICE to build some software that supposedly powers BLUMPF's deportation engine (we'll get to why that is bullshit later). Palantir are also the primary maintainers for TSLint, a linting tool for TypeScript. Jamie is now mad because TSLint uses some software he contributed to as a dependency.

When Jamie talks about "his" tools (such as Babel), the contribution graph gives a nice breakdown of how much he has really contributed.

• His contributions are a total of around 11,000 additions and deletions. The bigger contributors have changes running into the hundreds of thousands.
• He has made 223 commits, but that spike on the graph? That was him doing over a hundred commits in a single day. To update a single line in each package.json file, individually.

Sure, he gave a notable contribution, but is it "his" tool? Fuck no. He wasn't even around when it began, and most of his changes were trivial edits to schemas and the readme.

Palantir ignored him, so he made another issue and yet another issue because he was still butthurt about it:

So, Palantir responded:

This debunks the claims of the article. Problem solved, right? Palantir are actually the good guys and want to stop child sex trafficking. Nope, Jamie doubles down with the internet tough guy act:

Fuck me.

All that referencing was the work of this guy who decided to close his PR, and troll every other pending PR with links to the drama.

----

 

[GethN7]

jamiebuilds aka the "Microsoft Drop ICE" guy is back again, where he successfully merged a modified MIT license into some JS project:

View attachment 529874

Lerna is "A tool for managing JavaScript projects with multiple packages," or in laymans terms, a tool for people who thought writing a behemoth project in pure JS was going to be a good idea, and now need to split up their project into multiple repositories because of the usual JavaScript module fetishism.

I'm doubting the effectiveness of this based on battling court costs alone -- nothing is going to stop these companies from using older versions of the software with the previous license anyway, and they might as well stick with that while they port that untyped, single-process monstrosity to a better architecture. I would think the EFF would consider the ramifications of funding court battles over licenses like these.

Y'know what, let's look more into Jamie and what motivated him to do this, because this guy is fucking insane:

About a week ago he opened an issue on the tslint repository, where he threw a tantrum over them using his dependencies.

View attachment 529881
So let's dissect this: according to the the article he links, Palantir was awarded a $41m contract with ICE to build some software that supposedly powers BLUMPF's deportation engine (we'll get to why that is bullshit later). Palantir are also the primary maintainers for TSLint, a linting tool for TypeScript. Jamie is now mad because TSLint uses some software he contributed to as a dependency.

When Jamie talks about "his" tools (such as Babel), the contribution graph gives a nice breakdown of how much he has really contributed.

• His contributions are a total of around 11,000 additions and deletions. The bigger contributors have changes running into the hundreds of thousands.
• He has made 223 commits, but that spike on the graph? That was him doing over a hundred commits in a single day. To update a single line in each package.json file, individually.

Sure, he gave a notable contribution, but is it "his" tool? Fuck no. He wasn't even around when it began, and most of his changes were trivial edits to schemas and the readme.

Palantir ignored him, so he made another issue and yet another issue because he was still butthurt about it:

View attachment 529878
So, Palantir responded:

View attachment 529884
This debunks the claims of the article. Problem solved, right? Palantir are actually the good guys and want to stop child sex trafficking. Nope, Jamie doubles down with the internet tough guy act:

View attachment 529887
Fuck me.

View attachment 529888
All that referencing was the work of this guy who decided to close his PR, and troll every other pending PR with links to the drama.

View attachment 529890

View attachment 529889
----

View attachment 529891

This is like a carpenter who did minor spackling work on a house trying to evict the guy who bought it because he later found out the guy was a Neo-Nazi.

 

[Norvic]

The day javascript finally gets an "import" keyword is the day thousands and thousands of dangerhairs are entirely out of a job.
That day can't come soon enough for my liking.

 

[Dreamland]

The day javascript finally gets an "import" keyword is the day thousands and thousands of dangerhairs are buying books for learning Rust or make a fork without the keyword.

Fixed.

 

[awoo]

I've been hesitant to use the MIT lisense because it doesn't protect the freedoms that stronger licenses guarantee (although I don't know enough about licenses to know if you could pull a similar stunt with GPL)

There is nothing stopping people from using the commit right before, though
https://github.com/LernaOpenSource/LernaOpenSource

Also everyone at Johns Hopkins? Really?

 

[AnOminous]

I've been hesitant to use the MIT lisense because it doesn't protect the freedoms that stronger licenses guarantee (although I don't know enough about licenses to know if you could pull a similar stunt with GPL)

There is nothing stopping people from using the commit right before, though
https://github.com/LernaOpenSource/LernaOpenSource

Also everyone at Johns Hopkins? Really?

It sounds like a total minefield. You'd have no way of being able to comply with it since practically anyone could turn out to be forbidden. If the rest of the people involved with this allow it to be stand, this idiot just drove a stake through the heart of the project.

 

[D.Va]

In the hours that followed, Jamie has received a lot of flak. Generally a lot of people are pissed because this is a compatibility-breaking change, a lot of people use automated license checking tools and the project is incorrectly marked as MIT.

He broke his own CoC (surprise), what with calling everyone at Palantir a racist several times. Someone made an issue calling for him to step down, which he closed.

https://github.com/lerna/lerna/issues/1630

Heat is turned up as previous lerna contributors follow up on the request to remove their commits from the project.

https://github.com/lerna/lerna/issues/1622

Some guy points out that the licence change will indeed require the Lerna team to honour opt-outs, and they can't just simply re-attribute the code.

From what I've read, this project does not have a CLA. That means that in order to relicense, you either need to remove the contributions of the people who have not given EXPLICIT PERMISSION to relicense, or you need to reprogram the sections of code contributed by them.

This is not just for the contributors who complain, this is for every contribution that has been made to the project by those who have not explicitely agreed to relicense. The people who have contributed own their code have contributed it under the license terms of the MIT license. You cannot relicense their code without their permission.

And you cannot just remove their code and add it back in again without naming them as authors, because they own the code and it is not yours to do with as you please without permission.

It seems that if this license change is a serious endeavor and not just virtue signaling, the Lerna team is going to have to a) ask permission from a lot of people or b) rewrite a lot of code.

Otherwise, you're effectively stealing people's code.

Whoops!

People on the tail end of the Palentir issue discussion showed concern for possible changes to Babel's licensing, since he probably has enough sway there (Babel is definitely more significant than this dumpster fire of a project).

 

[Ms. Cegination]

In the hours that followed, Jamie has received a lot of flak. Generally a lot of people are pissed because this is a compatibility-breaking change, a lot of people use automated license checking tools and the project is incorrectly marked as MIT.

He broke his own CoC (surprise), what with calling everyone at Palantir a racist several times. Someone made an issue calling for him to step down, which he closed.

https://github.com/lerna/lerna/issues/1630

Heat is turned up as previous lerna contributors follow up on the request to remove their commits from the project.

https://github.com/lerna/lerna/issues/1622

Some guy points out that the licence change will indeed require the Lerna team to honour opt-outs, and they can't just simply re-attribute the code.



Whoops!

People on the tail end of the Palentir issue discussion showed concern for possible changes to Babel's licensing, since he probably has enough sway there (Babel is definitely more significant than this dumpster fire of a project).

https://jamie.build/
https://archive.fo/xfUB5
https://twitter.com/jamiebuilds
https://archive.fo/Qg0WJ

Why do these types of people look the way they do?

 

[Oh Long Johnson]

Why do these types of people look the way they do?

Are he and Sargon fucking?

 

[AnOminous]

I can't imagine why everyone isn't using open source shit, where you could use it for years and then some faggot loses his shit and nukes the project with a license that literally makes it impossible to use the software in any commercial environment without potentially violating it.

(Never mind the faggot also steals everyone else's contributions while doing this.)

 

[BlueSpark]

Apparently James Kyle (aka jamiebuilds) is known for attacking others in the software developer community:

 

[uncleShitHeel]

​

"Make things for me without pay or thanks, or I'll stamp my little feet "
Is this entitlement? Or is it only entitlement when it's someone they don't like?

Also lmao these fags can't even code, why are people even giving them the time of day?

Because as a society we've been mistakenly conditioned to treat sociopaths, assholes and narcissistic idots with compassion, instead of the common sense thing which would be to push the fuckers in front of a bus.

The day javascript finally gets an "import" keyword is the day thousands and thousands of dangerhairs are entirely out of a job.
That day can't come soon enough for my liking.

Be that change. Hell I'd happily look into being that change. I fucking hate js, I hate it's community and right now I'm required to use it for work.

If all those things went away I'd be a happier person.

 

[altkiwi01]

wow, that didn't last long.

https://github.com/lerna/lerna/pull/1633

 

[AnOminous]

wow, that didn't last long.

https://github.com/lerna/lerna/pull/1633

I shouldn't be surprised at this.

 

[byuu]

I can't imagine why everyone isn't using open source shit, where you could use it for years and then some faggot loses his shit and nukes the project with a license that literally makes it impossible to use the software in any commercial environment without potentially violating it.

Fortunately, a FOSS license limits the effect of such sperg outs:

Spoiler

Q:.
OK, so who can change the license on a project?
A:.
First, we need to be clear on what `changing the license' means. Licenses attach to instances or versions of code; they don't magically affect other copies, even if those other copies are bitwise identical aside from the license. So when you speak of changing the license on a project, you cannot suppose some sort of magical action at a distance that retroactively changes the terms on all existing copies. That is not possible (though you can do what the Free Software Foundation does and write a license that gives licensees the option of conforming to later versions).

So to "change a project license" is to just change the terms that will apply on future versions that you and other parties who agree to the change distribute.

 

[Strange Looking Dog]

Wow nice job there little buddy, but I think you need a few pieces of word art to complete this visual abortion

GRAphic
DeSign
Is My PAssion

He is apparently a UI designer for the occasional project. God help them

 

[Tealeaf]

I can't imagine why everyone isn't using open source shit, where you could use it for years and then some faggot loses his shit and nukes the project with a license that literally makes it impossible to use the software in any commercial environment without potentially violating it.

License changes are not retroactive and with free software you have full redistribution rights to the versions you have even if the original project rage quits.

It’s much harder if a commercial middleware library quits and stops selling you any additional licenses without the stupid clauses. Your only option is to stop selling yourself or quickly re-engineer your stuff to not use the tainted library.

 

[Marvin]

License changes are not retroactive and with free software you have full redistribution rights to the versions you have even if the original project rage quits.

It’s much harder if a commercial middleware library quits and stops selling you any additional licenses without the stupid clauses. Your only option is to stop selling yourself or quickly re-engineer your stuff to not use the tainted library.

Depending on the license, it's possibly legal to say "hey, relicense this all you want". This might be legal,it might be not.

 

[D.Va]

Hah, wow. It's been fun being a fly on the wall for this shit.

Coraline Ada, notable hon leech, caught wind of the license drama and made an issue about updating the version of the Contributor Covenant they're using. Yeah, this is what a project with an established CoC looks like. But don't worry, version 1.4 of the covenant has an explicit maintainer bad faith clause, so these problems can't possibly happen again!!!

https://github.com/lerna/lerna/issues/1636