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

[Alec Benson Leary]

I'm hoping they follow through. If the anti-meritocrats want to kick you out of the playground, the most effective way to deny them their sense of reward is to take your toys with you when you go. Because they don't have any of their own.

They've been living off your charity since forever and now they want to punish you for it? Let them starve.

 

[Marvin]

ESR is a dumbass and is talking out of his ass on this.

This is probably not legally feasible.

Also these trannies have the potential to be the death of development productivity if you let them fester. They're like termites. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Start your project off right: http://code-of-merit.org/

(Heh, it might be worth it to keep an eye on their issues tracker. I'm sure some SJWs will open bitchy issues at some point.)

 

[Tanner Glass]

Even if they can't revoke their code (and it seems like they can) outright, there is nothing that requires them to continue to contribute code to the project. In the event they don't get to hit an immediate "kill switch" - they'll just hit one that doesn't fire off for until a year or so.

Either the CoC people will let it lapse into unusable garbage by doing garbage like renaming variables and commands (no master/slave, no whitelist/blacklist, etc) or just by not having the skills to keep up with the issues that arise (further development, compatibility issues, security patches). The worst case scenario is that once the project is devastated that it gets picked up by those with ill intenions, such as Intel or other corporations trying to sneak in backdoors and other exploits.

It's very similar to whenever some socialist African country goes around and kills white farmers because they want the farmland only to realize the next year that they don't know how to farm.

 

[Marvin]

Even if they can't revoke their code (and it seems like they can) outright, there is nothing that requires them to continue to contribute code to the project. In the event they don't get to hit an immediate "kill switch" - they'll just hit one that doesn't fire off for until a year or so.

Either the CoC people will let it lapse into unusable garbage by doing garbage like renaming variables and commands (no master/slave, no whitelist/blacklist, etc) or just by not having the skills to keep up with the issues that arise (further development, compatibility issues, security patches). The worst case scenario is that once the project is devastated that it gets picked up by those with ill intenions, such as Intel or other corporations trying to sneak in backdoors and other exploits.

It's very similar to whenever some socialist African country goes around and kills white farmers because they want the farmland only to realize the next year that they don't know how to farm.

That's pretty optimistic.

In regards to whether it's possible to revoke it, we discussed this issue in the open source software community thread. There would need to be a clause explicitly enabling them to revoke the contract, not a lack of a clause saying they can't.

Like I said, ESR is a dumbass and doesn't know what he's talking about. He's relying on some shaky shit that probably wouldn't fly in court.

I don't think this CoC business will scare off as much talent as people are expecting. Most of the heavy lifters in the Linux community are already paid to be there by big companies. Linux will continue to trundle along. However desktop user support will dwindle.

Linux will still be king of servers, king of the cell phone market / tablet / shitty google laptop market as android, and the much smaller group of people who use it everyday, like myself, will get somewhat fucked.

 

[Tanner Glass]

That's pretty optimistic.

In regards to whether it's possible to revoke it, we discussed this issue in the open source software community thread. There would need to be a clause explicitly enabling them to revoke the contract, not a lack of a clause saying they can't.

Like I said, ESR is a dumbass and doesn't know what he's talking about. He's relying on some shaky shit that probably wouldn't fly in court.

I don't think this CoC business will scare off as much talent as people are expecting. Most of the heavy lifters in the Linux community are already paid to be there by big companies. Linux will continue to trundle along. However desktop user support will dwindle.

Linux will still be king of servers, king of the cell phone market / tablet / shitty google laptop market as android, and the much smaller group of people who use it everyday, like myself, will get somewhat fucked.

It might be optimistic (or beyond my understanding) but I thought one of the key underlying issues in the works wasn't just talented people leaving the project - but the senior people in Linux (like Linus and Ted Tso) who act as gatekeepers to prevent from those same corporations from adding exploits or other people from adding shitty code being forced out. The CoC was in effect for not even an afternoon before they started lining him up on the wall.

If Linux is turned into something that's intentionally less secure via exploits or bad management, I can't imagine it would hold the same value it currently has for very long.

 

[Marvin]

It might be optimistic (or beyond my understanding) but I thought one of the key underlying issues in the works wasn't just talented people leaving the project - but the senior people in Linux (like Linus and Ted Tso) who act as gatekeepers to prevent from those same corporations from adding exploits or other people from adding shitty code being forced out. The CoC was in effect for not even an afternoon before they started lining him up on the wall.

Linus was always going to retire at some point. The majority of Ted Tso tier contributors will remain.

If Linux is turned into something that's intentionally less secure via exploits or bad management, I can't imagine it would hold the same value it currently has for very long.

Security issues are an uninformed concern. The aggressive amount of attention aimed at even small open source projects means that that stuff simply doesn't fly.

It doesn't take Ted Tso or some specific, rare person to call that out. He just happened to be the one to do it.

The real concern is more mundane issues like performance.

Companies will keep the performance high for their own purposes, and you just gotta hope your side benefits this time.

 

[Calooby]

Code Jesus please let ReactOS become a viable solution soon... Windows 10 is not a reliable option contrary to popular belief, it's only a matter of time before it's become an accepted mediocrity that grows worse and worse day by day.

Given the change in the political climate of a share of individuals who code for the Linux kernel, things could get shittier if not well regulated and I'm not feeling too fabulous about that either.

 

[Kosher Dill]

My summary of this whole "license revocation" thing:
A bunch of nerds who love rules get invaded by amoral sociopaths who have no problem rewriting the rules into their personal plaything.
Nerds say: "Let's kick this upstairs to a bigger set of rules, in court!"
Guess what, nerds. It's the same all the way up.

 

[QI 541]

Code Jesus please let ReactOS become a viable solution soon... Windows 10 is not a reliable option contrary to popular belief, it's only a matter of time before it's become an accepted mediocrity that grows worse and worse day by day.

Given the change in the political climate of a share of individuals who code for the Linux kernel, things could get shittier if not well regulated and I'm not feeling too fabulous about that either.

Well you could just keep using Windows 7

 

[AnOminous]

My summary of this whole "license revocation" thing:
A bunch of nerds who love rules get invaded by amoral sociopaths who have no problem rewriting the rules into their personal plaything.
Nerds say: "Let's kick this upstairs to a bigger set of rules, in court!"
Guess what, nerds. It's the same all the way up.

Not really. If a sufficient number take this to court, even on a completely bogus theory, just having done so will make the whole project radioactive. They can burn it to the ground if they like.

 

[Marvin]

Not really. If a sufficient number take this to court, even on a completely bogus theory, just having done so will make the whole project radioactive. They can burn it to the ground if they like.

How would that work though?

Individuals suing google for violating copyright for continuing to use Linux with their contributions included? I'd suggest a class action lawsuit, but if they lost, they'd blow their one chance prematurely.

Well, and also, I never thought about how copyright would work when the contributions are entwined so deeply. It's pretty commonsense when there's one copyright for a project, like a film. But how does that work with code?

Depending on the language and the type of code and the type of contributions, in some cases, if you just reverted all of one contributor's diffs, the code wouldn't compile. But if it could compile, then some tests wouldn't pass. (If the developers were responsible and wrote good tests. *insert laugh track*)

Basically there'd be a few hundred holes in the code, and the work that came after those negated contributions that build on them / around them, would easily telegraph the work needed to get things working again.

In fact, when they patch over fixes, the resulting code might function exactly the same, aside from some formatting and variable names.

It'd be interesting to get a list of people threatening to revoke the license and run a git blame over all their names and see how deep this runs.

 

[Least Concern]

My gut tinfoil is saying that some of the big software companies are behind this. Linux is a thorn on the side of Apple and Microsoft as it does everything they do better for free, especially when it comes to stuff like running servers. By getting Linux thrashed with both competent people leaving and taking their toys as they go, and being replaced with subpar -coder wannabees who identify as purple unicorn cardboard boxes the Linux might soon be so useless that the only option is to take what the corps are offering at ridiculous prices and ToSes to boot.

Naah. People who contribute to OSS generally have one or both of these motivations: they're being paid for it, or they're doing it for fun. Coding is both a hobby and a source of income to many of us. It's probably hard to imagine a construction contractor or an accountant coming home after a day of work and then framing houses or fixing tax forms, but that's what a lot of us do. Those being paid to contribute to Linux will continue to contribute for as long as they're paid. As for the hobbyists, if they decide they don't want to be part of the CoC, they'll just find another project to contribute to.

At any rate, it's most definitely an exaggeration to say that Linux does everything better than Apple and MS's systems.

 

[Calooby]

Well you could just keep using Windows 7

Use it until 2020, you have to start paying for updates by then. No I'm not kidding either. Windows 8.1 with Classic Shell gets the job done. (Classic Shell brings back the original start menu, so you don't have to put up with the Metro bullshit)

 

[QI 541]

Use it until 2020, you have to start paying for updates by then. No I'm not kidding either. Windows 8.1 with Classic Shell gets the job done. (Classic Shell brings back the original start menu, so you don't have to put up with the Metro bullshit)

Can't you just pirate the updates?

 

[ChuckSlaughter]

My daughter had one high school programming class—Visual Basic. She was the only girl in her class, and she ended up getting harassed and having a miserable experience. What was your experience like?

My high school began offering computer science classes my senior year, and I took Visual Basic as well! The class wasn't bad, but I was definitely one of three or four girls in the class of 20 or so students. Other computing classes seemed to have similar gender breakdowns. However, my high school was extremely small and the teacher was supportive of inclusivity in tech, so there was no harassment that I noticed. Hopefully the classes become more diverse in future years.
What did your schools do right technology-wise? And how could they have been better?
My high school gave us consistent access to computers, and teachers occasionally assigned technology-based assignments in unrelated classes—we had to create a website for a social studies class a few times—which I think is great because it exposes everyone to tech. The robotics club was also pretty active and well-funded, but fairly small; I was not a member. One very strong component of the school's technology/engineering program is actually a student-taught engineering class called Exploratory Ventures, which is a hands-on class that tackles a new engineering or computer science problem every year. I taught it for two years with a classmate of mine, and have had students come up to me and tell me they're interested in pursuing engineering or computer science as a result of the class.
However, my high school was not particularly focused on deli jklfwberately including young women in these programs, and it isn't very racially diverse. The computing-based classes and clubs were, by a vast majority, filled with white male students. This could definitely be improved on.klmj

Linus kid seems ok, she didn't get harassed and she said so. She said she'd like to see more women in tech classes. Her high school experience was interesting.
I skim read the article so did I miss her bad side?

 

[thx1138]

I wonder, if back in 1993, when this new "Linux" thing came out, Linus Torvalds said to himself "One day, I will build up a sort of 'empire of everyone', I'll be rich and famous and at the same time I won't be a oligarchic tyrant like Gates or the suits at IBM or Jobs...and then it'll all be taken away from me by a man in a dress who cut his own dick off and swallows pills made of horse pee."

 

[AnOminous]

How would that work though?

Look how the SCO shit worked. That was a patently frivolous lawsuit by people who owned the copyrights under no reasonable theory and were purely trying to shake the world down for free money. Even so, that put the copyrights under a cloud for literally years and, to an extent, to this day.

A lawsuit by the people who actually wrote large parts of the functionality and had an even remotely viable claim to revoking the license to use it would make companies very reluctant to contract for services involving the property with a cloud over it.

Individuals suing google for violating copyright for continuing to use Linux with their contributions included? I'd suggest a class action lawsuit, but if they lost, they'd blow their one chance prematurely.

Just the possibility of that would severely impact the marketability of anything covered under the questionable agreement.

It would require people who actually did have claims to enough important code to cripple the OS if any significant part of it had to be removed.

Personally I don't think enough people would be willing to become utter pariahs to do this (seriously would you not punch someone in the face if you met them and they said they were SCO for instance).

 

[Marvin]

Look how the SCO shit worked. That was a patently frivolous lawsuit by people who owned the copyrights under no reasonable theory and were purely trying to shake the world down for free money. Even so, that put the copyrights under a cloud for literally years and, to an extent, to this day.

A lawsuit by the people who actually wrote large parts of the functionality and had an even remotely viable claim to revoking the license to use it would make companies very reluctant to contract for services involving the property with a cloud over it.



Just the possibility of that would severely impact the marketability of anything covered under the questionable agreement.

It would require people who actually did have claims to enough important code to cripple the OS if any significant part of it had to be removed.

Personally I don't think enough people would be willing to become utter pariahs to do this (seriously would you not punch someone in the face if you met them and they said they were SCO for instance).

It feels like the power situation is flipped though.

This is a crowd of random nerds vs google. I feel if they started sending out C&D's, google'd settle this definitively, quickly, one way or another.

 

[RadicalCentrist]

This is a crowd of random nerds vs google. I feel if they started sending out C&D's, google'd settle this definitively, quickly, one way or another.

Google has plenty of shit on its plate at the moment. If anything, blood is in the water and it's the time to strike while they are weakened.

 

[Marvin]

Google has plenty of shit on its plate at the moment. If anything, blood is in the water and it's the time to strike while they are weakened.

You think? I mean, they've got corporate counsel anyway. I would imagine they're constantly fielding legal shit. Android's the biggest OS in the world, both on mobile devices and overall. I would imagine they wouldn't want to play games with its legal status, even if they are somewhat distracted elsewhere.