zlacker

>>Xordev+(OP)
What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it.

I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies).

But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time.

We should absolutely be lobbying hard for changes to immigration law, the restrictions placed on ICE, and justice for their wrongdoings.

But I can't see how this helps improve immigration, and it certainly seems likely to cause a lot of negative consequences for GitHub. The employees are putting their employer in a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" situation.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I love the vision of a world where executives don't take actions their workers will protest. I think that in order to get there, the protests need to be reasonable, and I think this one isn't.

EDIT DISCLAIMER: I own a small amount of MSFT stock, which was not on my mind as I wrote this. I use GitHub's free service and have no other relationship I can think of with MSFT or GitHub.

>>rattra+Rh
(Edit: Removed “people are lazy”, poor choice of words) People feel despair, hence pushing on Github instead of the political process. I’m all for unconventional leverage, but Microsoft is a trillion dollar org and has shareholders; this isn’t some VC funded dual class share startup where the founder has a blank check to do whatever they want.

Edit: Can’t give up on the political process, that’s where the change happens. Continue to apply pressure, your opponents eventually give up or die out.

>>toomuc+Oi
You've got this backwards. What is happening here is the real political process - people congregating and trying to achieve their political goals through organizations they can actually influence. Organizing to convince your employer, or your local government, or your school board or whatever organization you can to push things in some direction is the political process. Sure, voting is one aspect of it, but it is by no means the be-all, end-all of politics and democracy.

>>tsimio+is
I don’t believe I’ve got it backwards. If Github/Microsoft won’t serve ICE, someone else will. If you want to fix ICE, the political process is what fixes that, not feel good efforts on a single business.

As someone with entities that are registered to do business with the federal government, I’d provide services to ICE, because ICE isn’t the problem: how they’re regulated is the problem. Not providing services to ICE doesn’t solve that.

>>toomuc+At
> If Github/Microsoft won’t serve ICE, someone else will

I'm sorry but that's an incredibly spineless take. If people stopped having this kind of attitude, then there would be no "someone else".

>>moolco+hR
I won’t apologize for being realistic.