Personally I wouldn't want to work for a company actually detaining people, but call me terrible but I'm not sure I'd feel the same about letting them pay to host some code...
Why don't people push for a fair immigration system in USA instead of abolishing ICE? What exactly am I missing here?
As far as ICE goes I think people are understandably shocked by ICE's actions that have been extraordinarily cruel under the current administration, so ICE gets a lot of attention.
However, would you be ok with Hitler hosting code on your service if it contributed in some small way to genocide? That _does_ make me feel ick. Tacit support by large numbers of "not really effected" people is what made the holocaust and slavery and jim crow, etc, possible.
I'm not comparing ICE to Violent White Supremacy... but it's worth staying informed and revisiting our own boundaries as the situation changes.
Skin color, nationality and ethnicity are playing a huge role in how we're treating people right now, and the spectrum of human<>inhumane is getting wider and wider with tacit support :-(
There are, in fact 'wrong customers' for the American right. It's just that their list of 'wrong customers' is different from that of the left.
These days, neither party is all that stable. There are many voices trying to redefine both and the reasonable people in the middle are not being listened to. I honestly don't know the final resolution.
1. You provide tools to a group. 2. You believe (in a informed way) that the group intends to act immorally. 3. Your tools will make the group more effective at acting immorally.
Do you have any responsibility for what happens?
Focus on making great tools. Don't worry about who might use them. That's someone else's job. If Craftsman starts trying to vet customers so nobody buying their hammers can use them to build KKK meeting houses, they will now be pressured to deny their tools to whomever the capricious demands of the internet mob dictate.
it makes for a very slippery slope
1. I make tools (wedding planning software)
2. I believe (in an informed way) that a group intends to act immorally (use my tools to plan a gay wedding)
3. My tools will make the group more effective at acting immorally
Do I have any responsibility for what happens?
Or (alternatively):
1. I make tools (highly specialized chemicals)
2. I believe (in an informed way) that a group intends to act immorally (use my chemicals to improve abortions)
3. My tools will make the group more effective at acting immorally
Do I have any responsibility for what happens?
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IMO, it's better not to attempt to be morality police. Focus on making great tools.
So yes I think everyone would agree you have some responsibility (otherwise no one would care about the outcome of the case, why request the right to discriminate if you don't feel that you have any responsibility for the resulting acts?)
Anyone who was around when the OSI set out a basic definition of minimal requirements for open source licenses will remember that there were some arguments about whether a license could restrict use based on fields of endeavour. The idea that it couldn’t is aligned with universalist civil libertarian principles, and epistemological humility.
> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor > The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.[2]
The principles of open source are still very strong, and somehow more obvious than free speech or due process. The network effects could make it impossible for any significant change, but I expect we’ll soon see attempts at licenses that are otherwise free, but attempt to restrict use by certain domestic enemies of the maintainers. [1] Matt Taibbi - https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-i... [2] OSI - https://opensource.org/osd-annotated
The USA has the most immigrants than any other country in the world at almost 47 million residents. That's 4 times higher than the second place country. And the vast majority of them came perfectly legally. For every one person that immigrates to Canada, 6 immigrate to the USA. I don't really know what people are asking for here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
I'm not sure I see a reason that the government must compromise with a give company.
If Boeing decided that ICE should behave even worse, would we cheer on ICE for compromising?
I think we'd argue that the right place for that sort of thing is at the ballot box.
The government also doesn't have to compromise. Maybe there's a competitor who is less particular about who they do business with or in fact thinks the cruelty is actually cool and good. gitlab is 100% neutral on who they do business with, for example.
A) Have a means of identifying which of their users are pedophiles, rapists, and terrorists? B) Have a means of selectively denying people access to the tools? C) Have a means of determining which of these users would using their tools to rape, produce child porn, and enact terrorism?
If so, then yes, I would say they're guilty.
You would cheer on Boeing for asking that ICE be more cruel?
I'm struggling to see how this is intended as a counterexample. Is it because disapproving of homosexuality is wrong? That doesn't at all change the entailment of responsibility by the conjunction of foreknowledge of consequences with uncoerced action.
If you walk out into a public street and fire a pistol around you randomly, you are clearly responsible for any death or injuries thereby caused (given that you were aware of the likely outcomes), even if it is through negligence or indifference rather than deliberate intent.
So everyone who chooses to license their software as open source is making a choice that intentionally limits their own ability to prevent others from using the licensed software legally. So no, open source software developers don't have the choice to restrict certain groups from using it - but that is because it was a choice they themselves made on how to license the software. Isn't that the ultimate hand washing?
"hey, if you sell this to me, I'm going to go shoot that black kid outside", and then showed you a few videos of them doing this before?
This is bogus though. Will Home Depot allow me to buy some rope if I declare to a random employee that I plan on using it to do a lynching on my local colored neighbors? Yes, they will. Does that make Home Depot an immoral organization? Nope.
I'd hope (and expect!) that home depot employees would ask you to leave if you made those statements while trying to purchase rope.
If you showed Home Depot sufficient evidence that you intended to lynch someone with it, and it was Home Depot's policy that we sell rope even if it's used for murder, then yes. I think the issue in your example is that you haven't made the corporate policy clear and you haven't made it clear that the employee is convinced of what you're about to do.
> If Boeing decided that ICE should behave even worse, would we cheer on ICE for compromising?
I said
> I wouldn't cheer on any company doing that,
emphasis on the "n't" in "wouldn't". And to be specific, I would not (<- that not is load bearing) cheer for Boeing advocating for more cruelty, nor would I cheer on the government for acquiescing.
If you want to compel private companies to do work for an unprotected class like a federal law enforcement agency, then yes at that point you should probably go and vote to make sure that happens.
Home Depot (the company) will not make any effort to ban me from using their chain even if an employee did make me leave the premises. I could just go home and order it online from HomeDepot.com and have it shipped right to me.
So, much as after you kick someone out of your store they could order on the home depot website, they could also just go to Lowe's and say nothing. Neither company is really to blame in that case. On the other hand, I wouldn't say that you shouldn't escalate to law enforcement if someone is threatening to go lynch someone in your presence.
> Suppose that they'd already been on trial for it, found guilty and served their time
Ok, so I'm supposing a convicted felon is trying to purchase a gun, which is illegal under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).
> Do you sell them the gun, knowing that they intend to use it for violence?
No, I do not sell them the gun, because it would be illegal to do so.
===
Bottom line, I believe in "innocent until proven guilty." I don't deny services or tools to someone legally able to purchase it because I think they might use it to commit a future crime. I might report them to authorities if my suspicions are backed by evidence, but it's not my job to prevent future crimes. If I work at a glass blowing shop and someone wants me to create a custom bong for them, I wouldn't deny them because they might use it to smoke illegal drugs. Who knows, they might be scientists that need it to conduct a study.
But you still have responsibility when you assist others in doing things, whether you agree or disagree with those things.
Otherwise you are ignoring the "let live" part of your own philosophy.
For example, someone comes to you asking for your services to help them kill a third person.
If you believe in the "let live" part of your philosophy, you cannot assist in depriving someone of life in that way.
Same applies to the golden rule. It's easy to say you don't want to be denied assistance from others, so you won't deny it to them. But that's the easy scenario. Consider, when Alice is asked by Bob to help damage you, do you think the golden rule tells Alice to deprive you of life and liberty? I don't think it does.
I'm asking if it's unethical to sell someone a gun if you're convinced they're going to do something you believe to be unethical with it. I would say yes. I'm not sure if you would say, "no, it doesn't matter if I know they're going to kill children with it", "maybe, if I only think they're going to kill animals with it", or "yes, I don't think I should sell them the gun if I know they're going to do something I don't approve of with it".
To your second point, we're not talking about "maybe they're going to do something bad", we're saying "here's plenty of documentation that they're going to do something bad".
Now this isn't quite the IBM nazi connection - but the government snatching up people, then paying private corporations to intern them, in turn apparently using them for forced labour... Is pretty bad.
I'd be surprised if software isn't essential to keeping the machine going - and I'd not hesitated to call taking money for tooling "being a collaborator".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/coronavirus-ice-d...
I don't like this contrived example though, and I suspect you've only set it up so that if/when I say "nope, I won't sell the gun to that person" you'll then say "in this case the gun is GitHub and the felon trying to buy it is ICE" which I do not think is an apt analogy at all.
I will agree that it's dubious that that nuance is reflected in the rulings on the Masterpiece case. I'm trying to follow the same lines set there, though, in my argumentation.
And would you have the same answer if you believed that law enforcement wouldn't do anything to stop the buyer from doing anything?
Would the added features be useful in another context? Would they be useful regardless of the type of work being done? Are they merely enhancements of the platform, or are they specifically tailored to the client's domain?
1. High paying legal immigration is tightly controlled because highly skilled people and high-paying employers don't dare to break the law.
2. Low-paying illegal immigration is poorly controlled because poor people and small employers don't care about immigration law.
Pro-ICE-abolition groups, for the most part, want essentially open borders for poor people and are ambivalent about high skilled legal immigrants. ICE, for its part, has become increasingly brutal in its enforcement of immigration law, and has repeatedly been caught employing white nationalists and doing otherwise gross things. Getting rid of an unpopular enforcement agency is considered easier to accomplish politically than to actually re-write immigration law.
So if ICE asks github to prioritize better native CI support for Windows, or something, they're doing it because it is of maximum benefit to ICE.
The CCP's position seems to be that anything vaguely resembling disrespect of the CCP or their leader will lead to revolution, and therefore must be suppressed with whatever means necessary.
It's generally possible for people to see small, seemingly-harmless, and sometimes-unintentional actions as being part of / enabling / normalizing some terrible threat, which must therefore be burned down, and anyone who opposes such burning must themselves be burned too. I think this happened with the Inquisitions, for example.
It doesn't solve the issue to say "the different political factions will judge for themselves which infractions against their beliefs are harmless". People are very capable of inflaming their own political passions to cast any issue as being the first step towards the end of the world. It only works if there is some common, overarching framework that the different factions agree on. If the common foundation is democracy, then I think that framework would probably be "that which the law allows is permissible; peacefully advocating your policies is permissible; if you think the law is wrong, advocate to change the law". Civil disobedience is a step outside that framework, but (by design) one of the most harmless.
Another responsibility that is not given enough weight is the maintenance of a civil non-polarized society.
IMO the former is more objectionable than the latter.
If GitHub were to go through with it, that would make for an interesting middle-man company business model.