Some of you need to watch this video, and hang your head in shame.

Dylan Taylor has been receiving constant harassment, including threats to his life and safety, for actions done collectively by SystemD. The article by Sam Bent was explictly mentioned as part of the harassment campaign, and rightfully so.

I don’t think enough people realize that this is catastrophically bad. It’ll discourage people from becoming open source developers, it’ll discourage people from using Linux, and it’ll discourage legislators from taking the Linux community seriously.

If you ever wished ill upon another human being for complying with a relatively inconsequential law, you are better off never touching a computer again. The Linux community has collectively gone so far beyond what is acceptable here.

  • Cherry@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    58
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    1 day ago

    Unfortunately appeasement upwards has been taken advantage of over and over.

    It’s logical to take a stance of ok what can we do to head off the bigger problem. But the truth is, over authoritative governments and tech businesses will overstep that rational offering. So appeasement needs to stop, and recognising this as the line is already occurring.

    I am not gonna wish harm on the guy, but I really don’t have a lot of sympathy for a techbro simp.

    • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      40
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 day ago

      Yeah preemptive bootlicking before even getting sued is not a characteristic i love to see in a dev that works on one of the most important pieces of linux software.

      • Magiilaro@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 day ago

        When the Ai companys acted after this maxime, ignore laws until getting sued, there was a huge outrage but here everyone wants the same from open source companies and developers.

        It seems that double Standards are fine after all.

        • micvil@beehaw.org
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 day ago

          I dunno the exact law, but I’d differentiate based on whether the law in place is bad, or good (in my opinion). Maybe the guys doing the “double standard” also think like this.

          • Magiilaro@feddit.org
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 day ago

            So you say that opinion and subjective classification of good or bad is the only valid measurement?

            That is the issue with double standard, everyone has their own subjective viewpoint of good or bad, of morality, of which laws to ignore and which to follow. And a lot of really bad things are done all the time in the name of good and moral reasons!

            Why make any law at all if only personal, subjectiv morallity matters?

            • micvil@beehaw.org
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 day ago

              This one is a very old debate, and you are taking my opinion to an extreme. Not that I think it’s particularly offensive or anything.

              This question is rhetorical: would you uphold racial segregation laws because they are the law?

              There are many takes one what one should do.

              • Kogasa@programming.dev
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                11 hours ago

                I don’t think the changes in question are “upholding” any law, but rather giving system admins and software devs a convenient/predefined way to attempt to comply with the law if they choose. “Upholding” the law would be requiring the field to be filled or checked.

                That said, to your point, if someone proposed a race field “so that devs can implement segregation if they choose,” I’d find that reprehensible even though it doesn’t do anything on its own. Similarly, I object to the systemd change.

                • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.zip
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  ·
                  24 hours ago

                  I’m not US and my country doesn’t have such a law, can’t fight foreign laws.

                  I’m not fighting the dev either and I don’t approve harassment, I’m just switching to non-systemd distro, that’s the best message anyone can send against this.

                • micvil@beehaw.org
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  1 day ago

                  I agree in principle. Thankfully, the law is not “in place” in the US yet, there’s still time to amend, repeal, etc., so we are not in trouble for now.

                  Ofc, John Brown would disagree with you, but he is extreme by today’s standards.

                  A better example would be the many people who try to block policemen from evicting people from rented apartments (mostly old/sick people who cannot pay). Ofc, one could pay for one being evicted, but that would just strengthen the landlord.

                  • Magiilaro@feddit.org
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    2
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    24 hours ago

                    The landlord has valid rights too, fighting policeman is definitively the wrong solution to this problem. The proper way would be in implementing a wellfare system that helps this (mostly old/sick) people when they can’t pay their bills. Fighting policemen for evicted people would be like only putting a bandaid over a punctured arthery. It may help for a, very short, time but in the end leads to nowhere.

                    But this is a tangent and topic that is very interessting to discuss but i fear is way to offtopic for this place