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.
Harassment is over the line.
Do you really think that people on the Internet will show restraint and ‘only’ harass the person without taking it too far?
No, because there are crazy people online. Supporting any kind of mob harassment is supporting death threats and violence because they inevitably follow once the mob is large enough.
Hey, abusing his position as a maintainer is absolutely abusing that social contract, so he does lose some protection that social contract afforded.
He should be uncomfortable, not afraid for his life.