[gavanwoolery]

For the record (if it matters) I am very pro-immigration and pro-immigrant rights, but I don't think denying chef services to ICE will actually do anything - let me explain.

Lets look at this from another perspective (couldn't hurt, right?). I am a company that sells paper.

Some companies might use this paper for very bad things (printing out patents?).

Do I comb through all my clients and determine what they are using the paper for? Doesn't seem to make sense, and worse yet, it seems like an entirely subjective process. Who says which companies are "good" and which are "bad" ?

When I stop selling paper to an entity, they will just find another paper provider. I have not really done anything meaningful aside from signalled my intentions, which I could do more effectively in other ways (lobbying, etc).

[JoshTriplett]

Paper is an interchangeable commodity with many suppliers. Specific software products often are not.

Furthermore, there's a difference between "someone bought this commodity from a distributor" and "we have a contract specifically with this entity".

[commandlinefan]

If every paper company got together and denied service to ICE, then ICE would be forced to limp along without paper. They wouldn't cease to operate - even if they wanted to, they couldn't; that's not up to them. They would just operate inefficiently. It would be frustrating to the DHS officers, but actively detrimental to the immigrants in their custody, slowing things down even more. Unless you actually believe that immigration law shouldn't exist or be enforced, you should be happy to work with ICE to help them process detainees as quickly and efficiently as possible.

[JoshTriplett]

"If we don't sell to XYZ someone else will" is not an argument to keep selling to XYZ, unless you already agree with (or are indifferent to) XYZ and their activities.

"XYZ is doing bad things but it'd be even worse if they did bad things less efficiently" is not an argument to keep selling to XYZ, unless you already agree with (or are indifferent to) XYZ and their activities.

Making an organization less efficient, or otherwise slowing an organization down, is not going to single-handedly stop it, but that doesn't make it pointless or counterproductive.

For the concrete example here, you haven't provided evidence that "less efficient" or "slower" applies only (or disproportionately) to activities that stop hurting people rather than activities that hurt people.

Also, you've created a false dichotomy, dismissing the existence of people who agree with portions of a branch of law but disagree with how that law is enforced.

[gavanwoolery]

I agree, I think its not an apples-to-apples comparison, and that is slightly intentional. I want to highlight the same decision to be made under a less frictional commodity to ask the question: where does one draw the line on what they supply? There are some obvious lines probably. You would not want to be a gun manufacturer that sold guns directly to drug cartels, for example.

[JoshTriplett]

I think it's reasonable to say "this software is open and anyone can use it, and we don't control who downloads and runs it themselves".

I also think it's reasonable, given an entity you don't want to do business with, to say "we don't enter into contracts (even our standard contracts) with these entities, and we don't provide any kind of support to these entities".

[ng12]

I think that's reasonable -- but also the reverse is reasonable. "Company decides to continue working with US government" should not be news.

[notus]

They don't have to look at the moral behavior of every person they work with, they just need to listen to their employees. The likelihood of employees being able to actually abuse that privilege is pretty low since it requires a lot of collaboration. Also this is not about "doing anything" in the sense of stopping ICE. This is about an individuals right to choose who they want to support and work with. Would you really expect an immigrant to feel good about working with an organization like ICE and facilitating their bad behavior?

[gavanwoolery]

That's fair, but we are diving into subjective territory. Lets say (hypothetically) that half of the employees support ICE. Who decides then whether or not the contract is maintained? (Unlikely scenario in this case, but I am more interested in the general precedent than this specific scenario, so just playing devil's advocate)

Also, lets say you are the CEO who proposes that you should NOT work with ICE, but all of your employees believe you should. In that case, it is obviously not as simple as just listening to what your employees want.

[notus]

Yeah those are good points. I'm not really sure how that could be handled well. It has to be handled on a case by case basis. In this situation specifically though the CEO says that he doesn't support their actions either so seems like a simpler case of "Hey my employees brought this to my attention and I agree with them"