[steve1977]

People seem to forget that a lot if not most of IT has some form of military background/funding behind it.

Be it the first computers, the Internet, RISC CPUs, BSD UNIX and much much more.

You’re free not to like this fact of course, but then using the technologies anyway is a bit of a double standard.

[dwb]

Are you really expecting people critical of the US military to not use computers, else be keeping a "double standard"?

[steve1977]

I think these people are keeping a double standard, yes.

[dwb]

Are you ideologically aligned with the distant origin of everything you use and consume?

[steve1977]

I try to be aware of these origins at least.

But we are not talking about distant origins here.

[dwb]

So if you're aware it's ok? Where has anyone in this story shown themselves to be unaware?

[mrguyorama]

And yet you expect to pull social security some day right? Clearly that makes you an ardent communist right?

[myaccountonhn]

I think it’s different to actively endorse something vs having it be used for something. If you’re working in a community producing axes and you’re later seeing the organization advertising them for murder instead of cutting down trees, you might understandably not wanna be part of it anymore or try to change the organization.

[steve1977]

But a lot of the technologies were explicitly designed with military use in mind. It’s not like some unintended and unplanned side effect.

So a better analogy would be swords that can also be used to cut fruit instead of killing maybe.

[myaccountonhn]

But we’re in a thread about leadership crisis of nix here. Was nix designed explicitly for military in mind?

[steve1977]

I don't know. The designer and founder of nix at least does not seem to explicitly exclude military use.

From what I understand, this is actually the root cause of the conflict here; the founder of the project seems to be fine with military use, some other members of the community are not.

[davidgerard]

Yet you participate in society. Curious!

[steve1977]

Straw man

[davidgerard]

he was in a well, actually

[steve1977]

Well then…

[colinsane]

i'm fascinated by this because a lot of my involvement in open source is a pretty direct reaction against state actors like NSA who undermine my privacy. and if i wanted to i could point out that the military took other things away from our field too, like Alan Turing. but ultimately, i think the argument is just that any institution which dumps a lot of money into a space deserves loyalty for that alone, but where's the substance in that? i mean sure, "don't bite the hand that feeds you", but also if you're grown and aren't so desperate for food anymore, then it's completely reasonable, arguably expected, for you to act on principles higher than money.

[michtzik]

How did the military take Alan Turing away from our field?

[colinsane]

it's believed he committed suicide after losing his employment -- and lots of other things -- on account of being gay. strictly speaking it wasn't the military, but a different part of the security apparatus.

[steve1977]

No, it was not "strictly speaking it wasn't the military" - it was not the military at all. It was the civil legal system in the UK.

If it was suicide at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death

[steve1977]

> then it's completely reasonable, arguably expected, for you to act on principles higher than money.

Well that was kind of my point. I see people act on principles of morality when it doesn't negatively affect their convenience and at the same time ignore those principles when it affects their convenience. For me that is the definition of a double standard.

That's it. I'm not saying we should put these people in jail ;)

[colinsane]

i've spent two years of my life getting NixOS to work well on my mobile phone because i value things like privacy. i assure you, actually ditching Android/iOS on principle is in fact very much not convenient. i do not see the link.

[steve1977]

You are using a mobile phone based on a RISC CPU (presumably) and the Internet. Those are the conveniences I was speaking of.

[colinsane]

closed source CPUs are also a thing i have invested inconvenient amounts of time in trying to overcome [1]. i expect by the latter decades of my life it will actually be feasible.

i'll be honest i don't understand what point you're trying to make. if i owe some loyalty to the military for the conveniences of their products, then would not Anduril owe me loyalty for the convenience of my products? the actual request to Anduril/military is way less than that, btw -- it's less "don't use our product" as "don't advertise in our spaces".

1: https://git.uninsane.org/colin/fdtd-coremem

[steve1977]

> it's less "don't use our product" as "don't advertise in our spaces"

I guess the problem here is the definition of "our". If Anduril sponsors development of nix, it's as much "their" product and "their" space as it is yours.

Or in other words, they are included in "ours". You might not like that, but that doesn't change the facts.

[jijijijij]

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

[_cenw]

This is missing the point in the same way that anti-capitalists sometimes get told to just not use money. Or critics of colonialism to just live somewhere else. There are things too essential to boycott - whether we personally like them or their history. It's also a lazy retort that doesn't quite interact with the substance of the critique.

[steve1977]

> This is missing the point in the same way that anti-capitalists sometimes get told to just not use money.

Except that's not what I'm doing. It's more like I'm telling anti-capitalists not to trade stock options in order to buy Porsches.