[ndriscoll]

Of all the things to be upset with a "defense" company over, actual literal defense (as in border monitoring and sensors) is a funny one. That stood out to me in the open letter as well. Why not the weapons systems that are apparently "somewhere between an autonomous drone and a reusable missile"? Would people be as upset at Boeing as a sponsor, or would that just be boring? Would people be as upset if Google or Facebook were sponsors? Google of course runs a global surveillance network, and says they're proud to offer AI services to the DoD:

https://cloud.google.com/gov/federal-defense-and-intel

[fabrice_d]

Yes I believe it's acceptable to be upset at any company that undermines democracy. That very likely includes most big tech companies, and absolutely includes Google and Facebook.

[ndriscoll]

I suppose what's interesting to me is why is no one (except maybe you) upset over e.g. this sponsorship list for LinuxCon:

https://events.linuxfoundation.org/archive/2022/open-source-...

with Google right there as a diamond sponsor and Meta as a platinum sponsor. IBM is also a diamond sponsor, and we've all heard about them and the literal Nazis (and the time they got a license exception for JSLint to be able to use it for evil).

Or perhaps the same people are upset over things like Linux sponsors, but everyone ignores them in that context?

The LWN article indicates 24 maintainers have removed themselves, which appears to be ~0.7% of the maintainer list. Were these people particularly impactful? Is there an actual crisis here?

I also don't really get it; are they going to use a different (worse) OS because of this? Or just stop pushing changes upstream for packages they care about (either staying out of date or maintaining a personal fork)? It seems like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

[pxc]

> The LWN article indicates 24 maintainers have removed themselves, which appears to be ~0.7% of the maintainer list. Were these people particularly impactful? Is there an actual crisis here?

Maybe a handful of them. One of them was an extremely prolific (#3 contributor to Nixpkgs) and active contributor that no doubt everyone will miss. There's at least one other name I recognize on the list. But most of them are pretty small-time maintainers so far.

> I also don't really get it; are they going to use a different (worse) OS because of this?

They're saying they're going to fork. There's one fork emerging already, but idk if it'll be the one. I hope a productive and usable fork does arise (and that eventually it can rejoin Nix) but I'm pessimistic that any will survive.

[fabrice_d]

You can be upset about something and powerless to push back.

[oivey]

An even bigger irony is that one of major community moderators who is mad is an “ethical software engineer” working at Google.

[Cthulhu_]

Be the change you want to see within companies. Of course, these companies can - and have - fire the activist employees as well if they become too obstructing, like the ones that were protesting Google Cloud doing business with Israel: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/17/24133700/google-fires-28-...

[ndriscoll]

An employee isn't going to change Google to exit the mass surveillance and mass propaganda businesses any sooner than they're going to change Raytheon to exit the missile business. It's fundamental to what the company does.

[pxc]

The relevant comment is misinformed. The person they're referring to without naming is Irene Knapp, who left Google (presumably over her qualms). She's named in some press articles about the Google walkouts in 2020, e.g.: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/18/magazine/goog...

[pxc]

Because people die crossing the border, and the whole enterprise of militarizing the border and criminalizing unauthorized crossings of individuals is a historical extreme which has only recently emerged.

When its naming was honest, the Department of Defense was called the Department of War. It's that notion of 'defense' we should have in mind when we ask whether the 'defense' industry should have a role in policing the border.

[nrdxp]

Because virtue