Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE

Re:Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE by mieseratte on Friday September 20, 2019 @08:02AM (#21025668)

I contribute to FOSS, have a number of small projects ballpark of [1,000, 10,000) users. I guarantee I disagree with a non-trivial part of those folks, politically. I don't put in constraints to deny them because of that. That's the world I want to live in.

> feel free not to use it.

If you disagree, feel free not to comment /s

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Re:Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE by iamtheworstdev on Friday September 20, 2019 @08:01AM (#21025661)

It is a bit ridiculous. Are people going to start pulling things from projects because they find out that FOSS is used heavily by the intelligence community?

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Re:Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE by Crinus on Friday September 20, 2019 @08:21AM (#21025835)

If an author of a free software believes that it is against his own morals to indirectly assist some organization that they see as immoral then, yes, they have the freedom to stop working on that software as there is no obligation on their part to continue doing so.

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Re:Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE by iamtheworstdev on Friday September 20, 2019 @09:48AM (#21026598)

I should have clarified my point a bit. I'm not debating ones prerogative to do it. But we as nerds know the things we make can and are used by "bad"* actors but typically say it's better for the common good so we should keep it. Things like encryption, heavy math libraries in the world of nuclear physics, rocket science, VPNs, etc.

So when we discover one bad person using our software and subsequently yank it, aren't we being a bit hypocritical?

* I quote that because not everyone agrees that DHS and ICE are bad actors and want to avoid a political tangent

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Re:Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE by eropple on Friday September 20, 2019 @10:48AM (#21027285)

YMMV, but to me there's a difference between directly creating financial benefit for the owners of a largely closed software ecosystem--and Chef in practice is a largely closed software ecosystem, it's single-source and they're doing their damnedest to squeeze money out of their users right now--and more general open-source publishing.

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Re:Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE by iamtheworstdev on Friday September 20, 2019 @01:13PM (#21029010)

So what you're telling me is people would be really disappointed if they noticed Puppet Labs makes money from the same people?

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Re:Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE by eropple on Friday September 20, 2019 @06:09PM (#21031837)

Disappointed? No, I'm not naive.

But if I used Puppet I'd be just as ripshit and hold them to the same standards.

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Re:Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE by onion2k on Friday September 20, 2019 @08:02AM (#21025667)

Yes.

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Re:Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE by missosoup on Friday September 20, 2019 @08:03AM (#21025679)

It's their prerogative to do that if they so choose. If you don't like it, don't rely on it. Get commercially licensed software where this can't happen or write your own.

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Re:Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE by ModernMech on Friday September 20, 2019 @08:06AM (#21025711)

I would if they were accepting $100,000 contracts with the NSA. Yeah.

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Re:Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE by shagie on Friday September 20, 2019 @08:16AM (#21025786)

https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

> 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

> The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

---

Being potentially used by organizations you don't agree with is what open source entails.

There also appears to be nothing wrong in the FOSS model of taking the last published version and forking it... and releasing that.

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Re:Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE by Crinus on Friday September 20, 2019 @08:26AM (#21025875)

A FOSS license allows an organization you dislike to continue using your software, but it doesn't require that you continue working on and providing that software on any specific way (there is the requirement in GPL to provide on request for a limited amount of time but it doesn't specify method and that can be done via - e.g. - email).

Others can pick it up from where you left and continue, of course.

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Re:Chef dependency removed after agreement with ICE by missosoup on Friday September 20, 2019 @08:26AM (#21025878)

The license doesn't do any of those things. The author has chosen to stop hosting the project because of those things.

That is their right.

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