I mean if your qualifying rule is everyone in the world, you've given Github the job of being world police. A role that won't make an earth shattering impact because bad actors can make those same programs offline. Why not have it in the light where we can see it coming? Being world police is the gov's job. Github should be treated as an american service and be required to respect only the gov's the US cares about and let the rest of the world use it on an "as is" basis.
My point - and I didn't make this clearly - is about the relationship between the company (GitLab) and the customers it chooses to do business with (think: aggressive undemocratic countries and the companies within them that enable oppression).
If you live in one of those countries and find that you are being stepped on by tools enabled and built by a U.S. company, then you're going to question the ethics and intentions of that company.
Until now GitLab has fostered a very positive open source ecosystem, making their own core product available for modification under the MIT license. That's fine, and that seems a principled and ethical stand.
It's still possible that their code will be deployed and used for malign purposes; those are the cases where as a victim you'd contact your (local) law enforcement if there's anything clearly illegal.
What seems a lot more questionable here is who GitLab chooses to peer with to profit from, and to allow influence over the direction of the product and the code itself. That is the change which is signaled in this policy shift - it is that GitLab will do business with anyone, and that employees shouldn't discuss that - indeed they are being told to treat it as some kind of virtue.
I am wondering on what you base this line of thinking? Do you have any examples where persons advocating for liberty are acting primarily out of self interest?
- GitLab is claiming to do business with any customer, on the basis of free trade and contribution
- GitLab is encouraging a culture where employees do not discuss or talk about those relationships
- I believe that technology is not neutral and the behaviours we as software engineers define in code, which then may affect thousands or even millions, are a result of customer influence (product decisions, feature requests, pull/merge requests, etc)
The commit[0] I read describes this as inclusion and 'efficiency' (i.e. 'yours not to question why'), but the real outcome I foresee is: "we are going to do business with shady companies and/or countries, and we want to encourage a company culture where this is seen as fine and dissent is discouraged"
This is self-interest on the part of GitLab the corporation - and ironically it also reduces liberty and freedom for GitLab employees to speak openly.
Meanwhile I can understand the top-level comment's description of why this might in some sense be a good business strategy. There's not a whole lot of discussion around the negative externalities of being successful in a way that compromises values though.
[0] - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/b5a35716...
As a definitely not libertarian I think we should be placing much greater restrictions on companies ability to discriminate against their employees and customers.
The kind of policy that GitLab is proposing here is fine - or even aspirational, under a certain lens - until one day you wake up and find that the same software is being used to destroy your community and compatriots.
How could that happen? Isn't this free speech to max utility? Isn't that flawless?
No, it's free utility to anyone - and you might eventually find that the people who are using it don't have you and your neighbours interests at heart.
The design of technology is _not_ ideologically neutral. It contains embedded biases and beliefs - even if they were subconscious or part of a community mindset - and those can and will be changed and overruled over time.
Careless licensing of technology will lead to the overriding and subversion of those ideologies, in ways that many of us would find abhorrent.
If you'd like to support that on the basis of free speech, you should ask yourself whether the worst re-applications of these technologies would still allow you to speak freely.