What is being described here is a prototypical case of industrial sabotage. Books have been written about it, the jury is very much not out on whether we should consider it malicious, although I very much consider it not... In fact industrial sabotage is quite often made out of love for the fellow worker.

This is very much a philosophical question and I doubt we will resolve it here on HN. However if you want to deem this act malicious I beg you to ask your self: To whom is the malice directed towards, who was harmed the most? What does this act tell us about the industry?

I, on the other hand, see this sabotage as a clear act of love from a fellow worker.

Sabotage is still malicious even if you sympathize with the motivations.

I would also strongly question any “fellow worker” explanation since I'm sure the pain will almost universally be felt by the “fellow workers” who have to update things, reassure their security team, or increasingly start justifying their use of open source software.

As is usually the case in most direct action. Your average strike will cause much further harm then this act for other workers. However the goal is not to halt production, halting production is simply a means to an end, the goal is usually better working conditions for the rest of the workers. This is why you often see workers stand in solidarity with strikers even when the strike directly harms them.

In that case, this is extremely weak since it was so quickly and easily reversed. A strike which has no purpose or chance of success tends not to get much support.

> To whom is the malice directed towards, who was harmed the most? What does this act tell us about the industry?

It certainly wasn't directed at the large corporations, they have many systems in place to mitigate this type of attack. It was directed at everyone else, like fellow open source devs, contractors, hobby developers, students, and small to medium businesses.

The goal simply appears to be chaos and attention.