I picked a side. I will take care that npm is not installed on my computers. Take your political sh*t out of my computer.
The premise behind your position is clearly that "politics" is some kind of meaningless distraction to the "real" business of shipping software. But... isn't that backwards? It's a war. People picked a side.
The idea that unilateral military invasion is merely "politics"[1] is... very strange to lots of people.
[1] In the sense of triviality you clearly intended, c.f. Clausewitz again.
Easy to say if you are not a frontend engineer.
You're implying that wars have no rules. This is very much not true, not legally and not morally. You should read the 4th Geneva Convention to disabuse yourself of this dangerous misconception: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/INTRO/380
>In wars, principled stands don't win
And excessively unprincipled stands can get you sent to The Hague to be prosecuted for war crimes.
Now, I'm not saying that deleting some files is a war crime. What I'm saying is that your reasoning for why it is legitimate is flawed.
I even doubt that you would agree with your own reasoning given some other examples. E.g., would you not agree that while we can ask McDonalds to stop doing business in Russia, it would be a crime for them to start poisoning their Russian customers?
Unless you're from the US, in which case the US will invade Netherlands to get you out of there. Apparently, there is a law (from 2002 IIRC) which allows the US to do this legally.
Same goes for Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and a lot more countries that did not sign (or ratify) the Rome Statute.
> One of the principles of international law is that a treaty does not create either obligations or rights for third states without their consent, and this is also enshrined in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.[149] The co-operation of the non-party states with the ICC is envisioned by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to be of voluntary nature.[150]
For Russia, China, and the US there's literally nothing that can be done: while the "members of UN Security Council" are "compelled to co-operate" with the ICC, these members can veto anything that comes up.
In other words, if you're from one of non-signatories, you can willfully kill, torture, subject to inhumane treatment, perform biological experiments, steal and destroy property, take hostages, unlawfully confine, transfer, and deport, and even willfully cause great suffering without fear of any kind of prosecution.
Does Geneva Convention make a difference? I only learned about ICC and Rome Statute, and it was disheartening enough for me to stop reading, so it's a genuine question.
Yes I think it does. Whatever the limits of enforcement, it means something that all the countries you mention are signatories to the Geneva Conventions I - IV.
Even if these countries refuse to extradite their citizens to The Hague, it doesn't necessarily protect war criminals from prosecution in their own countries. They are still breaking the law.
Of course the practical problem is getting hold of the suspected war criminals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_jurisdiction
https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/39791-international-crimes-sp...
In the current climate I am not sure anymore that people would disagree with poisoning Russians. Here in Germany they started to purge everything Russian (except people) and also agitating against Russians in general. It feels like we learned nothing from WW2.
From what I've seen there seem to be worldwide movements in that regard, that are even overboard for cold war propaganda.
edit: added "except people"
[1] https://www.axios.com/russian-businesses-us-vandalism-threat...
If you choose to become an actor in a war, then you also open yourself up to being attacked. There is only one kind of actor in a war- combatant.
Consider the maintainer who did the “delete all files on servers with Russian IP addresses.” This could be construed as an act of war against Russia. Would Russia be wrong to commit acts of war against this person? If the server performed some life critical task like operating hospital equipment or air traffic control or whatever, this change could have resulted in loss of life (so many mistakes in using JavaScript in such cases but set that aside for a moment). If lives were lost as a result, would Russia be wrong to use lethal force against the maintainer?
Disclaimer (sad that you have to add this these days; it should go without saying): I only use this as an example. I think Putin is a thug and I think that it goes against most westerners’ values, mine included, for nation states to preemptively invade other nation states. I’m not apologizing for or justifying any act by Russia. I have deep sympathy for people in Ukraine who just want to live their lives and not be killed or have their stuff destroyed.
>If lives were lost as a result, would Russia be wrong to use lethal force against the maintainer?
Yeah, unless they want to admit that they’ve been waging war against the entire western world by allowing their homegrown ransomware groups to operate with impunity.
If we go by your logic, Western countries should have turned Moscow into a giant glass parking lot after NotPetya, a destructive wiper worm released by the Russian government targeting the entire world.
Luckily you’re alone with your thinking.
And there are levels of warfare between "nothing" and "nuclear", in case you hadn't noticed. And North Korea and China are doing state-sponsored attacks against US targets, commercial and government and military. It's not clear to me that NoPetya was state sponsored, it's ransomware. The RF is not a bastion of law enforcement and justice; I agree that they do a terrible job of controlling organized crime activities, both cyber and non-cyber.
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/dypeek/open-source-sabotage-...
Fighting against bad actors is definitely a 'principled decision'.
Ignoring the situation and not taking action is an 'unprincipled decision'. Though it might disguised as principled action, on the basis of supporting some other principle, such 'open source', but ignoring one at the expense of another implies serious lack of self awareness.
This war, plus COVID, and the recently released documents indicating a planned invasion of Taiwan (though we don't know for sure) - represent major geopolitical shift of the order of WW1/WW2/End of Cold War, the stakes and consequences are enormous.
And the point is that it's a war. We've crossed the "bad things are going to happen" Rubicon already. You can't make principled arguments like that against people who have chosen to engage in a war out of the hope or desire for one side to win. They already did that moral calculus. It's like telling someone they shouldn't defend their home because pacifism is more important. You might be right, but you won't change anyone's mind.
Well, yeah. War is bad. On the spectrum of war badness, obviously, these pranks are pretty mild. But they're bad. It's a bad situation. When at war, people are forced to do bad things to prevent worse things. That's why starting wars is very bad.
Now, sure, you can argue about the semantics about "who" is at war, or whether these npm authors are "really" at war, or why they "think" they're at war, or whether they "should" be at war. You could also get into a discussion about whether or not this tactic is effective (and I'd agree it's hurting more than helping, btw). Go nuts.
But that doesn't change the fact that this is an action in support of a war effort. In wars, principled stands don't win. If you want a particular outcome, you have to pick a side.