GitHub Coders to Microsoft: Cut Ties with ICE or We'll Move Our Projects | Hacker News Reader

GitHub Coders to Microsoft: Cut Ties with ICE or We'll Move Our Projects

gizmodo.com

21 pointsmikece17 comments

I am curious though: how many people hosting projects at GitHub were totally fine with Microsoft buying GitHub but now that the news of working with ICE has come out THAT is a reason to move elsewhere?

According to the article, it's about 60. At least, that's the number of maintainers who signed the letter.

Microsoft was in PRISM according to Snowden, so also have ties to the NSA.

So were they all. Nobody has clean hands. Kvetching and raising a stink about it is so, so, so very effective.

If morality is of ultimate importance, we're going to have to go back to the days of projects hosting their own infrastructure. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, in the long run.

In this mentality, if a mob 1000 people attacks you, it's completely OK because everyone is doing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

If you're doing something wrong, or using power over them to make life miserable for somebody else, then yes. Usurping power by forming a mob is very much okay. If it weren't, the revolutionary war would never have taken place.

Just puzzled what would really be the impact from a business perspective if those coders move their projects out? Will it damage Github’s reputation that would turn into a mass exodus of people using their service?

I think a fair set of governance on the ICE relationship that MS has alongside conformity from the developers / project maintainers can be achieved in this scenario.

I think before the dust settles a lot of people will be on gitlab instead of github. I've copied all my history/distros over there and have been using it more recently. I'm finding I like it a lot better anyways I especially like the 'groups' feature.

Why are all these stories flagged? Can't we discuss the issue in a civilized way? There are quite a few developers on the list of signees, and this socio-technological issue is definitely pertinent to HN. Can we please stop with this childish "I don't like it so I flag it" attitude?

I mean, Microsoft is not a charity so if they deem okay to do business with ICE, good for them. And if it is so shocking to X, Y, or Z (the signees and others), then they should totally move elsewhere.

Threatening a company is a good weapon for consumers but leaving the company to go elsewhere would be a tad more impactful.

Because if Compnay XYZ disagrees with your politics, you should punish them?

The same agency, ICE, does LOADS of good work, protecting America and it's citizens. Much like Microsoft (or any company)- that offers useful, widely deployed products.

Supporting GitHub/MSFT or doing business with them doesn't have to come with an implied liking of ICE.

Just like one may dislike in-laws while loving a spouse. You don't have to divorce your spouse to prove your dislike of the inlaws

What good work is that, exactly?

Imprisoning US Citizens at random and trying their hardest to deport them seems to be a critical job of ICE.

https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-keeps-mistakenly-deport...

”Because if Compnay XYZ disagrees with your politics, you should punish them?”

If a company implicitly assists in putting little children in camps, then yes, it’s ok to “punish” them by not giving them your business.

“Just like one may dislike in-laws while loving a spouse. You don't have to divorce your spouse to prove your dislike of the inlaws”

Similarly, if my in-laws were racists and my wife didn’t think that there were anything wrong with that, then yes, divorce would be an option.

Except they didn't. What's the more likely story: that Microsoft entered a multi-year contract with the US government and policies around the border recently changed or that Microsoft was complicit in US government policy and therefore responsible for all of their actions by association? Such a flat way of looking at the three dimensional, shades-of-grey world we live in...

vote with your wallet.

isn’t that a property of free market capitalism that people promote?

America isn't based on free-market capitalism, it's cronyism at it's worse.

Take Kansas, for example. Israel buys a lot of weapons from us, and they commit war crimes against Arabs for us, so in thanks Kansas has made it illegal to boycott Israel.

Yet I cannot legally buy a musical instrument from Iran without fear of going to jail for violating federal sanctions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com