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Comment by chomp | Hacker News Reader

MIT allows for the sublicensing to a more restrictive license. I have no idea how this would play out in court, but it looks like this is allowed. Pretty scummy move though for people who don't agree with this maintainers politics, and very concerning for ANY company who does anything that the maintainers could potentially disagree with. I'd avoid this project now, or use an older MIT-only commit.

EDIT: Thought about this on the way into work. The MIT license is only applied to code contributions once the code is "at rest" after merge. Permission is then granted for anyone "obtaining a copy" of the software. The repo maintainers claim that they are obtaining a copy of the software, but it looks like this isn't a copy, it's the original. I wonder if the contributors really do have legal recourse.

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Is it politics when human rights are violated? I don't think it's "politics" to oppose children separated from their parents.

> Is it politics when human rights are violated?

Absolutely. The most important politics.

Of course, using “politics” as a dismissal of importance is only a technique to protect the political status quo from a challenge one cannot otherwise defend against.

I think there's a legitimate desire in wanting to avoid "politics". It's a more specific instance of avoiding the trap described by 'perfect is the enemy of good'. Here's a good Tumblr post to which I linked earlier today in a similar HN thread:

- [The Grey Tribe — Activism, Accessibility, Setting Good...](https://the-grey-tribe.tumblr.com/post/175038067648/activism...)

All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing (or something), right? So some politics are a pinch or a slap but others are a hammer to the head. What's wrong with taking a stance about, for example, children in cages? This isn't just a protest over whether trickle down works or if taxes are too high/low.

Linkedin doesn't put children in cages, to the best of my knowledge. (I just randomly chose one company from the list). This list is random. There are companies which do business with federal government, some of them with ICE and law enforcement agencies. I'm paying federal income tax in the US and as every other citizen or LPR or even H1B visa holder fund ICE. I'm much more complicit in "putting children in cages" than Linkedin.

Complying with the law by paying taxes is less wrong than making a conscious choice to work for a company that provides services to ICE. You've been 'coerced' in to paying for ICE. LinkedIn haven't been coerced in to working with them.

You are saying that a company(!) can make a conscious(!) choice. That’s... well, a little bit too much.

"<company name>" is pretty much always a shorthand for "the people who choose to work for <company name>".

Next time you read something and think "The literal interpretation of this is ridiculous!", try to remember the Principle of Charity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

okay. so people who are citizens of the country <country name> are coerced to pay taxes and can not escape, but people who work for <company name> are not coerced to do their jobs. how so?

if you want to make an argument about consciousness then i can tell you that i absolutely consciously chose US as a country to live in, at the age of 41.

I fully support peoples' efforts to protest the current US administration, and any other administration.

I don't support usurping other people's speech to push protests. Copyleft is a wonderful thing, but we have to treat it with respect and play by the rules, else we risk diluting its legal potency.

If this was a single maintainer, or a project that got the rest of its developers to agree on the sublicense, then that would be great. However, this seems like a rogue repo maintainer (or a few of them) pushing a sublicense without their contributors agreeing. Sounds like a great way to turn a few of its contributors against them, but also sounds like a great way to violate their copyright.

I can agree about one maintainer vs many

CBP and ICE aren’t the same organization (and that’s even before getting into the distinction between HSI and ERO).

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