Authoritarians pursuing military conquest and territorial expansion hasn’t been “the norm” for the past few decades. The world is changing with Ukraine and Hong Kong, and soon Taiwan.
Not saying these examples in the article are all models of how we should design things in the future. But the world is changing and norms will change alongside it.
Guy murders your kids anyone can murder anyone from now on, no big deal
Barring, you know, the current suspect.
According to whom? According to Putin, they invaded ukraine to "denazify it". On the other hand "US invades country for oil" is a pretty popular narrative on the internet.
Even if you want to support Ukraine, some things have certainly gone to far, like discriminating against anybody and anything with Russian origins (professor being told to not teach Dostojewski for example, as posted on HN a couple of days ago).
And demonstrating the international monetary system is not reliable at all, not sure it is a good thing.
That's the norm now, right?
(I should mention that Russia already does tolerate destructive hacking against the West, and has been doing so for a while - that doesn’t change my opinion, but it would be unfair not to note.)
On the one hand, I cannot deny the right of Iraqis to defend their territory from a criminal war of aggression. But do I need to stand up for what he is doing? Should I put money in his paypal account? Do I have to agree that all soldiers are legitimate targets, even when there is no military objective other than "exacting a cost?" Can I ask who pays that cost? Is it the war criminal George Bush, or just some grieving American family somewhere? If twice as many families have sons, brothers, fathers taken from them, would a future George Bush think twice?
Back to the topic at hand. Of course we can understand the motivation but at the same time the question for us is whether we in the open source community want to preserve software as a humanitarian sphere which is not necessarily neutral in conflict but, at least, part of civil society and not involved in or drawn into cyber-warfare as far as possible.
That fact that hostilities have broken out does not mean that everyone has to camp at one ridiculous extreme (kill them all) or another (total capitulation) and it's perfectly reasonable to try to find a path between them which is consistent with our own moral and ethical code.