Comment by mmaunder
2 days ago
They've abandoned GitHub for Codeberg because GitHub has ICE as a customer. Codeberg uses Paypal which is a member of the ICE "Virtual Global Taskforce".
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/top-story-industry-partner...
There is a purity spiral that organizations can enter when they start doing this, which ends up with you shoving yourself into a cold dark corner of the internet and still not being completely detached from the badness because Cisco provides infrastructure for nearly every major weapons manufacturer and defense department globally.
> There is a purity spiral that organizations can enter when they start doing this
You are the one summoning that spiral by making a cheap gotcha wrt codeberg using Paypal.
The project apparently could and did move because the swith from github to codeberg wasn't that big of an impact, and because, while the new forge is not perfect, they feel the association is less severe. There is no "purity spiral" in that, just a pragmatic choice factoring in ethics.
Right, that seemed like a minor issue. There was also the minor issue of the increase of AI code PRs. Seems like the greater issue was a perception of deterioration of the platform (in their sites for years) and a reasonable path towards migration to another platform.
I think the MSFT ownership was pushing it along as well.
As I was reading your reply I was half convinced that it was not purity spiral but by the end, even you admit it’s an ethics thing so yeah it is pretty much purity spiral in place. Next they will leave the USA so that they won’t be associated with Trump.
Practicality matters. For example, even if you choose not to harm other living things, you cannot avoid stepping on and killing the occasional insect. Theoretically you might be able to do it, but you’ll stop having a life. But you can still do much in line with your beliefs, such as not killing animals for food.
If GitHub were the sole game in town, maybe (probably) they wouldn’t have switched. But it isn’t, and they found something which in their view is an acceptable replacement and less worse. So yeah, maybe they don’t ethically agree with everyone on every thing up the chain, but they apparently agree with them more. That matters. You take a stand where you are able to.
2 replies →
Simian,
You are making an ethical judgment when you say, in essence, that 'it is wrong for businesses (and non-profits) to attempt to act in an ethical manner, aligned with their mission statement'.
Making an ethical argument about the purposelessness and futility of ethics is... interesting to say the least. Please, consider stopping the internet today and instead spend time with a book on ethics that you think agrees with you sensibilities, and then look at this situation again.
2 replies →
There are multiple dozens of ethic schools and ideas and many of them are not about purity, but although viability and realistic expectations.
They are not going Categorical imperative here.
Having reasons based in ethics for doing something is not the same thing as a purity spiral.
Sounds great because Zig folks do seem to have a history with rejecting existing tooling for fussy reasons and building their own (really good) stuff.
If this forces them to rethink and build a better GitHub, can't wait.
I think there's a difference between providing services to X and a platform using a payment processor that collaborates with X.
You have a point, of course, but for many options, the best we can do is avoid the worst one as there's no perfect solution. I'm not saying that people should leave GitHub because of this, but I can see why some would and why they may pick a different, still not perfect, alternative instead of doing everything themselves.
There's nothing that compels you to "purity spiral" other than attempting to appease cynics who insist that all decisions must be completely binary and consistent, with no room for nuance or practicality, and that anything else is virtue signaling (which is somehow less defensible than enabling harm in the first place).
Reducing harm where feasible is still meaningful, and certainly better than no attempt at all.
That's a weird take-away from the post, where the only time ICE is mentioned is
> Putting aside GitHub’s relationship with ICE,
and the rest of the article provides technical reasons.
I feel like that's the whole point of the OP. I agree with the overall post but mentioning the ICE relationship seems to detract from the main point.
"I hate GitHub because X Y and Z features are bad" is a good reason to move away; "I hate GitHub because one of their thousands of enterprise customers does not align with my political views" is not, in my opinion.
For the record, I do not support ICE
People protesting ICE do not do so out of political concern, but humanitarian concern.
This seems like a minor nitpick as those two are intimately tangled up, but it matters to make the distinction. Standing up for others is not petty or self-serving and that's exactly what this sort of conflation can falsely imply.
7 replies →
I read it as "this was a big news story which we care about. You may know it, but it is not the primary reason. Here is the primary reason."
That's why the article put that reason aside
5 replies →
It does signal/imply that even if GitHub fixed every technical grievance tomorrow, Zig might still not come back.
[flagged]
5 replies →
>and the rest of the article provides technical reasons
The post ends with an indictment of capitalism.
Levels of indirection matter.
It seems like every organization in America is compromised in some way if you dig deep enough. Certainly you can find reasons for every big tech. There's still a balance to be struck though.
> It seems like every organization in America is compromised in some way if you dig deep enough.
I agree, and my view is that it goes much further. Quoting author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.".
If by dig you mean lazily sweep the front door while listening to dance music, then yes, I agree with you :)
Lmao absolutely right
when the shit finally starts flying there is no better place to be than low down, in a dark corner, with clean hands, looking nothing like a pig
[dead]
And with no money or users....
Levels of indirections matter.
You're mad because they left a vendor because they switched to a different vendor that you think is just as bad but also you're accusing them of starting an "inevitable purity spiral?" Which one is it?
It didn't seem to me that the person you answered to was "mad". Are you "mad" because of what they wrote?
It's not in conflict. They are pointing out that in this case their stated goal was not achieved so it's pointless.
It wasn't their stated goal, if you read linked article. The commenter got it wrong.
3 replies →
We’re all sick of these activist dorks