Should Open Source Sniff the Geopolitical Wind and Ban Itself in China and Russia?
takyon writes:
Should open source sniff the geopolitical wind and ban itself in China and Russia?
In 2022, information technology collided with geopolitics like never before. After Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, many nations decided that Vladimir Putin's regime and populace should be denied access to technology and even to services from the companies that make and wield it.
The USA, meanwhile, extended its restrictions on technology exports to China, citing its belligerence and repression of human rights.
[...] Which got me wondering: should open source contributors, and the organizations that facilitate their work, consider the positions their governments adopt? Should they be concerned that their efforts are being used for nefarious purposes? Might they be restrained from doing so? If they did want to limit distribution, how would that even work, license wise?
[...] The US government, however, is in no doubt that open source projects can and should be subject to its sanctions: in August 2022 the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added a tool called "Tornado Cash" to its Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons List (SDN list), a document that names entities with which US citizens are not permitted to do business.
[...] Open source advocate Coraline Ada Ehmke in 2020 delivered a speech titled: The Rising Ethical Storm In Open Source [webm].
In the speech, she opined: "Open source software today is playing a critical role in mass surveillance, anti-immigrant violence, protester suppression, racially biased policing and the development and use of cruel and inhumane weapons."
"And open source's complicity isn't a bug. It's a feature," she added. "This is actually by design. The open source definition allows for use of software for any purpose including specifically for evil."
Ada Ehmke went on to argue that open source developers cannot ignore their social responsibilities.
"I believe that as technologists we have a moral imperative to prevent our work from being used to harm others," she said.
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