I have noticed that in addition to this perspective there are scores of developers who espouse the idea that “we just create, what people do with our work isn’t our business.”
I understand the utilitarian qualities of the argument, but I submit that there’s a reason that capital-E-Engineering credentials typically require some kind of education in ethics-in-design.
I agree that we're responsible for what we create. I would also submit that corporate culture has been under intense selective pressure over the past 10 years to get good at creating compliance with ethically problematic software projects. I'm curious how many people left Google because they dropped the "don't be evil" motto.
There's lots of carrots (compensation, high quality desk jobs) and sticks (promotion structures, threat of offshoring). The really annoying and egregious aspects of corporate speak are easy targets for ire and take the heat, while the subtle euphemisms make the actual questionable projects easier to live with day to day.
capital E engineers have numerous other laws that protect their position.
Civil/mechanical/electrical have countless codes that must be followed with the force of law.
When we say we want engineering standards for software developers we are also asking for standards and codes to be applied to software and all that entails.
I'm not saying this is good or bad, just to consider the ramifications of this at all levels.
This has been 'being considered' my entire career, so since the 90s at least. I have finally determined all the libertarian style 'thinking' over action is just stalling. They have stalled to the point that tech now smells bad to the majority of people, I wonder what comes when OUTSIDE influences decide enough. I feel like tech's 'self determinism' runways is running out and I'm kinda happy for it. Couldn't happen to a more deserving industry.
I have administered a number of Mattermost environments going back to 2019.
It absolutely is not a mistake. They’ve been slowly introducing limits to the Team Edition and screwing with the licensing in obtuse ways to drive revenue. It is something that has executive force behind it.
I have migrated everyone/everything to Zulip, which it turns out has a far better user experience and a much cleaner model. The admin tools are much more mature (and actually function reliably). I have not gotten any complaints.
And I also don’t have to deal with things like on-premise to managed cloud back to on-prem migrations due to ridiculous licensing and pricing instability.
A lot of people in tech today think politics is something “other” to tech. It’s the same kind of “we just make the thing, how it’s used, by whom, for what, and why is someone else’s problem” that pervades the likes of Meta Platforms Inc. With today’s technology industry, thinking like that is naive at best.
The worst of the worst tech bros and their earlier investors (like Marc A) created and have tried hard to spread that idea around. The goal is to keep politics out of the tech workforce so that they can meddle in politics without fighting multiple fronts.
You’re not supposed to say that though, for that’s saying the quiet part out loud. The sad thing is how many people buy it hook line and sinker.
Which isn’t to say you’re somehow wrong for wanting a safe space away from political discourse. It’s important not to forget how empowering silence and ignorance are to causes that typically undermine the rights of the populace.
> Which isn’t to say you’re somehow wrong for wanting a safe space away from political discourse. It’s important not to forget how empowering silence and ignorance are to causes that typically undermine the rights of the populace.
I feel like these two statements nearly contradict each other. Maybe the second sentence should have begun with "However,..."
Either way, I totally agree that apathy is enemy #1 and policies that enable censorship for any reason are enemy #2.
> I only say that because I've noticed that it's most often people who have the "right" social characteristics that get the most aggressive responses. The people criticizing her wouldn't expect a white male to do anything else[...]”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard this idea communicated in this kind of framing. I think it makes your point quite striking.
Many people do inaccurately equate IaC with “cloud native” or cloud “only”.
It can certainly fit into a particular cloud platform’s offerings. But it’s by no means exclusive to the cloud.
My entire stack can be picked up and redeployed anywhere where I can run Ubuntu or Debian. My “most external” dependencies are domain name registries and an S3-API compatible object store, and even that one is technically optional, if given a few days of lead time.
Just wait until you end up spending $100,000 for an awful implantation from a partner who pretends to understand your business need but delivers something that doesn’t work.
But perhaps I’m bitter from prior Salesforce experiences.
Having worked in security on a fairly high profile, highly visible, largely used product — one of the fundamental decisions that paid off very well was intentionally including mechanisms to prevent issues with other businesses (like Google) from impacting user abilities for us.
Not having email change functionality would have been a huge usability, security, and customer service nightmare for us.
Regardless of anything else, not enabling users to change their email address effectively binds them to business with a single organization. It also ignores the fact that people can and do change emails for entirely opaque reasons from the banal to the authentically emergent.
ATO attacks are a fig leaf for such concerns, because you, as an organization, always have the power to revert a change to contact information. You just need to establish a process. It takes some consideration and table topping, but it’s not rocket science for a competent team.
I have (almost completely) moved my business from GitHub to Forgejo as well. I’m deploying an instance at home as well.
It’s shocking how bloated and slow GitHub is even for basic actions when you compare it to Forgejo running just your own stuff.
Bonus: if you can manage to reliably backup a database and a filesystem, you can then backup your forge. Outside GH Enterprise there is still no restorable backup option inside GitHub.
How is it for usability (other than speed) compared to GH. Given that most/all devs are already comfortable in GH. What are the downsides in your experience?
There are minor clumsy points here and there in the UI, but nothing major and nothing that’s a stumbling block.
It’s hard to paint a perfect comparison without using the same features but all the basics are there and working.
The version we have in use doesn’t support a gist functionality but the last I looked there was a PR for a similar feature with a less-GH—lawyer-baiting name. That was the biggest thing for me.
“We had to re-state our financials and amend our taxes because the AI screwed up and we didn’t have anyone who understood accounting look at our books.”
I understand the utilitarian qualities of the argument, but I submit that there’s a reason that capital-E-Engineering credentials typically require some kind of education in ethics-in-design.
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