Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

RcouF1uZ4gsC

I think this sounds very reasonable for the kind of tool that is being produced.

Joel Spolsky has a great article on Big Macs vs Naked Chef

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/01/18/big-macs-vs-the-na...

In there, he talks about bespoke development vs mass market products, using McDonald's Big Macs vs a chef.

I think this provides a reasonable framework for approaching the present controversy.

For example, if McDonald's sold a Big Mac to <villain>, no one would bat an eye. However, if a chef went to work for <villain> there would be questions.

In the same way, if you are making a mass-market, generally useful tool, nobody should be excluded from using your tool. However, if you are doing custom, hi-touch development, then it might be more justified to screen your clients more.

I think Gitlab falls more into the mass-market, generally useful tool.

View on HN

I think that the point is McDonalds doesn't empower $villain to do $badstuff (that is, unless he is literally starving - in which case it would be inhumane to not give him food). However, technology empowers us to do things that would not be possible without it.

Sometimes, a company can not choose who uses their tools - e.g. if it is open source, you can hardly prevent $villain from using it. This is similar to a hammer: If $villain buys a hammer at a hardware store, the hardware store is not to blame if $villain smites people (unless maybe $villain is known to be villainous, but that's not the point right now).

On the other hand, if a known $villain comes to you, and asks you to help him commit $atrocities: You can make the decision not to help.

(So, to put it short: I think your analogy is bad).

I think the analogy still stands if the goods/service is a commodity. It's not like $evil_corp will just forego using version control if GitLab doesn't offer it; there are tons of version control offerings.

The interesting spot is where you're selling off-the-shelf goods/ services that nobody else can provide. I would say that it's morally wrong to provide those services in that case since it's directly attributable to you that $villain did $bad_thing because of your offering, even though you had little personal involvement in the interaction.

So if $villain goes to the hardware store, says he needs a good hammer since $villain is feeling like hitting $someone with it - then the hardware store should sell a hammer? After all, $villain may go to the competing hardware store and get a hammer there, or even build his own hammer.

If $villain has outright said he’s going to do that with it, then the $salesperson might still sell the $hammer if their personal safety is endangered. But they should also notify the $police so that $someone can be warned and $villain can be apprehended.

I think this $scenario is outside the $effective area of the $metaphor.

Here the metaphor breakdown for a very simple reason: crimes are crimes and not crimes are not crimes.

the villain part is irrelevant. If $hero/heroine wants to buy an hammer to smite $villain, the hardware store is in the same situation: protect your safety and call the police.

Gitlab falls into both - what you are referring to is the cloud offering, the self-serve one.

I doubt anyone (employee or otherwise) would bat an eye if ICE or the U.S. military would open a private repository on Gitlab cloud.

But Gitlab also does enterprise sales (I assume it does enterprise sales at least since they have enterprise software) - which usually means customized integration, bizdev and account management. More often than not organizations like Gitlab approach the companies to sell to them. In the case of government agencies they often can't even approach legally, Gitlab would have to apply into an open bid contract.

The analogy avoids the difference that food is a consumable that everyone, from minimum-wage workers and billionaires, uses and getting better quality food doesn’t make you orders of magnitude more powerful than everyone else. Computer technology is different, it enhances the differences between people. An artist working for a villain to make propaganda posters doesn’t raise as many protests as Facebook being open to villains because through Facebook your campaign can get orders of magnitude stronger.

If Happy Meals came with an assault riflevpeopke would probably be more angry at McDonalds for catering to bad guys.

It's tough to make appropriate analogies (which are hyperbolic) without the topic being blasphemous. But companies like IBM, Hugo Boss, and Volkswagen still get talked about as supporting Nazis during WWII. BASF even has a page about their involvement manufacturing Zyklon B gas [1]. I do think you have a point of bespoke vs mass market, but I still think there's a line. Even in the bespoke category you hear about celebrities taking large paychecks to attend parties for questionable people and often get defended because they're not formally supporting them but are draining their wealth by some amount.

I think the difference might be a commodity relationship; nobody would question <villain> using Windows, but a business account with Microsoft would. Even with <villain> using Windows, if it was a prominent and ongoing thing I imagine people would expect Microsoft to intervene.

[1] https://www.basf.com/global/en/who-we-are/history/chronology...

I am not sure why you include Volkswagen in this list. VW was founded by Nazis, it would be strange if it did not support them during WW2. On the other hand IBM had a choice.

It was mentioned more as long-term baggage because of the association. I honestly have no idea if relationships, like IBM's, were frowned upon at the time. I believe most of those close relationships were clandestine at the time and only publicized later. The others, being German companies, even if they weren't founded by Nazis probably would no longer exist if they hadn't cooperated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com