Activists from the feminist and LGBTQIA+ communities have been trying to force the Linux project to join the Contributor Covenant [...] an agreement to implement a special Code of Conduct (frequently CoC from now on) aimed at changing the predominantly white, straight, and male face of programming. CC’s Code of Conduct is controversial particularly because it allows anyone to be banned from contributing code for any reason, usually with no mechanism for oversight or accountability.
On September 16 the pro-CoC side got their wish—Linux had officially committed to implementing and obeying the CC Code of Conduct—and they immediately set about using it to remove top Linux coders. Sage Sharp, who describes theyself as a “diversity & inclusion consultant, hufflepuff, non-binary agender trans masculine” and has 7k followers, cites GeekFeminismWiki and targets Google’s Theo Ts’o with accusations of being a rape apologist.
Opposition to CC’s Code of Conduct has generated thousands of posts on 4chan’s technology board alone.
This has prompted a growing discussion of rescinding GPL license grants from code contributions, in protest.
Specifically, in apparent retaliation, members of the Linux kernel developer community (by way of the Linux Kernel Mailing List) are now considering en masse rescinding of their grants of GPL licenses for their code contributions, in protest. Developers who have been banned as a result of the CoC are being encouraged to do the same.
This recent development may have been stimulated in part by founder Linus Torvalds' recent announcement that he will be stepping away from Linux kernel development, at least for the near term. Apparently, Linus was under increasing pressure from the CoC activists for his infamous impatience with—and boorish verbal abuse towards—submitters of code that does not meet his exacting standards for inclusion in the kernel.
In response, perennial Linux critic and agitator Richard Stallman (RMS) has stated he intends to decline comment on this internal Linux community controversy.
A major challenge in keeping elections safe from cyberattacks, said Homeland Security's Christopher Krebs, has less to do with technology than with the way in which elections are held in the United States. Elections, even those held for the office of the president and Congress, are run by state and local governments, not by the federal government. That means each state and, frequently, individual localities have their own way to hold elections, implementing different technologies—from paper ballots to multiple kinds of voting machines, including direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines, some of which do not produce a paper trail and therefore are vulnerable to being hacked.
Krebs put the conundrum this way: “It is the responsibility of the states to administer elections. It is the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security and the federal government to provide for the national security and national defense of this country. There is a discussion that needs to happen between those two things.”
The cost of feathers has risen, even down is up!
