Childish or not childish, that is the question [LWN.net]

Childish or not childish, that is the question

Posted May 29, 2026 15:05 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
Parent article: Nesbitt: Protestware for coding agents

In the issue (https://github.com/jqwik-team/jqwik/issues/708#issuecomme...), the author notes

> Thus, one can argue that my ethical judgement is wrong or based on wrong assumptions. One could also argue that the measures I decided to take come with more down-side than up-side.

I'd call the (presumed) resulting decrease in users a downside, but that's in the eye of the beholder …

> Calling it childish, however, reveals IMO that the accuser has not seriously thought about the topic.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but one could argue with at least equal validity that I'm calling this childish *because* I have seriously thought about the topic.

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Childish or not childish, that is the question

Posted May 29, 2026 15:47 UTC (Fri) by jpeisach (subscriber, #181966) [Link] (3 responses)

It's childish. IMO, it's like a supply chain attack, in a way. Anyone who upgrades risked having their code changed without notice.

Childish or not childish, that is the question

Posted May 29, 2026 21:24 UTC (Fri) by cjwatson (subscriber, #7322) [Link] (2 responses)

If somebody is running code that will delete their stuff based on some text sent to the equivalent of a log file, then there is certainly risk involved but the greatest share of fault for it does not lie with the thing producing the log output. How many years have we spent fixing things like quoting and SQL injection bugs again?

Childish or not childish, that is the question

Posted May 29, 2026 21:34 UTC (Fri) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

I completely agree with you. I do not have much sympathy for protestware, but we should not build house of card either.

Childish or not childish, that is the question

Posted Jun 3, 2026 15:02 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> ... but the greatest share of fault for it does not lie with the thing producing the log output. How many years have we spent fixing things like quoting and SQL injection bugs again?

Well put.

Remember the movie WarGames where a child comes close to starting world war III. 100% "childish". Then what: you only admonish the child and move on, that's it? Ridiculous.

Let's please talk less about AI itself and a bit more about the permissions some people seem to grant to agents which are non-deterministic _by design_! AI is turning everything upside down but so far it has not obsoleted core security principles like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege .

Play with fire, get burned and don't come whining.