Bug of feature? [LWN.net]

Bug of feature?

Posted Jul 1, 2026 18:49 UTC (Wed) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172)
In reply to: Bug of feature? by evgeny
Parent article: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

Just to come back to the original disagreement here.

Your point is that in the current situation with an agressor doing an unprovoked and illegal attack. Somebody is doing a non-violent protest against this. And this non-violent protest is immoral because somebody in the aggressor nation might do violence to other people also in the agressor nation?
Do I have this right? Am I missing something?

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Bug of feature?

Posted Jul 1, 2026 20:08 UTC (Wed) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (1 responses)

Yep, that's a correct description. FYI, it's called collective punishment.

Bug of feature?

Posted Jul 1, 2026 20:54 UTC (Wed) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link]

Closer to the practice of "human shields" where a combatant deliberately places civilians near military targets(or moves the targets to where the civilans are) with the goal that the other side will be to humanitarian to drop any bombs. Not an exact match though. The equivalent would be for somebody to attack their own people in order to deter the enemy from attacking. Can't think of any instance where this has actually been tried...