Open Stack

Thank you all for your support.

It is a difficult and unfortunate state of affairs for Australia.

To me this highlights the need and strength of open source and I am proud
to be a part of this community.

Cheers,
Josh

On Sat, Dec 8, 2018 at 6:26 AM Michael McCune <msm at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 2:12 PM Jeremy Stanley <fungi at yuggoth.org> wrote:
> >
> > I've seen concern expressed in OpenStack and other free/libre open
> > source software communities over the recent passage of the
> > "Assistance and Access Bill 2018" by the Australian Parliament, and
> > just want to say that I appreciate the trust relationships we've all
> > built with our colleagues in many countries, including Australia. As
> > someone who doesn't particularly agree with many of the laws passed
> > in his own country, while I'm not going to encourage civil
> > disobedience, I do respect that many have shown preference for it
> > over compelled compromise of our community's established trust. I,
> > for one, don't wish to return to the "bad old days" of the crypto
> > wars, when major projects like OpenBSD refused contributions from
> > citizens and residents of the USA. It's bad for project morale,
> > excludes valuable input from people with a variety of perspectives,
> > and it's just downright inefficient too.
> >
> > The unfortunate truth is that anyone can be pressured at any time to
> > derail, backdoor or otherwise compromise software and systems. A new
> > law in one country doesn't change that. There are frequent news
> > stories about government agencies installing covert interfaces in
> > enterprise and consumer electronic devices alike through compulsion
> > of those involved in their programming, manufacture and
> > distribution. There's evidence of major standards bodies being
> > sidetracked and steered into unwittingly approving flawed
> > specifications which influential actors already know ways to
> > circumvent. Over the course of my career I've had to make personal
> > choices regarding installation and maintenance of legally-mandated
> > systems for spying on customers and users. All we can ever hope for
> > is that the relationships, systems and workflows we create are as
> > resistant as possible to these sorts of outside influences.
> >
> > Sure, ejecting people from important or sensitive positions within
> > the project based on their nationality might be a way to send a
> > message to a particular government, but the problem is bigger than
> > just one country and we'd really all need to be removed from our
> > posts for pretty much the same reasons. This robust community of
> > trust and acceptance we've fostered is not a risk, it's another line
> > of defense against erosion of our ideals and principles. Entrenched
> > concepts like open design and public review help to shield us from
> > these situations, and while there is no perfect protection it seems
> > to me that secret compromise under our many watchful eyes is a much
> > harder task than doing so behind the closed doors of proprietary
> > systems development.
> >
> > I really appreciate all the Australians who toil tirelessly to make
> > OpenStack better, and am proud to call them friends and colleagues.
> > I certainly don't want them to feel any need to resign from their
> > valuable work because they're worried the rest of us can no longer
> > trust them.
> > --
> > Jeremy Stanley
>
> ++
>
> well said. thank you for stating this so eloquently.
>
> peace o/
>
>
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