this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
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[–] recursive_recursion@piefed.ca 31 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

For anyone out of the loop JiaTan was a malicious user known for the XZ Utils attack which almost caused catastrophic damages across the whole internet.

It's difficult to estimate just what the impact would have been had the attack not been caught by Andres Freund who happened to stumble across the attack while looking into performance issues.

Whoever JiaTan is, you can kindly deport yourself off the face of the planet. Thanks.


XZ Exploit - Computerphile

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Also the proposed CoC is the CIA's Sabotage Field Manual

[–] fonji@sopuli.xyz 4 points 6 days ago

With an extra chapter, describing how to corrupt open source projects

[–] Mad_Punda@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago

Is that their GitHub account or someone using the same name? If the former, how do they still have a GitHub account?

[–] tux0r@feddit.org 21 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Regardless of the (undoubtedly funny) nature of that very document, I wish that “codes of conduct” weren’t such a big thing. “Don’t be a dick” is the only rule one would ever need, and there is not much bureaucracy needed to enforce that.

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Depending on the size of the repo and number of contributors.

Small ones, yeah probably a simple "don't be an asshole" is fine.

It gets harder when your contributors start scaling way up and go international. What might be customary in one culture may be considered rude by another. Allowing for people to be different while also maintaining decorum is important.

I worked on a FOSS project that was very small (~5 devs) and I really had to get used to how upfront the German devs were. We knew each other enough but still.

[–] zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 week ago

That's great until someone says "I'm not being a dick, I'm just telling the truth" while being a dick. This is especially easy to pull off against minorities, because the aforementioned "truth" can be based on stereotypes or inaccurate media portrayals.

[–] firelizzard@programming.dev 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not everyone has high emotional intelligence. There’s a fair bit of overlap between programmers/engineers and people on the spectrum. A good code of conduct effectively spells out how to avoid being a dick.

[–] tux0r@feddit.org 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Being autistic, I am perfectly comfortable with “don’t be a dick”.

[–] firelizzard@programming.dev 5 points 6 days ago

What you’re comfortable with as a contributor is irrelevant. What matters is whether you understand the maintainers’ intent and whether the people you’re interacting with think you’re acting like a dick. Someone who’s bad at understanding how other people feel will likely be bad at predicting what behavior will come across as being a dick.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago

Rather I think what we should wish for is that they be unnecessary, or at least it be unnecessary for them to be as fleshed out as they are. I've found a lot of FOSS communities to be quite casually misogynistic—you could just say to ignore it and focus on the code, but it most certainly makes it harder to focus on the code when the community is subtly hostile towards you. If you think CoCs are unnecessary even for large projects then it's probably because you're not one of the demographics affected by the problems that led to CoCs proliferating. Once a project has enough of a community around it I think a CoC is reasonable enough in the current culture.

[–] exu@feditown.com 9 points 1 week ago

In an ideal world they wouldn't be needed, but we're far from ideal and it definitely helps moderate a community by pointing to specific rules over "just be nice"

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] tux0r@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sounds like a threat though.

[–] IncogCyberspaceUser@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Just like "reading the rules" for each community. Stop wasting everyone's time with boilerplate bullshit that shouldn't need to be said, like treat people with respect, no spamming, etc. If there are community specific rules to adhere to, put them front and center.

[–] MostlyBlindGamer@rblind.com 5 points 1 week ago

I would have thought describing images you post to spaces for blind people would be common sense, but do find my self enforcing rules on that all the time. Rules that are front and center. A real code of conduct formalizes rules, allows for consistent enforcement, and informs minority populations of the protections they may expect. If you don’t need that, I’m happy for you, but you may want to explore the nature of that privilege. Whether or not that’s necessary in the context of FOSS projects depends on multiple factors. It’s certainly not necessarily if you want to be a benevolent dictator for life.

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I don't mind CoC's that much, but I do really dislike Discord server rules that all have the same 10 completely obvious points and then make you search for a password in the rules. I don't see how having to look for a password in 3 pages of rules that says doxing is bad and being nice is good is going to filter out anyone but the impatient.