• charles@lemmy.computer.surgery
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    2 years ago

    Programming code is pure logic and has no opinions.

    Can you explain to me how, for example, Stuxnet is apolitical?

    All they do is permit/restrict specific rights to attribute, use, modify, reproduce, distribute, etc. the code.

    Can you explain how these restrictions/permissions are apolitical?

    • pitninja@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      Stuxnet itself doesn’t care whose centrifuges it destroys (in fact it doesn’t care or have an awareness that it’s destroying anything at all), it does what it’s programmed to do and is deployed to do by people with political goals. It’s not the same thing as Stuxnet itself being political.

      I did say that I could conceive of one way that software licenses could be considered somewhat political if one’s politics reject the validity of intellectual property. But then again, the software licenses are also not the code itself. If one doesn’t believe in the concept of intellectual property, one is free to accept whatever risk is involved with breaking the license and using it anyway. The software doesn’t care who’s running it.

      I know this is all somewhat pedantic, but I pretty firmly believe no software is inherently political. At least maybe not until we have a computer system that achieves some form of sentience and its operating instructions are subject to its own will.