A Cautionary Tale of Open Source Social Technologies 330
eweekhickins writes "The 'country' drop-down menu on one organization's donations pages omits Israel as a country and includes 'Palestine.' Among other things, this means that Israelis can't donate to the organization from these pages; it also presents the risk of a PR nightmare for the organization. This EWeek story cautions that while basic Web 2.0 technologies combined with open source can be incredibly powerful and productive, they can also lead to disastrous results for an organization that isn't paying close enough attention."
Interesting story... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, there was this time the mainland Chinese government and the one on the island were in bitter competition as to whose flag would be displayed in Red Hat Linux. I forget who won, and why displaying both wasn't a valid compromise. (Probably neither side wanted to compromise.)
Re:Interesting story... (Score:4, Interesting)
There was also the use of the UN flag under the Gnome or Tango icon sets (forgot which one) as a "locale settings" icon. It angered non-UN countries/users. Despite it having nothing to do with the UN at all, they felt slighted.
Moe's Tavern (Score:2)
Hello, I'm looking for a Mrs Schluss, first name Anne.
Re:Interesting story... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While I sympathize with the Israelis in this case, it's open source, right?
Fork it and add your country. Then make it better software than it was originally. Hit them where it hurts.
Re:Interesting story... (Score:5, Insightful)
The inital list was "feature" complete.
Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Russia and a couple of other countries were ommited via the credit card processor.
( professedly due to exessive fraud.)
The person from israel who could not donate
found instant and easy issue with Palestine
being included.
The author blew it up for clicks or a donation
from Bill of Borg.
End of story.
G!
MACC
Re:Interesting story... (Score:5, Funny)
"The CIA world factbook is one of the best places to get geographical data on countries."
Yes, you are right. You can trust them because they are not controlled by any government.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Contested territory (Score:3, Insightful)
Does the UN objectively determine what is contested territory? How do you determine something like that objectively? If England were to claim Normandy is English (as it has been in the past), would it make it contested territory?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Looks outside window at UK society. I don't see why you think jewish people should be any more immune than the rest of us...
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Bad, bad title (Score:2, Insightful)
So, the next time we write code using FLOSS libraries, we must read every line of code?
How productive is that?
Where should I stop - 1000 lines, 10k, 100k, or all of the millions of the Linux kernel?
From the Big Fucking Manual:
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe2 [catb.org]
Note, however, that "No problem should ever have to be solved twice." does not imply that you have to consider all existing solutions sacred, or that there is only one right solution to any given problem. Often, we learn a lot about the problem that we didn't know before by studying the first cut at a solution. It's OK, and often necessary, to decide that we can do better.
Bah! stop the discrimination, you lofty fscking overlords.
Umm..... "You know who you are."
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bah! stop the discrimination, you lofty fscking overlords.
The discrimination will stop after the KH-55's make landfall
across most of the modern world.
But at that point it won't really matter will it ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-55 [wikipedia.org]
They are new and improved to with tech from the F117 shot
down during the Bosnian-Serbian War during the Clinton Era.
Makes me want to watch Dr. Strangelove, lol.
Re: (Score:2)
Israelis as a different race (Score:2)
Hmm, no. You can't normally join races. You can convert to Judaism.
Besides, "Israeli" isn't a proper subset of "Jewish". There are plenty of Israeli citizens who are Arabs.
Palestinian Territories, Occupied...Iraq, Occupied (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Palestinian Territories, Occupied...Iraq, Occup (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Interesting story... (Score:5, Interesting)
25+ years back, I somehow got "volunteered" into putting up the flags for the World Youth Baseball Tournament when it was held in the town where I lived at the time.
There were about 15 or 20 countries involved and the organizers handed me a big box of flags, one for each country, and said "Here you go", and that was the extent of the direction that I received.
Each flag had a little tag pinned to it saying what country it was for, so I just put them up in alphabetical order, more-or-less the way that they came out of the box.
This almost caused an international diplomatic incident!
Apparently you can't put country X's flag up next to country Y because they are fighting about something, or Y doesn't recognize X, or you-name-it. Phones started to ring, including mine, and I had to rush out again and re-arrange the flags to suit the diplomats.
I ultimately put those flags up in four different orders over the course of the week or so that the baseball tournament was on, because the arrangements never suited everyone. I only had the "diplomatic incident" occur once, on that first day, but I spent hours on the phone with various mucky-mucks smoothing ruffled feathers. And re-arranged those damn flags almost every day afterward.
Yes Minister (Score:2)
Re:Yes Minister (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting story... (Score:5, Informative)
Do you really think Israel's children are in a situation where they require the assistance of UNICEF?
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks, Phozz. However, you will notice that one can click on the European part of the map and on the resulting page appear France and Germany. One could also click on the N.American part of the map and on the resulting page appears the United States. However, when clicking on the Middle Eastern part of the map, Israel does not appear on the resulting page.
Maybe they should reconfigure the image map to have Israel point to the page on which she appears.
Do you really think Israel's children are in a situation where they require the assistance of UNICEF?
Are French, German, or United Statesian children in a
Re:Interesting story... (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, please. Look at the size of the map! There is no way they could make Israel clickable -- it would be, what, a single pixel wide at best?
Seriously, get some perspective here. You are totally overreacting to a non-issue. Information on Israel is easy to find simply by using the alphabetical list of countries that is prominently located directly below the map, and is what most people are likely to use if they are looking for a specific country by name. And, back on UNICEF's front page, you will observe on the far right a block of flags showing countries involved with UNICEF. You will observe the flag of Israel among them, exactly the same size as all the others, in alphabetical order as you'd expect.
There is no global anti-Semitic conspiracy at work in UNICEF.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, it gets better. Look at their map -- Cuba doesn't appear on it at all! What sinister motive is driving UNICEF to deny the existence of an entire island? I bet it's because that's where Guantanamo Bay is located! Yes, it all makes sense now...
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Are French, German, or United Statesian children in a situation where they require the assistance of UNICEF?
G!
MACC
Not just Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why EWeek is specifically highlighting open source software. I don't see how closed source software is immune from this concern.
If you're a nonprofit, you need to look at all the software you're, open-source or not. If you're using software you need to examine it to make sure its not sending a message at odds with your organization.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It actually makes a bit of sense, as FOSS projects are more likely to make choices that a business might recoil from.
More likely though, EWeek is just being afraid of the new and different.
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If you RTFA, you'll find that the reasoning behind the decision is one you're more likely to find from businesses than from FOSS projects. Israel was among the list of countries from which they were receiving overly many fraudulent donations.
So an organization that is developing a particular open source -- or even closed source -- software tool might make business decisions that are incompatible with your own?
Shocking! Shocking, I tell you!
Re: (Score:2)
Fradulant donations?! Man - it was just someone trying hard to overturn the Shylock stereotype of Jews!
Re: (Score:2)
Israel was among the list of countries from which they were receiving overly many fraudulent donations.
Nowhere in the article does it say that they were actually getting "fraudulend donations". I
If the "e-commerce experts" mentioned in the article claim that the rate of fraud in transactions from a certain country is higher for commerce applications I would tend to believe them. But how is thos relevant to donations? Donating with stolen credit cards is not exactly a common criminal activity, for obvious reasons.
Case in point (Score:5, Interesting)
Even Microsoft can get hit by this. [msdn.com]
Re:Not just Open Source (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. One of the fringe benefits of introducing FOSS to the tiny Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu was when I showed local geeks that they could actually choose the 'Pacific/Efate' time zone setting. (Efate is the island where the capital of Vanuatu is located.)
Windows and Mac OS X both display either Noumea (capital of New Caledonia to the South) or Honiara (capital of the Solomon Islands to the North). This creates a very real sense that, as far as the Big Boys are concerned, we don't exist. Worse still, Mac OS X thinks that Vanuatu uses Daylight Savings Time, like the adjacent time zone in Australia. My clock has been off by an hour for months now.
That may not sound like much, but believe me, that tiny little bit of tzdata goodness has created the impression among many local geeks that this software is designed not just for office drones in some distant country, but with them in mind.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's be honest with ourselves here. It is.
At least if by "office drones" you meant "basement lurkers" anyways ;)
Re: (Score:2)
> If you're a nonprofit, you need to look at all the software you're, open-source or not.
I am NOT software of ANY kind (including non-profit, open-source, or 'not').
I'm a human being, dammit!
"Get your hands off me, you filthy software!".
Possibly. (Score:3, Interesting)
It would depend upon how large the closed-source company was.
If it was one guy selling the software he wrote, you'd probably see the same implementations of his political views (provided that there was a way to do so).
With Open Source, the one guy can write his political opinions into his code ... which get grabbed and used in a different project ... which ends up in a third project ... etc.
And unless you have a similar political bent,
Re:Possibly. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Possibly. (Score:4, Informative)
It would depend upon how large the closed-source company was.
What, like how Executive Software/Diskeeper refuses to sell their product or provide support to pharmaceutical companies because their CEO is a Scientologist?
That's the Diskeeper which is included in Windows in a reduced form as the defragmentation utility, in case you're not familiar with how big its market is.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
woosh!
Only dumb shit here is you! lol
Reminds me of Cosovo/Kosovo (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems like people will always look for reasons to hate each other. Can't just make a suggestion; this is something we can HATE over!
So What? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really, its a decent immediate decision for a temporary duration (over the weekend maybe), but what they should have done is made the sign-up/donation system to better to weed out bogus donations.
Just because Israel may not support them as much as a different country, it may not mean that the per-capita support wasn't equal.
I'm sure they get a lot of bogus donations from the US, UK, etc, but they also get a lot of legitimate ones as well. So they were just willing to sacrifice Israel as a whole, and thu
You mean that clicking "Accept Defaults" is risky? (Score:3, Insightful)
I, for one, am shocked, shocked that a program might not have sane defaults for every situation, particularly if "sane" is not terribly well defined.
As for the payment processing thing, various sorts of black holing of countries based on their dubious reputations is not an "open source" thing, or a "closed source" thing or, for that matter, anything to do with code at all. It is wholly a matter of CYA and cost/benefit calculations, no matter what software the vendor doing the deciding is running. An interesting anecdote about the complexity of doing stuff that seems simple; but barely source related at all.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I am shocked, shocked at the shocking state of affairs when so many are shocked at the shockingly common shocking contents of this shocking article.
Bullshit (Score:2)
This has nothing to do with Open Source. It didn't occur to these doofuses that it just might be a good idea to systematically _test_ their Web site?
so fix it already! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's Open Source... How hard can that be! I mean really. it might be 2 lines of code more, or (if done right) just another database entry.
It isn't rocket surgery people. that's the strength of OSS, you *can* fix it without having to beg for a fix from your vendor!
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Overreacting (Score:5, Informative)
If my reading of the article is right, it goes something like this:
There's a Ruby API that lists countries and regions. One of these is "Palestinian Territory -- Occupied". Someone decided to shorten this to "Palestine".
Meanwhile, someone at Facebook decided that a certain list of countries contains high risk of credit card fraud. One of those countries is Israel. So they won't take your credit card if you live there, probably because they've run into fraudsters operating in that country and they don't want to risk it. Just like they won't take a credit card from Nigeria, to name one.
So, someone sees this and concludes the worst. The Facebook application is anti-semitic. Overreact much?
Honestly, I think people are a bit too touchy about Israel/Palestine. Sure, it's a touchy subject, but a simple set of unrelated mistakes and people assume you're part of a vast conspiracy to destroy their nation? I think we as a society owe it to ourselves to be more careful about such accusations, and not simply react.
Worst summary ever (Score:4, Interesting)
Really, what article is the summary about? I was afraid that after reading all that gibberish it could lead me to a rick roll...
So, even assuming the story is real, quite it could actually not be real, it has nothing to do with open source, I'll tag it FUD, thanks.Web 2.0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Can't understand where is the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
- Palestine appearing in the countries list because is a (valid?) short form of "Palestinian Territory, Occupied". If isnt valid is not Web 2.0 or open source fault, was a developer decision that could had been taken in any part of the chain (i agree that the chain in this particular case is pretty long).
- Israel not listed because, as with other 14 countries, their IP space is very used by fraudsters. Maybe with spam is easier to understand... If Israel were responsible for 80% of world spam, and because of that becomes filtered from a lots of mail servers (lots of countries used to be widely filtered because of spam coming from them), that would be anti-semitism of those servers admins? Maybe a bit worse, if an israeli ISP a lot of spam is being sent, and it ends a rbl (if behaves badly that way, will end in most), would be antisemitism too?
Is a nice spin to blame web 2.0 and open source for things that dont implies them to happen. Next big hurricane, if being tracked by web 2.0 sites and with open source software, will be blamed to them too.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, that would be anti-semitism by the new definition.
An anti-semite used to be someone who hated Jews. Now an anti-semite is someone hated BY Jews. YOu don't need to look much farther past Jimmy Carter to see what I mean.
Carter, who is hardly a skinhead, was recently lambasted for being an "anti-semite" for suggesting that maybe, just maybe, its not OK to use tanks to fight kids with rocks.
Apparently, if you don't support the murder of palestinians, you must clearly support the murder of Jews. If you'r
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Israel uses tanks and bulldozers to demolish Palestinian houses, often with children inside who are too young to throw rocks.
Don't be moronic. Israel is THE definition of an apartheid state. Are Palestinians allowed to vote? No. Are they allowed to travel? No ( sure, then can wait for days to go through 'checkpoints', but in effect, no, they can't travel ). Are Palestinian refugees allowed to return home? No. Are Palestinians
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Israel makes every effort to get the inhabitants out. The claim that Israel often demolishes houses with children inside is a lie.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh please! You 'make every effort to get the inhabitants out' before destroying their homes. And then you wonder why people want to wipe you off the face of the planet! How about NOT bulldozing their homes in the first place? Is that too much to ask?
What exactly does that have to do with the fact that I pointed out that you're clai
Re: (Score:2)
First, note that you have conceded that Israel does not intentionally bulldoze children. Instead of replying to my refutation of your claim, you move to a different issue, namely the reason for demolishing some Palestinian homes in the first place. The homes that are demolished are buildings used by terrorists or buildings illegally constructed.
Second, if you can't see the relevance of the sources I quoted, that's your problem, not anyone else's. It should be obvious. You claim that it is a lie that Ara
Re:Can't understand where is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
"Every effort"? Does making "every effort" to minimise the effects of a horrific act somehow mean said act is OK? There are many, many cases of the IDF killing innocent people, such as Rachel Corrie (the peace activist, sorry, vicious anti-semite terrorist). For not wanting to do it they seem to do it an awful lot.
Being able to vote and run for office doesn't mean anything when you can't travel to the next town because the checkpoint, for no apparent reason, either never opens or turns you around at the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Israel uses tanks and bulldozers to demolish Palestinian houses, often with children inside who are too young to throw rocks.
Bullshit. Israeli demolitions are announced in advance and are done by bulldozers which are fairly slow moving and need to come in from Israeli lands, which gives everyone involved considerable time to evacuate. If they wanted to destroy a house with everyone in it, they would have used missiles.
The problem is that all of that is a lie. I don't know why you Zionists bother spreading this BS - anyone actually interested in the conflict already knows the horrors that you are inflicting upon the Palestinians. The only thing you're doing is further entrenching anti-semitic views, by inflaming anger against you.
Obviously you've chosen what you want to believe, disregarding the facts. There are Arabs, Muslims serving in Israeli government. There are Arab citizens there that have all the rights of Jewish citizens. The
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Then who exactly voted for Muhammad Abbas? Who voted for the Hamas in Gaza? I'm sure those were the Jews. Yes, those sneaky, evil Jews...
Sure, technically they can vote - for a "government" that has little to no power, except what it can strong-arm for itself via the use of militias. In terms of the actual government that controls their country, no vote whatsoever. (Actually, one thing that really scares some of the the Israelis is that one day, the Palestinians will stop asking for independence and start asking for a vote; this is unlikely to happen.)
If the Palestinians didn't use their right to travel to transport weapons, munitions and explosives, I can promise you the checkpoints would gradually disappear. Unfortunately each time a checkpoint is removed, yet another suicide belt or other weapon is discovered, proving the need for these checkpoints.
I wouldn't bet on it. In any case, the way the Israeli government uses checkpoint closure
Re:Historical Factoid (Score:2)
Free will and determination. (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone that tries to tell us that we "can't" do business like this needs to join the free world.
And to be blunt, it is really only a PR nightmare for American companies.
No trolling in submissions please (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
They spend a lot of time discouraging recognition of Palestine as an independent state and at every opportunity. Re-read the article again with that in mind. Palestine certainly IS a country and is recognized by many others around the world. The UN reference is a red herring. Israel occupies Palestine with military force.
Take note that it was a pro-Israel pressure group that started this 'controversy' with immediate threats to the developers.
Re: (Score:2)
Some moron modded you down as flamebait. I guess some people really hate the truth. The idiot is probably part of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which has explicitly stated, "the truth is not a defense" when conducting one of their kangaroo trials because someone's feelings are hurt.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's a ridiculous lie.
It has a democracy, and one in far less disasterous state than Israel's ( or the US's for that matter ).
Yes that's because of the horrible corruption of our governments. If you ask ordinary people, they all consider Palestine a country under siege.
What a dumb conclusion... (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder how many times they've bitched about the omission of Palestine... gee, none? What a surprise. Hypocrites.
I'm a little bitchy, but one can't play the anti-semitic card every time Israel is omitted/criticised. It devalues everybody.
Re: (Score:2)
Burma for one is recognised as well under the name Myanmar and their leader is a corrupt mass murderer of his own people and lets not forget Mugabe.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Israel, like Palestine, is recognised by some countries and not by others. If Israel happens to be recognised by your country and Palestine not, that doesn't make it more a country than Palestine.
The status of a country is hardly an objective fact. Consider Taiwan - country or not? As above, it depends who you ask.
Nothing new for Proprietary or FOSS (Score:3, Informative)
People leave things out, forget, or usually just plain didn't know better. Similar things were said for some commercial product a few years back (I think it was Windows or Office, but I could not recall). It was either a language or time zone setting that neglected the country.
This is like all the software bug news articles - yes, there are bugs in software, but you know what, people actually FIX them, they don't STAY that way there are new versions, etc. It's all just some techno-political FUD mudslinging to influence the ignorant.
Article shows bias (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
Israel was omitted because of fraud from that country, which seems like a good reason. Palestine was probably included in the list because it is recognised by the UN, and is included in ISO 3166-1 [wikipedia.org]. If you were to delete Palestine from the list, it would certainly be a very loaded political statement, but its inclusion is not.
Re: (Score:2)
Well said.
Most of us are willing to accept this hateful rhetoric, and there's always a few who do find the answers. Good Job.
Re: (Score:2)
They finally change it after I notify them of the omission. But to these days, I still can't rule out the possibility that the omission was intentional. I mean, if someone in the corporation is obsessed enough to compile a list of all countries, even the ones barely qualified as country, how can (s)he forget to include palestine?
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Or, to put it another way: The world is a very big place. It has over two hundred countries. In my opinion, it is far more likely that somewhere lost in the mists of time is one original list on which all of these were based - and this list may not even have originated on the Internet. It could just as easily be someone blindly typing in a list from a 50-year old encyclopaedia as some sort of anti-semitic conspiracy.
I'd argue
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because not everyone revises their country list every time something makes the news. They probably made the list once and didn't bother to update it because one doesn't expect countries to change. They do, and notice that they did change it after you notified them.
All the countries you listed (including HK) are on the ISO3166-1 page the GP linked to. So is Puerto Rico, but everybody (rightly) just bunches them in with the US. Palestine is listed as a "Palestinian _Territory_", and if one looks at the news t
A proposed edit. (Score:2)
"This means that if you're using open-source code, you have got to be very scrupulous and diligent to make sure that another developer hasn't surreptitiously slipped in a political message or a feature that could make your organization look bad or even lose it money.
And always be mindful that once you let third parties touch your enterprise in any way, decisions they make will be broadcast around the Internet whether you like them or not. Basic Web 2.0 software technologies are proving to be both incredi
and the problem would be... what? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see any risk here that's particular to open source. Analogous issues have come up with proprietary vendors, including Microsoft. And often, there is no way to win, because no matter what you do, someone will be upset.
As for Israel, personally, I think it is a country and it has a right to exist and I'm glad that the US supports Israel.
But it is simply a fact that hundreds of millions of people do not share this view. Odd as that view may seem to you or me, it doesn't seem odd to them. And some
Why this is an issue with Open Source (Score:2)
This is an issue, and it is an issue with Open Source.
First, this isn't an Israel vs. Palestinian rights question. However, it did put this organization in the midst of the issue. His wife's organization trusted a commonly used Open Source widget and got pulled into an unfortunate debate.
Why is this an Open Source issue? Because the way Open Source works: If I buy a program from Microsoft, I can completely hold Microsoft responsible for the results. However, many times, Open Source software depends upon mul
Pissy zionists don't get my sympathy (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
"Deutschland"? Sounds like some kind of barbarian lingo.
The proper name for this province is Germania [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that Taiwan is a Chinese word sort of kills the joke.
Re: (Score:2)
When they say "Taiwan", I think they're talking about Formosa.
Re:Fuck em (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not how the Zionist lobby operates. They don't rely on courteous behaviour and goodwill. They bully people into submission by crying 'anti-semite!' and threatening to 'go and tell the whole Jewish community'.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The courteous way to deal with people is to assume that they've made an honest mistake before throwing around conspiracy theories and wild accusations of rascism and religious hatred.
What their stance: that a product should be boycotted and that an organisation must be anti-Semite and anti-Zionism, based on a country options drop-down box is reasonable?
Someone who isn't acting like an arrogant, spoilt child would simply point-out the error and ask that it be f
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So basically, if I get you right, you're pissed because they left Israel out. But also because they are not denying the existence of Palestine?
Re:OMG! OSS means people can make a statement (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I thought everyone knew open source projects didn't have documentation!
(The above is a joke, albeit one with a grain of truth to it.)