Dear GitHub,
Almost 4 years ago, a group of open source maintainers wrote you a letter expressing their frustration that the platform they love most was ignoring their request for help. You stepped up your game, and started paying attention, fixing things that were broken, and building new experiences that have gone above and beyond what we asked for.
Now, we are asking you to help again. GitHub's leadership recently chose to renew a contract to provide GitHub Enterprise Server to the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division of United States Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This government agency is actively committing numerous crimes and human rights violations, in contravention of both US and international law. ICE conducts random violent raids throughout the United States, invades communities and workplaces with military equipment, detains busses and trains, and arrests people solely on the basis of their perceived nationality, skin color, or native language. Their agents lurk outside of schools in order to abduct the children of immigrants and force their families to surrender themselves into custody. ICE imprisons people in deplorable and unsanitary conditions and denies them medical care. They separate the children they imprison from their families and offer them for adoption by others via agencies with shady histories. ICE agents subject both the adults and children they imprison to horrific physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. They continue to commit these heinous acts in defiance of multiple judgements issued by US courts and condemnations by humanitarian organizations. Many people, including children, have now died in their custody.
At the core of the open source ethos is the idea of liberty. Open source is about inverting power structures and creating access and opportunities for everyone. We, the undersigned, cannot see how to reconcile our ethics with GitHub's continued support of ICE. Moreover, your lack of transparency around the ethical standards you use for conducting business is also concerning to a community that is focused around doing everything out in the open. We want to know that the platform we have invested so much of our time and energy in is operating in a way that is consistent with the values of open source software development.
We therefore call upon GitHub to:
- Immediately cancel your contract with ICE
- Commit yourself to a higher ethical standard with all of your business dealings, and share that standard with the open source community, the same way you do with your Terms of Service and other community standards.
We still believe in GitHub as a platform, as a place to help the open source community make the world a genuinely better place. Please, step up and join us.
Signed,
- Daniel Appelquist, @torgo (Co-Chair, W3C Technical Architecture Group)
- Tony Arcieri, @tarcieri (iqlusion, RustSec)
- Anaïs Betts, @anaisbetts (ReactiveUI)
- Jory Burson, @jorydotcom, (Web Standards & Open Source Community Liaison: Bocoup, Ecma International, OASIS Open, OpenJS Foundation, W3C)
- Marcos Cáceres, @marcoscaceres (W3C Web Applications WG Chair, Mozilla)
- Ada Rose Cannon, @lady_ada_king (Co-chair, W3C Immersive Web Working Group, Developer Advocate Samsung)
- Paddy Carver, @paddycarver (Terraform contributor)
- Taeyoon Choi, @tchoi8 (School for Poetic Computation)
- Krzysztof Cieslak, @Krzysztof-Cieslak (CEO, OSS developer, Ionide, Saturn, FsAutocomplete)
- Josh Comeau, @joshwcomeau (staff software engineer, Gatsby)
- Marc Cornellà, @mcornella (Oh My Zsh)
- Matt Cowley, @MattIPv4 (cdnjs)
- Kushal Das, @kushaldas (Public Interest Technologist, Freedom of the Press Foundation)
- Chris Dickinson, @chrisdickinson (Entropic)
- Buck Doyle, @backspace (Nomad contributor)
- Audrey Eschright, @aeschright (Calagator)
- Steffen Forkmann, @forki (Paket, FAKE)
- Brian Gesiak, @modocache (Swift, LLVM)
- Don Goodman-Wilson, @DEGoodmanWilson (developer advocate, GitHub; board, Maintainerati)
- Jordan Harband, @ljharb (TC39 Editor; Opendoor engineer; npm package author)
- David Heinemeier Hansson, @dhh (Ruby on Rails)
- Geoffrey Huntley, @geoffreyhuntley (ReactiveUI)
- Vaidehi Joshi, @vaidehijoshi (basecs)
- Zach Leatherman, @zachleat (Eleventy 11ty.io)
- Glyph Lefkowitz, @glyph (founder, Twisted)
- Jan Lehnardt, @janl (CEO Neighbourhoodie Software, PMC Chair Apache CouchDB)
- Verónica López, @verolop (DigitalOcean/ Kubernetes contributor)
- Tatiana Mac, @TatianaMac (Self-Defined Dictionary)
- Kat Marchán, @zkat (Entropic)
- Lauren McCarthy, @lmccart (p5.js, Processing Foundation)
- Buster Neece, @SlvrEagle23 (AzuraCast)
- David Nicholson, @NickleDave (contributor to scientific Python libraries)
- Tim Pope, @tpope (Vim plugins)
- Jordan Rose, @belkadan (Swift contributor)
- Jordan Santell, @jsantell (immersive web tools)
- Richard Schneeman, @schneems (CodeTriage creator, Puma, Sprockets, Ruby on Rails contributor)
- Pam Selle, @pselle (former IOpipe maintainer, Terraform contributor)
- Daniel Shiffman, @shiffman (Processing Foundation, The Coding Train)
- C J Silverio, @ceejbot (Entropic)
- Boaz Sender (Bocoup, OpenJS Foundation, Processing Foundation, W3C, Ecma International)
- Daniel Stockman, @evocateur (Lerna)
- Itamar Turner-Trauring, @itamarst (Eliot, formerly Twisted and Telepresence)
- Natalie Weizenbaum, @nex3 (Sass)
- Greg Wilson, @gvwilson (RStudio)
- Tierney Cyren, @bnb (Node.js, OpenJS Foundation, Cutenode, Electron)
- Marco Perone, @marcosh (Statebox)
- Henry Desroches, @xdesro (Faculty)
- Johan van der Knijff, @bitsgalore (jpylyzer maintainer)
- Eric Schultz, @wwahammy (CommitChange, Houdini Project)
- David Celis, @davidcelis (maintainer of and contributor to various Ruby gems)
- Phillip Harrington, @phillipsharring (Software Developer)
- Jeremy Meiss, @jerdog (DevRel, Community)
- Dorothy R. Santos, @dorothysantos (Processing Foundation)
- Brian McFee, @bmcfee (librosa)
- Eden Segal-Grossman, @edensg (Open Pit, Parent Company)
- Ron. A, @0xadada (Unredacted Word)
- Chris J. Zähller, @seezee (Messenger Web Design, Mercury Photo Bureau, WP FOFT Loader plugin for WordPress)
- Elliot Blackburn, @BlueHatbRit (mdpdf, and npm package author)
- Vincent Grafé, @vgrafe
- Olivier Lacan, @olivierlacan (Keep a Changelog, Shields, Code School)
- Felipe Ventura, @fvntr (Techqueria)
- Artemis Tosini, @artemist (independent security researcher)
- Hannah Howard, @hannahhoward (Carbon Five, RxReact)
- Florian Gilcher, @skade (Rust, Rust Berlin, Ruby Berlin e.V.)
- Dan Bentley, @dbentley (Tilt)
- Kristal Garcia, @kgmajor (Techqueria)
- Frédéric Harper, @fharper
- Noah Berman, @bermannoah (small but mighty Ruby OSS projects, coffeebot)
- Tilde Thurium, @annthurium (Atom Editor contributor, Write Speak Code organizer)
- Alexander Payne, @myrrlyn (Rust community)
- Sam Whited, @SamWhited (Go, Docker, Conversations, etc. contributor)
- Younes Zakaria, @drcd (lp0.dk)
- Corey Farwell, @frewsxcv (@kickstarter, Rust)
- Brian Knox, @taotetek (GoCZMQ, contributor to CZMQ, Rsyslog)
- Pierre-Yves Baccou, @pyb (Light Meta)
- Melissa Elliott, @0xabad1dea (infosec researcher)
- Zach Klippenstein, @zach-klippenstein (Square)
- James Farmer, @jpfarmer (Honey Milk Software)
- Jeremy Macaluso, @jvluso (Ethereum-oauth, Frame)
- Elana Hashman, @ehashman (Open Source Initiative, Debian, Python Packaging Authority, Kubernetes)
- Giles Bowkett, @gilesbowkett (various Ruby & JS contributions and personal projects)
- Colin Caine, @cmcaine (Tridactyl and open scientific software)
- Loren Segal, @lsegal (YARD, RubyDoc.info)
- Laryn Kragt Bakker, @laryn (Backdrop CMS and CiviCRM contributor)
- Ibrahim Cesar, @ibrahimcesar (React Lite YouTube Embed)
- Shawn Eisenach, @wholewheattoast (Artist and Software Developer)
- Matheus Graciano, @graciano (tananã)
- Remie Bolte, @remie (YouTransfer.io, gfc.io)
- Rob McLarty, @robmclarty (js, bikes, infosec)
- Joe Granville, @metaregress (hobbyist)
- Saul Shanabrook, @saulshanabrook (Quansight, Jupyter)
- Ken Arroyo Ohori, @kenohori (Delft University of Technology)
- Adam C. Foltzer, @acfoltzer (Lucet)
- Shane Becker, @veganstraightedge (CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective @crimethinc)
- Daniel Bayley, @danielbayley (Motion/graphic designer and software developer)
- Chris Galardi, @ixtli (Engineer, iphone dev team)
- Dinesh Gurnani, @dgurnani12 (EECS and Enthusiast)
- Michael Daryabeygi, @ginkgoMZD (CiviCRM Contributor)
- Kyle Simpson, @getify (Getify, YDKJS)
- Richard Littauer, @RichardLitt (Maintainer Mountaineer)
- Brian Cain, @briancain (Vagrant contributor)
- Matheus Fantinel, @matfantinel (Software Developer)
- Thibaud Guillaume-Gentil, @thibaudgg (creator and contributor of various Ruby gems)
- Jacob Helwig, @jhelwig (Calagator)
- Thomas Donoghue, @TomDonoghue (open-source software developer)
- Patrick Hickey, @pchickey (WebAssembly software developer)
- Coraline Ada Ehmke, @coralineada (Contributor Covenant, Beacon, Hippocratic License, and EthicalSource.dev)
- Patrick Arnett, @patrickarnett (Software Developer)
- Robert Hafner, @tedivm (GitConsensus, various PHP and Python libraries)
- Matthew Dean, @matthew-dean (Less.js)
- Reilly Grant, @reillyeon (W3C Devices and Sensors WG Co-chair, Google)
- Garrett Green, @garrett-green (Software Developer)
- Gueorgui Tcherednitchenko, @gueorgui (A Possible Space)
- Sebastian Riedel, @kraih (Mojolicious)
- Federico Mena Quintero, @federicomenaquintero (GNOME)
- Matt Chapman, @matt2000 (Code Contributor to many open-source projects)
- James Vorderbruggen, @JamesVorder (MassMesh)
- Phil Beauvoir, @Phillipus (Archi)
- Myles Lewando, @codemacabre (CodeMacabre, OpenPlanetary)
- Stephanie Wilkinson, @stephaniewilkinson (@naisorg)
- Timothy Dang, @timdang (Software Engineer)
- Thomas Fuchs, @madrobby (Zepto, scriptaculous)
- Ray Ryan, @rjrjr (Square)
- Jamie Kyle, @jamiebuilds (Babel, Yarn, Parcel, Lerna, Flow, Marionette, Dear GitHub 1.0)
- Kay Rhodes, @masukomi (maintainer of and contributer to multiple projects)
- Pedro Reys, @pedroreys (Programmer)
- Philipp Hansch, @phansch (Rust & rust-clippy contributor)
- Subhrajyoti Sen, @SubhrajyotiSen (Mozilla contributor)
- Jannis Leidel, @jezdez (Mozilla, Python Software Foundation, Django Software Foundation)
- Colby Swandale, @colby-swandale (Bundler, Rubygems, RubyGems.org)
- David Ranzolin, @daranzolin (San Francisco State University)
- Josh Simmons, @joshsimmons (FOSS community organizer)
- Cory Dodt, @corydodt (Bright.md)
- Artur Barseghyan, @barseghyanartur (open-source contributor)
- Tomas Jansson, @mastoj (VP Engineering, Unacast)