Weren't John Kerry and Hillary Clinton arguably equally responsible for any war that Condy supported? The voted for the funds that made it possible, how is that less responsible for the results?
I didn't know they were on the board of directors of Dropbox. Very interesting.
Yes: a large percentage of the politicians in power today are responsible for the heinous crimes against humanity being committed, even yet daily, in the name of the American people - and YES, you SHOULD hold them accountable, since - as an American - you, yourself, are also responsible for the heinous actions of your nation state.
See, that doesn't work. There's no such thing as a recall for some positions, and it's pretty hard to be responsible for someone who says they're going to do one thing and then does a completely different thing once they're beyond accountability.
All that means is that Americans value social stability over all else. The threshold hasn't been crossed yet.
Despite what the media might say, life is still pretty damned good here, and what injustice exists affects a minority, rather than a majority of people.
Biggest prison population, enslaved, of any western nation.
Largest perpetrator of crimes against humanity in the last 80 years.
Among the worst health care in the developed world, Atrocious statistics in welfare conditions, in general (been to Skid Row, lately, homie?), categorically the worst exporter of waste, of the so-called developed nations, never mind it considers itself a super-power.
Apartheid in America? You're just not watching it on your channels .. but its there.
Slavery? White slavery? America is the home of it.
Every single developed nation has done (and still does) some pretty horrible stuff.
Healthcare? Disagree, citizens of other nations find themselves coming here. Cost is an issue (another thing we're working on as of late), but quality certainly isn't.
Welfare has always been a sticking point. We're making progress.
Actually Rice has never held a democratically elected office - a strange trait of the American government system is that The President can appoint anyone he likes to hold these offices.
This counters to countries like Britain where these roles have to go to,democratically elected Members of one of the two Houses (usually the lower House of Parliament where the Prime Minister sits).
So assumeing Condeeleza Rice had some degree of agency in her role of Secretary of State, it's hard to even hold President Bush accountable for all of her actions.
> Rice has never held a democratically elected office
Technically true, however, she WAS approved by 2/3 of the Senate to hold what is widely considered the second-highest administrative office (after the President).
So you also never eat ketchup as well, right? What about making sure that you never buy gasoline from a major, evil gas producer? Are all of your clothing options carefully selected and verified as to not benefit from child labor? And, of course, you didn't write that message on an Apple product, since they are assembled in what are essentially slave labor camps?
Devil's Advocate: It's not. But they didn't join Dropbox's board, so it's irrelevant. It is possible this isn't about partisanship, just personal history.
Though I have a hard time believing that's actually the case.
Easy. Voting to give someone the authority to go to war, and actually taking the country to war on faulty or fabricated evidence are in entirely different universes. Voting for war authority was likely necessary as a bargaining chip against Iraq to get them to comply with inspections. That Bush took that as a blank check and skipped further diplomatic processes is entirely on his (and his administration's) shoulders.
What evidence do you have that there was fabricated evidence to justify the war? I'm not saying it wasn't faulty, but all the parties has closed door access to all the intelligence to make a decision. Just because we don't like the decision retroactively doesn't mean it was done on purpose, but rather due to mistakes being made. Not to say that's more comforting, just that they are different things.
1. Cheney strongly pressured the CIA to discover a smoking gun for Iraq WMDs
2. CIA produced a document that they themselves questioned the authenticity of (the "yellow cake" purchase document)
3. Bush/Cheney ran with that, ignoring the caveats of the intelligence and trumpeting it as the smoking gun
4. Later discovered that the document was fabricated
So while I haven't seen any evidence that they were personally involved in fabricating the evidence, they fabricated the narrative that justified the war by interfering with the intelligence gathering and vetting process and ignoring their recommendations.
Claims that senators that voted for war are just as responsible because "they saw the same evidence" does not account for reality. Senators are shown evidence, they are not involved in the process of gathering and vetting that evidence. If this process is interfered with then the conclusions are worthless.
> Senators are shown evidence, they are not involved in the process of gathering and vetting that evidence. If this process is interfered with then the conclusions are worthless.
Senators can request additional information on the processes that is shares in closed doors. There is also the intelligence oversight committee that can investigate those actions and bring all the parties involved to actually testify.
The fact that not many members of Congress questioned what was presented ultimately rests solely on their shoulders, since they can choose to request more information and open inquiries.
> Voting for war authority was likely necessary as a bargaining chip against Iraq to get them to comply with inspections.
No, authorization for war action is not a "bargaining chip," it's an authorization to go to war for an extended period of time. The president can already invade any country for 60 days without needing Congress's blessing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution
Obama used that power with Lybia. Of course, you can argue that you can invade a country or attack it for a longer period of time without actually breaching the War Powers Resolution, as Obama did: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16powers.html?...
How do you recall or condemn that type of action from a sitting president?
If you put together a list of companies that the politicians who voted for the Iraq war were board members of...you'd be boycotting a lot of companies.
I'd be on board with this if it weren't for the fact that Mega as it exists is a gigantic middle finger in the general direction of the copyright industry.
While admirable, that is not conducive to their continued well being.
Well they do have a desktop folder syncing program so it works more like dropbox. They probably don't have a lot of the same APIs and more in depth ways to use it. It is just file backup and encryption.
There's political debate currently in Finland about giving police and intelligence the same kind of legal framework for access as the NSA has had in the US. But so far the proposals have been resisted. Mikko Hyppönen https://twitter.com/mikko and some others have been talking a lot publicly about making Finland a data haven with strong protections for privacy. Maybe they'll even succeed.
You'd think that by now there's be more than enough incentive to use services from non-US companies, and therefore to start such companies outside the US. Where are they?
We will respond to any notice of alleged copyright infringement if they comply with the law and are properly reported to us through our DMCA process (https://www.copy.com/about/dmca).
It may be necessary − by law, legal process, litigation, and/or requests from public and governmental authorities within or outside your country of residence − for us to disclose your Personal Information, Non Personal Information, and Private Data Files. We may also disclose information about you if we determine that for purposes of national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary or appropriate.
I do use Google Drive some, but the overall usability of it is a bit painful. They have a lot of nice features for sharing folders/files with others, but the organization of it's web UI is just painful to use at times.
You know... you asking that question made me look at it and try to figure out why I don't like it. I think it actually my lack of organization with it. "My Drive" and "Shared with me" section has lots of docs/spreadsheets that I don't need anymore and they clutter the view, I just never thought to remove them to clean it up.
So really, it's my own lack of housekeeping that's bothering me. Time to clean up my Google Drive. Thanks.
Personally, I've had endless sync issues with Google drive. It doesn't seem to have any sort of 'retry' feature if it can't sync a file other than restarting the service.
If you have your own server, I'd recommend BTSync. Sync any folder on your computer easily, without having to move them into a specific folder. You could probably set something up to also sync everything to Google Drive with a script, for redundancy.
Could be a weird bug. I have a lot of files in my drive and don't have any issues so far. My drive is set up to sync on windows and mac. Also use it on my android and web.
Or even worse, backdoored. Considering how strong the government went down on the old mega, I'm surprised they would allow Kim Dotcom to create another service, especially one that was designed with encryption in mind.
Why are you using Google Drive? Eric Schmidt is a tech adviser to Barack Obama, the same person who selected a "war mongerer" in Joe Biden as his partner.
To be fair aw3c2 never said they use Dropbox and while uptown's question was most certainly in respect to "Dropbox alternatives" their question is only asking about "the security and privacy of BTSync" to which aw3c2 responded.
I snooped the traffic and it does not seem to send traffic to proxies if you configure it correctly to not do so.
I've moved from Dropbox to BTSync for 1Password sync and am comfortable with it. Of course, if an open source alternative comes up, I'm willing to consider it.
There's AeroFS, but I hate Java apps so that's a non-starter for me.
Its funny I was kind of looking for alternatives for our business, we use it as a poor mans shared NAS across two offices, but with the new Business features (personal and business folders in particular) finally reached a usability threshold for us.
Adopting OneDrive would then prevent you from ever adopting Linux in the future without migrating all data to a different service. You may be confident you don't use Linux now, but are you confident you'll never need Linux support? How confident are you with adopting a tool that's not OS agnostic?
What I like the most is the integration of OneDrive with Microsoft Office 2013. But Microsoft successfully "force" me to use OneDrive because I bought Surface RT, which the best Windows 8 application for syncing file so far is OneDrive.
Nowadays, I rarely use Dropbox anymore if it is not for group projects. I don't know why but OneDrive seems unpopular among my friends.
I've been running ownCloud[0] on my server. It has Windows/Linux/Mac/Android/iOS clients and has been working very well for me as a drop in Dropbox replacement. In addition to the clients, you can use webDAV to access your files.
I have a cheap hosting account into which I've extracted the ownCloud tarball[0]. For security updates, I've subscribed to the announcements ownCloud mailing list [1] so I get an email each time there's a new version (either bugfix or major). The mailing list is very low traffic (only messages about new versions). I either follow the instructions on the site [2] for major upgrades or otherwise use the built in updater [3][4] for the minor bugfix releases.
If your pi is just running ownCloud and it's got access to a relatively fast connection, there shouldn't be any problem with doing that.
I'm thinking of getting a VPS to run my own server as the limitations of a hosted account are pretty important when it comes to running your own stuff (as opposed to 'just' hosting a blog or whatever).
I have done this. It's ok, but you have to tinker a bit to get big (GB+- is that even big anymore?) files to upload with the web interface. It might be worth your while to get something a bit more powerful (sheevaplug, etc.)
I've been using Spideroak https://spideroak.com/, they push security but only have 2G of free storage and their prices are steeper.
But they have a Linux client! Proprietary, but I can never get grive to work right so I use it (hesitantly). Most of my stuff is synced via owncloud, though.
I could honestly care less about Dr. Rice being on the board of directors or not. Is she going to start a program to torture users of Dropbox? If that comes to pass, it may be a cause for concern. Other than that it appears that Dropbox is adding an accomplished and intelligent person to their board. Is who ever made this website, going to run around and try to get Dr. Rice fired from every job she gets? It really does appear that this is a personal vendetta of some sort.
However! I do welcome the thought of people looking for alternatives to Dropbox. I consider trusting your information with a propriety company based in the US, to be quite foolish these days. Personally I use Owncloud. It's open source. You can run it from your personal server. Owncloud has clients for Linux, Window, MAC, Android and IOS. You can also access your information through any web browser. To put the cherry on top, Owncloud has the capabilities to sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks across your all devices. It's a great piece of software and should suit those looking for an alternative.
Note that there are potential privacy concerns with Wuala and similar services, as they use de-duplication techniques, meaning if somebody makes a file public, and you have the same copy in storage, they can see these files in your account.
It's not a serious privacy violation, as it only identifies what are otherwise public files anyway - but if you want complete privacy, including being able to hide what you are uploading, not just the content - then you're better with something self-hosted perhaps.
Similar to ownCloud, has client support for all the major platforms.
For the record, it's written by a Chinese company - not that this should matter, but it's often rejected because all those Chinese are cyber criminals, y'know?
Unless a company is actively hurting people, I'm going to choose what I use based on the quality of the product, not on a board member's past. Maybe they determined that a hardened political voice would balance them out in the boardroom. Maybe they need someone there to play the devil's advocate in an industry that can be extraordinarily narcissistic.
According to the request of the democratically elected Iraqi leadership and the inability of the Obama and Iraqi leaderships to negotiate something mutually beneficial.
I think the point the author is trying to make is that you don't know what she will do to the quality of the product, but your best guess would be basing her future decisions on her past.
That said, I don't agree with the author. She may have made bad decisions in politics, but I don't see the relevance to a tech company.
It's as voluntary as taking a shower everyday. I don't consciously think about where the product comes from when I buy stuff, especially when it comes to commodities. If you start doing that you can't buy stuff anymore and you have to grow your own stuff yourself and stop trusting everyone else on the planet :)
> If you start doing that you can't buy stuff anymore and you have to grow your own stuff yourself and stop trusting everyone else on the planet :)
That's exactly my point. If you're assigning blame for something the US government did to someone because they paid taxes, then you can pretty much assign blame to everyone for everything. Oh, you went to Stanford during the '90s? Well Rice was provost then, so you helped pay her salary are therefore responsible for the deaths that occurred in the Iraq war. It's absurd.
Yeah... or I could continue using Dropbox as I have done for the past couple of years safe in the knowledge that a director's political background has little-to-nothing to do with the day-to-day running of a tech company.
The pictures on drop-dropbox sites are self-explanary and exponentally stronger, than common comments on why tech X shall be avoided I come across every day.
That is first time a "stop using tech X" site made me change my opinion.
Fully supporting. Those who are searching for alternatives - try out BitTorrent Sync. I have been using it for a while, will pull a plug on Dropbox acc.
I have generally been using Google Drive anyway, but after what this person did to my country as well, I am not going to support a company that supports her.
Time to move all of my files from Dropbox to GDrive.
That was quick and painless. I was already using gdrive for my work files; downloaded and installed gdrive sync in about 5 minutes, and now I have over 3 times the free space I did with Dropbox. Thanks, Condy!
How so? So it's ok to be a part of the team that was responsible for killing many men, women, and children and not only not answer for it, but move on to be on company boards where you can be a part of some serious collection of money at some point? Wow, ok. We must be living in different realities because those years that she was part of will be looked at (or already are) as some of the worst - if not the worst - in American history.
It's sad that none of that crew will ever answer for what they started and did. Granted, there were a lot of people in that chain that should have stood up and said no and not killed anyone. But they didn't. And if you or I did any of those things not wearing an army uniform, we'd be locked up and/or on death row.
I would never in a million years even acknowledge anyone from that team let alone bring them on the board of my company. We really are in an era where it's all about valuations, elevator pitches, and exits. I'm waiting for some young company to bring Dick Cheney on next.
Pick your battles I guess and I will be looking for an alternative that doesn't welcome war criminals.
While convenient to paint a picture of everything being messed up and different than previous generations, none of this is at all accurate. The difference is that we lived through the Bush administration, remember it vividly, and many of us disagreed with nearly everything that happened during those 8 years. And it just happened, so it's still fresh(ish). As the saying goes, "everything's different, everything's the same." I agree those years were really bad; whether they were the worst or whatever is relevant only to someone trying to make a broader point (which I'm not).
Personally, in most cases, I don't have a problem with hiring someone based on their merits, despite what their past job was, or even what their political beliefs are (see: Brendan Eich). Apparently Condoleeza Rice is extremely smart, capable, and, as the former Secretary of State, obviously well-connected in the international community.
And while you made a pretty good attempt at equating her to Dick Cheney, she's just not Dick Cheney.
At the end of the day, this is about Dropbox, not the Bush administration, and if Drew Houston has a spine, nothing will change about this situation.
Thanks for the flippant comment. Eich resigned because while talking heads on TV would have you believe otherwise, the gay rights movement is a civil rights movement. By actively donating against it, he was making a strong statement about his leadership qualities that he would actively discourage equal rights for homosexuals.
That said, the idea to drop a product over the composition of its leadership is perfectly valid. If Robert Mugabe showed up on the Dropbox board of directors, I imagine a great many people would be nonplussed and Dropbox would have undergo a trial by public that would not end well.
A great many people would argue that given Rice's track record as a public servant, her personal and professional proclivities, while certainly more nuanced and less egregious than Mugabe, are not great when considering where you should store your data.
IMHO, tapping Rice for their board was a terrible decision and speaks more towards Houston trying to pump up the old-school market strength image of Dropbox than a wise strategic move to improve the quality of their service and business.
Why all this politicization of Rice's role? What possible relevance could her actions (or hysterical descriptions of her actions) in the Bush administration have in regards to her role as a board member of Dropbox?
Most likely, this is a political appointment to get Dropbox connections in Washington, to sell large contracts into the federal government. And, possibly, to sell into governments abroad where Ms Rice's connections may also be of value. (None of which has any relevance to the usefulness of their product to me.)
I was wondering how long this would take. Thoughtcrime is here. The quest for ideological purity is kneecapping our future. Shutting out half of the brainpool because they hold opposing views about disconnected topics is a recipe for societal failure.
Well, what happened at Mozilla was certainly "Thoughtcrime" (just happened to be on the unpopular part of the spectrum, if it were 20 years ago nobody would have said anything) but Rice is something different altogether. Her hands are not clean, if you know what I mean.
Interesting, since Condoleeza Rice seems to be the very definition of Thought Police. Her quest for ideological purity resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being killed or maimed.
Choosing not to consume a product based on the actions of a board member, is hardly imitating her, unless of course you're telling me that every time someone drops Dropbox, God kills a kitten...
That's not an adequate source as it implies nothing in terms of my request.
If that's all it takes then will you agree with me that the current administration and its members, present and past, have been conducting a quest for ideological purity in Afghanistan and neighboring areas? Therefore none of them should hold a job of any significance now or in the future?
I'm really not at all interested in providing you a source nor arguing with you about who should hold a job or not. Draw your own damn conclusions on the information that is already public knowledge.
I couldn't agree more. We have a very easy task identifying right-wing style totalitarism, but apparently sillicon valley has a blind eye when it's coming from its left.
Soooo, putting public pressure on a company that is employing a very controversial politician who is linked to war deaths, mass surveillance and torture is left-wing totalitarianism. Care to explain yourself?
Listen, war means death. Counter-terrorism means spying and surveillance, and unfortunately very often, torture.
Those are things a state does and has always been doing for the last 3000 years. The fact that we know about it, that we think about it as grown up, that we are trying to do otherwise whenever we can, and choose to prevent abuse is what makes us unique as a democratie.
Now please, let me laugh at those people in the valley that wants to pretend that they have some sort of political view because they are boycotting dropbox.
You may think the war in Iraq was a strategic mistake, or was useless, but don't try to pretend that Mrs Rice is the equivalent of some south american fascist and that corrupts whatever she touches. That's just a total lack of respect for the people that truely lived under those regimes.
The states of Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Finland, Belgium, Norway do no such things. US, China, Russia and others on the other hand do. So don't feed me this 3000 years crap.
US is not trying to do otherwise, Rice wasn't trying to do otherwise. Dropbox board, Dropbox top management lost all my trust as soon as they agreed to work with the person responsible for lots of human suffering. It's simple really, its about the character of people running dropbox.
Sweden, Denmark and Holland have no army and no international interests or responsibility at stake.
The US took the responsibility to protect western countries since they won world war 2. That means protect their interests as well as ours (i'm European), which sometimes means remove a vicious dictator from power instead of flooding him with oil money. The fact that the public opinion has a word to say about it every 4 years is what makes a democratie.
It makes absolutely no sense to compare their foreign policy to the one of Sweden or Finland.
I'm really curious to know which company is going to be next at this horrible witch hunt. Twitter ?
Since when is running a boycott campaign a "quest for ideological purity" or enforcing "thoughtcrime"? This doesn't seem like it's about ideology or what sort of things Rice thinks. It's about people being tortured and killed and her part in that. It's about actual crime not thought crime. She should be held accountable for her actions and making her a pariah in various communities is one small way of doing that.
Keep those torches lit for everyone in the current administration too, right? Torture, war, and mass-surveillance continue to this day, 5 years after she stopped being Secretary of State. In addition, many in the current administration were involved in the Iraq war as well.
I don't get this kind of stuff. I'm sure it's based on good intentions, but this will just lead to MORE nepotism and less transparency because the price of negative press is that much greater.
It feels similar to the hit on the Mozilla guy, which really rubbed me the wrong way. For all I know he clubs baby seals in his free time, but nobody bothered to investigate the truth until it was too late.
One individual or group, finally crawling out of being persecuted, deciding to persecute another is just plain disgusting.
To me, this feels totally different from the Eich case. His political beliefs has nothing to do with Mozilla's product. However, giving someone who approves of wiretaps an important position in a company that people trust with their data, seems like an unbelievably bad idea.
It's not just about whether someone in the company has an opinion I find despicable, it's about whether my own data is still safe.
Well it's a start to know this board member stance on this issue and acting accordingly (i.e unsuscribing or dismissing depending on the importance one give to the issue).
She's an independent board member. She does not have the ability, in practice, to do anything other than vote on compensation and various other corporate policies.
And if all it takes to get dropbox execs to turn over data is fiscal threats from a board member who is a former government employee, then they were going to give up long before Condi shows up on the board.
EDIT: and I just want to be clear. If you just don't like the idea of having someone who was involved with the war in Iraq/Afghanistan on the board of a company, you're entitled to your opinion (though I think it's pretty hard to be secretary of state or any other position of power in the govenrment without being involved in something evil).
But I find the idea that somehow Condi's presence on the board an indicator that they'll disclose my data to the government borderline ludicrous.
But why is she a board member? Who hired her? You make it sound like she was forced on Dropbox by outside forces, and they completely disagree with her. In reality, Dropbox hired her, so they do not completely disagree with her.
It's not just about Rice, it's about what this says about Dropbox.
Let's assume, she is an ambitious person that will work for whoever is paying her.
Wouldn't it make more sense, that they hired her because they want her to lobby against the NSA? Who would be better qualified to get some results in those areas?
From Dropbox's perspective the wire-tapping saga is just bad for bussiness, and they want to make money. So, it makes sense, they would try to spend money to put a stop to it.
I did not mean to give the opinion that I thought Dropbox was forced to hire Condi. Nor did I intend to suggest that Dropbox agrees or disagrees with her.
Here's what I think. I think Dropbox said, "As we try to beef up our credibility with large enterprises and government agencies vs. Box.net and Google and other companies, it would be helpful if we had a board member with some street cred that we could use as a selling point with large CEOs, CIOs, and other senior tech people".
This is not an uncommon thing. At that point, you look out across the landscape of "famous people" you can put on your board. It can't be anyone who is affiliated with a competitor, and there's a lot of competitors. It has to be someone with name recognition who also is willing to be a board member and has some sort of leadership experience.
At some point, Condi's name cropped up with a few others, they met her, thought she was smart, she had the time and availability, and they brought her on.
I bet someone at some point said, "Hey, you know, are we concerned with the affiliation with GWB?" and they thought about it they said, "Hey, look, she was SECRETARY OF STATE, the first female african american one, she's a former stanford professor, she's a genius, surely people will recognize that this is different than her work with GWB"
Thank you. Mrs Rice isn't what would make Dropbox unsafe, it's their lack of encryption and other insecure practises. A quick DuckDuckGo search yielded these articles:
Agreed. Usually the motivation to have someone like Rice on your board, is to have more government connections, for the purpose of not doing what the government wants. i.e. Influencing the government, as opposed to it influencing you.
Edit: Admittedly this can be a bargain with the devil, and backfire.
To me, this looks like it may have been directly inspired by the Eich case. The whole premise is a little nonsensical. How will kicking her off the board change anything, when the shareholders (or whoever) who appointed her will remain? No time to answer questions like that when there is demagogy to do. It is a personal vendetta in a very similar vein as the Mozilla incident, even if the justifications may be better this time around.
I feel this is different. With Mozilla I don't think the guys personal opinion (right or wrong) would affect his job. In this case it's different. You're trusting Dropbox with your data and on their board is a woman who was a senior member of an administration that created PRISM. This could effect the product is serious negative ways.
Wait .. are war-criminals now an oppressed minority? Not that i'm convinced she is a war-criminal, but it's not an easily refutable position, is it?.
On the other hand. It stands to reason Dropbox wants a well connected politician on their board, so they can lobby against the NSA style policies that are negatively affecting their international sales.
>One individual or group, finally crawling out of being persecuted, deciding to persecute another is just plain disgusting.
And this is just disingenious. This was not the case with the Mozilla guy, nor is this the case here. For starters: gays are still being persecuted in many US and international jurisdictions. That war, and it is a war for civil rights, is still ongoing. Secondly, it's not a group that is being targetted but specific individuals because of their complicity in what is essentially a hate-crime they just got away with. That's like arguing we shouldn't perscute/target nazi-collaborators in the middle of WWII. (although one can argue perscuting collaborators after the war, wasn't the moral high ground either)
But, on a more meta level. I think the tech sector is getting more into politics, because the politics are getting more into the tech sector. Consider the NSA, net-neutrality, DMCA or all the twitter powered revolutions. I mean, the internet is essentially fueling a proccess of globalisation and democratisation, that has a lot of political implications.
We can no longer pretend technology isn't a political weapon of change, because the powers that be, are getting more and more aware of this.
Dropping Mozilla because Eich is anti-gay-marriage made sense to me because Mozilla is the beacon of open source. Mozilla belongs to us in a very personal way, many of us have contributed code to Firefox personally.
But Condi Rice joining a completely private Dropbox as a board member - this is a non-issue. I'm as strongly anti-Bush administration and anti-war in general (especially the Iraq War - good grief) as anyone you could hope to meet, but this is ridiculously naive and short sighted to think that Condi being involved with Dropbox is something to get excited about. There are SO many people involved with private companies that are so much more partisan and support with no hesitation so many terrible things that if you want to go down this rabbit hole, you're going to be down there for a while my friends.
Edit: that Condi Rice is a "privacy" concern - ok. Fine. I think that's ridiculous but you know what - nothing is particularly ridiculous when it comes to privacy anymore. So I will accept that argument.
>>There are SO many people involved with private companies that are so much more partisan and support with no hesitation so many terrible things that if you want to go down this rabbit hole, you're going to be down there for a while my friends.
What do think we do then if we find that a decision-maker in a company is highly partisan and maybe bad for privacy?
It's not about partisanship, it's about whether your data is safe. Of course maybe data can never be safe in the hands of a US company, but I put significantly less trust in a company that hires someone who supported all the violations by various secret services, than in one that fights those violations.
Before this I could at least pretend they didn't play ball with the NSA, I knew it was self deception but I'm also very lazy. Now they might as well hang a "Friend of NSA" sign in front of their building.
I downgraded my Pro account.
Unfortunately there's no division as to where politics is allowed to interfere. From Wikipedia[1]:
Politics is the process observed in all human (and many non-human) group interactions by which groups make decisions, including activism on behalf of specific issues or causes.
You can shut your eyes and pretend that they're separate, but that doesn't make it true. One's political and ethical views deeply influence how they act, particular towards others.
EDIT: This is a general point, not an opinion on the current issue.
Disclaimer: I'm pretty orthodox Catholic and thus firmly disagree with most software programmers on topics that are often discussed here. But I don't boycott emacs just because the authors are atheists (I actually use emacs full time for work now). And I don't boycott software whose maintainers are pro-choice or whatever else. Boycotting software because of political or religious differences isn't going to help software, it's only going to further unnecessary dissension instead of fostering understanding and personal change.
The personal attachment that comes with using a good brand in this field isn't trivial, and it should be expected that users project their sensibilities on the brand. Being politically neutral in the view of its users should have been a priority for DP, regardless of which powerful gatekeepers to world markets are on Rice's speed dial.
This sounds like holding non-profits to higher standards than corporates. That seems a strange and grossly unfair thing to do, ultimately counterproductive to the very purpose of non-profits.
Of course, when it comes to their core values you have to hold non-profits to high standards - e.g. Mozilla on the open web.
But when it comes to things unrelated to their mission... Why should they be any more perfect than a for-profit corporation!
I like people holding organizations to high standards, its fantastic. But please, hold all of them to high standards - both for-profits and non-profits.
This is rapidly turning very ugly, and I can't stand it. Is being "anti-gay" or "pro-war" or even just "republican" the new Communism? The new witchcraft?
I hope so. We're moving into a phase where there you can grab information about anything, from nearly anywhere, at almost any time. There is little advantage to decision making based on cemented ideals anymore. This new era has exposed the good and bad in all facets of life. It's no longer about republicans, or communists, or this, or that, it's just about life.
I prefer to remain non-partisan and instead look at things as a complete outsider, just as a regular human being without any rooted loyalty in any one system or another.
If a company hires a shitty person, and people start dropping their service like flies, and that company reconsiders, then we're moving in a good direction, and I view my "vote" of not sticking with Dropbox more as a single ballot to living in a more informed and refined society.
I really hope somebody replies and lets me know why I'm wrong rather than just sitting here at -2. Please don't turn HN into Reddit :(
Yeah that's fair, but none of the original founding members are still active within IBM, so the intent has essentially been burnt out. They are remnants long forgotten.
Condoleezza Rice however, is still alive and well, and is actively on the Dropbox board. The decision is easy to make, so I made it.
I would honestly prefer people to have a set standard, e.g., Should I drop a nuclear bomb? No. Never. Under any circumstances. Whether I agree with that standard is another matter altogether, but having a solid measuring line is significantly more reassuring than a flip-floppy wet noodle.
I agree that no two situations are alike, but principles by definition should still guide the decision making process.
No. For the same reason that being a white supremacist hasn't really ever been "okay."
Eich was not anti-gay, he was anti-civil rights. Legal marraige and religious marriage are unfortunately poorly named, but two very different things. If Eich doesn't understand that, he's got bigger issues than being dumped by Mozilla.
I have plenty of good friends who do not agree with the idea of homosexual religious marriage and yet support civil rights and the right of homosexuals to be legally married.
That said, cable news, groupthink and information overload have a nasty habit of making us fall back on baser instincts (gay=bad, Christian=bad, war=bad or any other black/white arguments).
Instead we should probably turn to our communities where we are able to have long-form and less-aggressive arguments about fundamental issues. If you perceive the person you're arguing with as a human and a friend, you're less inclined towards unmitigated anger and senseless aggression. But that would require us to put down our computers and walk into town hall and actually speak with humans, so I'm not holding my breath.
You have to pick your battles unless you're prepared to live as a hermit beyond the edge of civilization. We have plenty of choices in cloud storage, browsers, and fast food. With some things, like voting in a two party system and buying gas, you're choosing the less awful of the viable choices. Choosing in most cases is a matter of triage, not preference.
Open Source, not non-profits. I'd have to think about the non-profit thing, but Open Source is a very particular thing - you're asking the public to work for you for FREE. People at Mozilla make good money, non-profit just means they don't have shareholders, and yet we work for them FOR FREE. And we like to! We have no problem doing it and we shouldn't - but yes, it does mean we get to hold them to our standard, whether that be higher or whatever.
I believe that people are far more invested in non-profits to which they donate money, as opposed to companies whose products they merely purchase. I do not find it at all surprising that a person who wrote a check to Mozilla (possibly one of a handful of donations to non-profits they made that year) would feel more invested in Mozilla's actions than, say, someone who eats a lot of Nabisco Graham Crackers. Even when the money spent on their consumption of graham crackers over the same year period may exceed the amount of the Mozilla donation.
This is the logical conclusion after the Mozilla farce. Every new hire will be vetted for correct political affiliates, or the ISJP (Internet Social Justice Police) will do their McCarthyism thing.
>> "Dropping Mozilla because Eich is anti-gay-marriage made sense to me because Mozilla is the beacon of open source. Mozilla belongs to us in a very personal way, many of us have contributed code to Firefox personally."
I feel the opposite. Eich's opinion (which I don't agree with) was unlikely to impact his work. Rice was part of the administration that created PRISM. I don't want her anywhere near a company I'm supposed to trust with all my files.
You might have the opinion that universal health care is bad for this country. I would disagree with you, but that would be your personal opinion and I couldn't fault you for it, whatever I may think of you privately.
But if you believe all colored people should be enslaved and donate money towards making it happen, then we all should fault you because that's not an acceptable opinion, it's bigotry. Similarly, stripping gay men and women of their civil liberties is bigotry that should not be tolerated.
Rice's actions have also resulted in harming our civil liberties and I don't support her, but I can't fault Drew Houston for wanting her on their Board. Anybody who has the chance to add somebody as powerful and well-connected as Rice to their Board would be stupid not to. She is there to advise, not lead. I don't believe her presence on the Board will make Dropbox any more or less trustworthy with our data than before. If Dropbox is going to leak our private data now, then that's a company that would've done so without Rice as well.
I'm not very passionate about either the Eich situation or this new Dropbox issue, but I have to say that this feels much more "political" and relevant than with Mozilla. Eich privately opposed gay marriage, but the public disclosure threatened to hurt the foundation's image and his effectiveness. Rice was a unabashed supporter and post 2006, an architect of the Iraq War.
It would be closer to Mozilla hiring Mike Huckabee or similar as CEO.
I had precisely the opposite view. I felt that Eich's politics weren't aligned with my beliefs but were personal and legal. Condi is in a whole other league - having to help prosecute an illegal war and intentionally mislead our citizenry.
Dropping Mozilla because Eich is anti-gay-marriage made sense to me because Mozilla is the beacon of open source.
The leap from open source to pro-gay sounds like a complete non sequitur to me. What is the reasoning there?
I like the way Torvalds put it.
For example, the GPLv2 in no way limits your use of the software. If you're a mad scientist, you can use GPLv2'd software for your evil plans to take over the world ("Sharks with lasers on their heads!!"), and the GPLv2 just says that you have to give source code back. And that's OK by me. I like sharks with lasers. I just want the mad scientists of the world to pay me back in kind. I made source code available to them, they have to make their changes to it available to me. After that, they can fry me with their shark-mounted lasers all they want.
> The leap from open source to pro-gay sounds like a complete non sequitur to me. What is the reasoning there?
Your characterization of it being a "leap to pro-gay" is a bit much. Supporters of Prop 8 are actively trying to deny other Americans rights, many people find this offensive, regardless of the grounds for denial. It echoes racial, gender and age discrimination of the past -- things that many find to be un-American. The fact that the people affected happen to be gay is secondary for many who opposed Prop 8. No American should be legislated as a second class citizen.
Open Source is about open access, both to contribute and use. Prop 8 was trying to deny people access to government, rights and benefits. These attitudes are in direct opposition.
Beyond the ideological friction, you are dividing the community of users and contributors -- people who support gay rights and marriage equality somehow feel like they are supporting somebody who is trying to change society by denying people rights.
Mozilla isn't driven by profit, it's driven by the goodwill of its users and contributors. Mr. Eich was well aware of the sensitive nature of people's attitudes towards his contribution -- he's tried for years to make it a non-issue, but it has kept following him.
It's not that Open Source is "pro-gay rights", it's that it is pro-open access and equality. Mr. Eich's contribution shows contempt for this ideal at some level. It appears that many had issue with this.
Additionally, Google, Mozilla's largest financial contributor, is a company that has actively taken a strongly anti-Prop 8 stance. Having the leader of the Mozilla Foundation be openly in opposition to Google's stance brings questions about if this will ultimately affect Mozilla's funding.
Mr. Eich's technical leadership and history with Mozilla probably qualifies him as a very competent leader for the organization, however the political realities of Mozilla's relationship with Google and the open source community's ideals creates doubt about the realities of his ability to manage these important relationships between Google, users and contributors.
As I can see now here in HN, a lot of people idealize the idea of Open Source to mean the stereotype of the current zeitgeist good side, when it does not.
"Dropping" Eich or getting rid of Mozilla because you disagree with someone's point of view on a single issue is pretty extreme.
You may find that literally hundreds of good and/or services you currently use are the brainchild of someone or is being headed by someone who has many ideals you also disagree with. You might be left with nothing.
Eich's politics weren't all that important. There was a minor issue of whether it would cause trouble for Mozilla's gay employees (or employees who just felt strongly about it) and a big public relations problem, but the technical functioning of the company wouldn't be affected.
With Dropbox and Rice, I think there's a decent chance (not huge, but decent) that she's sitting down and giving everybody pointers for how they can most efficiently and effectively cooperate with the NSA. She's out of the administration but people like this never truly leave.
From the side it looks like Dropping Mozilla because Eich, made sense to you because it was issue you cared about, and dead people in Iraq? well they are far away and probably didn't think like you anyway.
Same with contributing code to Firefox: of course my small patch for the bug affecting me personally looks like a big deal, but if i look at a big picture, my contribution isn't even comparable to what Brendan Eich did.
I don't say that dropping dropbox is a good thing, but i don't see how one can think logically that harassment of Eich was something for greater good, and this is a non-issue.
Unfortunately emotion is a strong thing, much stronger than logic.
I think the Rice as a board member issue is a totally different concern, directly related to the delivery of the service.
Rice is a former National Security Advisor, and is looped into the political structure. So now, when the three letter agency of your choosing needs to have a frank conversation with someone at Dropbox, Condi will be a trusted conduit.
Eich also created JavaScript and I don't see a massive push to drop it everywhere. I think these sort of things are an outrage-economy with no serious or lasting effect.
Agreed. I think the Mozilla case was different due to the nature of the role, the nature of the company and how the person involved handled the whole situation.
Why do you think that it is "ridiculous" for people to be upset that a strong supporter of warrant-less wiretapping and PRISM is now a board member at the place they store their data?
A lot of people here seem to have absolutely no issue with saying "I have no problem with the ethical ramifications of a company's actions or choice of representatives or the beneficiaries of a company's wealth that my support helps grow". I can't tell if you're sociopathic or just utterly clueless. Not taking a 'moral stand' isn't business -- it's taking a moral stand of not caring. Culpability can stem from inaction as well.
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[ 0.15 ms ] story [ 369 ms ] threadYes: a large percentage of the politicians in power today are responsible for the heinous crimes against humanity being committed, even yet daily, in the name of the American people - and YES, you SHOULD hold them accountable, since - as an American - you, yourself, are also responsible for the heinous actions of your nation state.
brb, dropping Dropbox...
Something is going to have to change, sooner or later. I hope its for the better, but I doubt it will be.
There is your problem, America. Fix it.
But not in America.
Despite what the media might say, life is still pretty damned good here, and what injustice exists affects a minority, rather than a majority of people.
Largest perpetrator of crimes against humanity in the last 80 years.
Among the worst health care in the developed world, Atrocious statistics in welfare conditions, in general (been to Skid Row, lately, homie?), categorically the worst exporter of waste, of the so-called developed nations, never mind it considers itself a super-power.
Apartheid in America? You're just not watching it on your channels .. but its there.
Slavery? White slavery? America is the home of it.
Every single developed nation has done (and still does) some pretty horrible stuff.
Healthcare? Disagree, citizens of other nations find themselves coming here. Cost is an issue (another thing we're working on as of late), but quality certainly isn't.
Welfare has always been a sticking point. We're making progress.
And the rest of your post is utter hyperbole.
This counters to countries like Britain where these roles have to go to,democratically elected Members of one of the two Houses (usually the lower House of Parliament where the Prime Minister sits).
So assumeing Condeeleza Rice had some degree of agency in her role of Secretary of State, it's hard to even hold President Bush accountable for all of her actions.
Technically true, however, she WAS approved by 2/3 of the Senate to hold what is widely considered the second-highest administrative office (after the President).
Devil's Advocate: It's not. But they didn't join Dropbox's board, so it's irrelevant. It is possible this isn't about partisanship, just personal history.
Though I have a hard time believing that's actually the case.
1. Cheney strongly pressured the CIA to discover a smoking gun for Iraq WMDs
2. CIA produced a document that they themselves questioned the authenticity of (the "yellow cake" purchase document)
3. Bush/Cheney ran with that, ignoring the caveats of the intelligence and trumpeting it as the smoking gun
4. Later discovered that the document was fabricated
So while I haven't seen any evidence that they were personally involved in fabricating the evidence, they fabricated the narrative that justified the war by interfering with the intelligence gathering and vetting process and ignoring their recommendations.
Claims that senators that voted for war are just as responsible because "they saw the same evidence" does not account for reality. Senators are shown evidence, they are not involved in the process of gathering and vetting that evidence. If this process is interfered with then the conclusions are worthless.
Senators can request additional information on the processes that is shares in closed doors. There is also the intelligence oversight committee that can investigate those actions and bring all the parties involved to actually testify. The fact that not many members of Congress questioned what was presented ultimately rests solely on their shoulders, since they can choose to request more information and open inquiries.
Really? What is your source for that? Where in the Senate's report do you see that information? http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/pagedetails.action?browsePat...
Also quite a few similar stories and first-hand accounts (of varying credibility) from a google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=cheney+pressure+iraq+intelli...
No, authorization for war action is not a "bargaining chip," it's an authorization to go to war for an extended period of time. The president can already invade any country for 60 days without needing Congress's blessing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution Obama used that power with Lybia. Of course, you can argue that you can invade a country or attack it for a longer period of time without actually breaching the War Powers Resolution, as Obama did: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16powers.html?... How do you recall or condemn that type of action from a sitting president?
While admirable, that is not conducive to their continued well being.
Condoleezza sure left a global footprint in the Middle East alright. Hate do this Dropbox, but time for me to move on.
Edit: Suggestions for a Dropbox substitute?
I hate that I even have to make decisions like this, what the fuck kind of world are we living in.
https://tresorit.com
There's political debate currently in Finland about giving police and intelligence the same kind of legal framework for access as the NSA has had in the US. But so far the proposals have been resisted. Mikko Hyppönen https://twitter.com/mikko and some others have been talking a lot publicly about making Finland a data haven with strong protections for privacy. Maybe they'll even succeed.
We will respond to any notice of alleged copyright infringement if they comply with the law and are properly reported to us through our DMCA process (https://www.copy.com/about/dmca).
From https://www.copy.com/about/privacy :
It may be necessary − by law, legal process, litigation, and/or requests from public and governmental authorities within or outside your country of residence − for us to disclose your Personal Information, Non Personal Information, and Private Data Files. We may also disclose information about you if we determine that for purposes of national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary or appropriate.
So really, it's my own lack of housekeeping that's bothering me. Time to clean up my Google Drive. Thanks.
https://tools.google.com/dlpage/drive
They give 25 GB, and respect your privacy (they are based on France).
So far there's no perfect file cloud service, unless you want to also manage your own server.
Hopefully this news will lead to increased development for a product like SparkleShare. Lord knows we need it.
I've moved from Dropbox to BTSync for 1Password sync and am comfortable with it. Of course, if an open source alternative comes up, I'm willing to consider it.
There's AeroFS, but I hate Java apps so that's a non-starter for me.
Ugh...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...
[1] http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-m...
Nowadays, I rarely use Dropbox anymore if it is not for group projects. I don't know why but OneDrive seems unpopular among my friends.
Hey actually the word footprint can also be understood as garbage.
> the impact on the environment of human activity in terms of pollution, damage to ecosystems, and the depletion of natural resources.
Then if you read it this way, the sentence sounds actually very appropriate!
[0] http://www.owncloud.org
So far, it's been pretty painless.
[0] http://owncloud.org/install/
[1] http://mailman.owncloud.org/mailman/listinfo/announcements
[2] http://doc.owncloud.org/server/6.0/admin_manual/maintenance/...
[3] http://doc.owncloud.org/server/6.0/admin_manual/maintenance/...
[4] http://imgur.com/Z4U8ac5
I'm thinking of getting a VPS to run my own server as the limitations of a hosted account are pretty important when it comes to running your own stuff (as opposed to 'just' hosting a blog or whatever).
(although he is a bit of an idiot)
https://www.mediafire.com/upgrade/
If you want something with strong security and privacy, there's https://spideroak.com/
If you're relying on a single service with all copies of the data, you're doing it wrong. Always have backups.
http://titansgroup.com.br/cloud.php
It's currently aimed at telcos (América Móvil used it in Latin America) but IIRC they rolled out their own product, at least for internal use.
But they have a Linux client! Proprietary, but I can never get grive to work right so I use it (hesitantly). Most of my stuff is synced via owncloud, though.
However! I do welcome the thought of people looking for alternatives to Dropbox. I consider trusting your information with a propriety company based in the US, to be quite foolish these days. Personally I use Owncloud. It's open source. You can run it from your personal server. Owncloud has clients for Linux, Window, MAC, Android and IOS. You can also access your information through any web browser. To put the cherry on top, Owncloud has the capabilities to sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks across your all devices. It's a great piece of software and should suit those looking for an alternative.
http://owncloud.org/
http://www.salesforce.com/company/leadership/board-of-direct...
I'd say Wuala, as SpiderOak's mobile application wasn't great last time I checked. It only had read capability.
It's not a serious privacy violation, as it only identifies what are otherwise public files anyway - but if you want complete privacy, including being able to hide what you are uploading, not just the content - then you're better with something self-hosted perhaps.
Similar to ownCloud, has client support for all the major platforms.
For the record, it's written by a Chinese company - not that this should matter, but it's often rejected because all those Chinese are cyber criminals, y'know?
That said, I don't agree with the author. She may have made bad decisions in politics, but I don't see the relevance to a tech company.
Seems like it did not work so well with Mozilla recently. And that guy there did not kill anyone either, even indirectly.
That's exactly my point. If you're assigning blame for something the US government did to someone because they paid taxes, then you can pretty much assign blame to everyone for everything. Oh, you went to Stanford during the '90s? Well Rice was provost then, so you helped pay her salary are therefore responsible for the deaths that occurred in the Iraq war. It's absurd.
> Uh we have all killed indirectly
Well, Rice has been certainly much more 'directly' involved in killing that the ones who paid taxes.
That is first time a "stop using tech X" site made me change my opinion.
Fully supporting. Those who are searching for alternatives - try out BitTorrent Sync. I have been using it for a while, will pull a plug on Dropbox acc.
Time to move all of my files from Dropbox to GDrive.
So if they drop Condoleezza Rice you'll be fine with their decision making process and keep your dropbox account?
It's sad that none of that crew will ever answer for what they started and did. Granted, there were a lot of people in that chain that should have stood up and said no and not killed anyone. But they didn't. And if you or I did any of those things not wearing an army uniform, we'd be locked up and/or on death row.
I would never in a million years even acknowledge anyone from that team let alone bring them on the board of my company. We really are in an era where it's all about valuations, elevator pitches, and exits. I'm waiting for some young company to bring Dick Cheney on next.
Pick your battles I guess and I will be looking for an alternative that doesn't welcome war criminals.
Personally, in most cases, I don't have a problem with hiring someone based on their merits, despite what their past job was, or even what their political beliefs are (see: Brendan Eich). Apparently Condoleeza Rice is extremely smart, capable, and, as the former Secretary of State, obviously well-connected in the international community.
And while you made a pretty good attempt at equating her to Dick Cheney, she's just not Dick Cheney.
At the end of the day, this is about Dropbox, not the Bush administration, and if Drew Houston has a spine, nothing will change about this situation.
That said, the idea to drop a product over the composition of its leadership is perfectly valid. If Robert Mugabe showed up on the Dropbox board of directors, I imagine a great many people would be nonplussed and Dropbox would have undergo a trial by public that would not end well.
A great many people would argue that given Rice's track record as a public servant, her personal and professional proclivities, while certainly more nuanced and less egregious than Mugabe, are not great when considering where you should store your data.
IMHO, tapping Rice for their board was a terrible decision and speaks more towards Houston trying to pump up the old-school market strength image of Dropbox than a wise strategic move to improve the quality of their service and business.
TL;DR, Houston, you fucked up.
No amount of backtracking will convince me I didn't see what just happened.
Most likely, this is a political appointment to get Dropbox connections in Washington, to sell large contracts into the federal government. And, possibly, to sell into governments abroad where Ms Rice's connections may also be of value. (None of which has any relevance to the usefulness of their product to me.)
I already know of the Thought Police claims so I don't require those.
If that's all it takes then will you agree with me that the current administration and its members, present and past, have been conducting a quest for ideological purity in Afghanistan and neighboring areas? Therefore none of them should hold a job of any significance now or in the future?
Once again I made the mistake of thinking I was having a civil discussion about a topic and asking for more information.
Again, I apologize for giving the impression I disagreed on the matter even though I never stated my position one way or other.
Based on other responses throughout this topic I'll call it a day on the matter.
Those are things a state does and has always been doing for the last 3000 years. The fact that we know about it, that we think about it as grown up, that we are trying to do otherwise whenever we can, and choose to prevent abuse is what makes us unique as a democratie.
Now please, let me laugh at those people in the valley that wants to pretend that they have some sort of political view because they are boycotting dropbox.
You may think the war in Iraq was a strategic mistake, or was useless, but don't try to pretend that Mrs Rice is the equivalent of some south american fascist and that corrupts whatever she touches. That's just a total lack of respect for the people that truely lived under those regimes.
US is not trying to do otherwise, Rice wasn't trying to do otherwise. Dropbox board, Dropbox top management lost all my trust as soon as they agreed to work with the person responsible for lots of human suffering. It's simple really, its about the character of people running dropbox.
The US took the responsibility to protect western countries since they won world war 2. That means protect their interests as well as ours (i'm European), which sometimes means remove a vicious dictator from power instead of flooding him with oil money. The fact that the public opinion has a word to say about it every 4 years is what makes a democratie.
It makes absolutely no sense to compare their foreign policy to the one of Sweden or Finland.
I'm really curious to know which company is going to be next at this horrible witch hunt. Twitter ?
In order to protect your privacy, Wuala encrypts the data on your computer before it is uploaded.
It feels similar to the hit on the Mozilla guy, which really rubbed me the wrong way. For all I know he clubs baby seals in his free time, but nobody bothered to investigate the truth until it was too late.
One individual or group, finally crawling out of being persecuted, deciding to persecute another is just plain disgusting.
It's not just about whether someone in the company has an opinion I find despicable, it's about whether my own data is still safe.
We do now…
And if all it takes to get dropbox execs to turn over data is fiscal threats from a board member who is a former government employee, then they were going to give up long before Condi shows up on the board.
EDIT: and I just want to be clear. If you just don't like the idea of having someone who was involved with the war in Iraq/Afghanistan on the board of a company, you're entitled to your opinion (though I think it's pretty hard to be secretary of state or any other position of power in the govenrment without being involved in something evil).
But I find the idea that somehow Condi's presence on the board an indicator that they'll disclose my data to the government borderline ludicrous.
It's not just about Rice, it's about what this says about Dropbox.
Wouldn't it make more sense, that they hired her because they want her to lobby against the NSA? Who would be better qualified to get some results in those areas?
From Dropbox's perspective the wire-tapping saga is just bad for bussiness, and they want to make money. So, it makes sense, they would try to spend money to put a stop to it.
Who would you hire?
Here's what I think. I think Dropbox said, "As we try to beef up our credibility with large enterprises and government agencies vs. Box.net and Google and other companies, it would be helpful if we had a board member with some street cred that we could use as a selling point with large CEOs, CIOs, and other senior tech people".
This is not an uncommon thing. At that point, you look out across the landscape of "famous people" you can put on your board. It can't be anyone who is affiliated with a competitor, and there's a lot of competitors. It has to be someone with name recognition who also is willing to be a board member and has some sort of leadership experience.
At some point, Condi's name cropped up with a few others, they met her, thought she was smart, she had the time and availability, and they brought her on.
I bet someone at some point said, "Hey, you know, are we concerned with the affiliation with GWB?" and they thought about it they said, "Hey, look, she was SECRETARY OF STATE, the first female african american one, she's a former stanford professor, she's a genius, surely people will recognize that this is different than her work with GWB"
http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-and-threats/dropb... http://www.wired.com/2011/05/dropbox-ftc/ http://thehackernews.com/2013/07/hacking-dropbox-account-vul...
(This is just a semi-random selection.)
Edit: Admittedly this can be a bargain with the devil, and backfire.
On the other hand. It stands to reason Dropbox wants a well connected politician on their board, so they can lobby against the NSA style policies that are negatively affecting their international sales.
>One individual or group, finally crawling out of being persecuted, deciding to persecute another is just plain disgusting.
And this is just disingenious. This was not the case with the Mozilla guy, nor is this the case here. For starters: gays are still being persecuted in many US and international jurisdictions. That war, and it is a war for civil rights, is still ongoing. Secondly, it's not a group that is being targetted but specific individuals because of their complicity in what is essentially a hate-crime they just got away with. That's like arguing we shouldn't perscute/target nazi-collaborators in the middle of WWII. (although one can argue perscuting collaborators after the war, wasn't the moral high ground either)
But, on a more meta level. I think the tech sector is getting more into politics, because the politics are getting more into the tech sector. Consider the NSA, net-neutrality, DMCA or all the twitter powered revolutions. I mean, the internet is essentially fueling a proccess of globalisation and democratisation, that has a lot of political implications.
We can no longer pretend technology isn't a political weapon of change, because the powers that be, are getting more and more aware of this.
But Condi Rice joining a completely private Dropbox as a board member - this is a non-issue. I'm as strongly anti-Bush administration and anti-war in general (especially the Iraq War - good grief) as anyone you could hope to meet, but this is ridiculously naive and short sighted to think that Condi being involved with Dropbox is something to get excited about. There are SO many people involved with private companies that are so much more partisan and support with no hesitation so many terrible things that if you want to go down this rabbit hole, you're going to be down there for a while my friends.
Edit: that Condi Rice is a "privacy" concern - ok. Fine. I think that's ridiculous but you know what - nothing is particularly ridiculous when it comes to privacy anymore. So I will accept that argument.
What do think we do then if we find that a decision-maker in a company is highly partisan and maybe bad for privacy?
Politics is the process observed in all human (and many non-human) group interactions by which groups make decisions, including activism on behalf of specific issues or causes.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_%28disambiguation%29
EDIT: This is a general point, not an opinion on the current issue.
Of course, when it comes to their core values you have to hold non-profits to high standards - e.g. Mozilla on the open web.
But when it comes to things unrelated to their mission... Why should they be any more perfect than a for-profit corporation!
I like people holding organizations to high standards, its fantastic. But please, hold all of them to high standards - both for-profits and non-profits.
I prefer to remain non-partisan and instead look at things as a complete outsider, just as a regular human being without any rooted loyalty in any one system or another.
If a company hires a shitty person, and people start dropping their service like flies, and that company reconsiders, then we're moving in a good direction, and I view my "vote" of not sticking with Dropbox more as a single ballot to living in a more informed and refined society.
I really hope somebody replies and lets me know why I'm wrong rather than just sitting here at -2. Please don't turn HN into Reddit :(
I don't care what her intention was at the time. Just read http://www.drop-dropbox.com/. It's certainly enough for me.
If so, how can you possibly justify that?
After all, IBM helped the Nazis, so everything they touched is morally tainted.
(And no, I'm not Godwinning, just pointing out how absurd the line of thinking is when taken to extremes)
Condoleezza Rice however, is still alive and well, and is actively on the Dropbox board. The decision is easy to make, so I made it.
I agree that no two situations are alike, but principles by definition should still guide the decision making process.
Eich was not anti-gay, he was anti-civil rights. Legal marraige and religious marriage are unfortunately poorly named, but two very different things. If Eich doesn't understand that, he's got bigger issues than being dumped by Mozilla.
I have plenty of good friends who do not agree with the idea of homosexual religious marriage and yet support civil rights and the right of homosexuals to be legally married.
That said, cable news, groupthink and information overload have a nasty habit of making us fall back on baser instincts (gay=bad, Christian=bad, war=bad or any other black/white arguments).
Instead we should probably turn to our communities where we are able to have long-form and less-aggressive arguments about fundamental issues. If you perceive the person you're arguing with as a human and a friend, you're less inclined towards unmitigated anger and senseless aggression. But that would require us to put down our computers and walk into town hall and actually speak with humans, so I'm not holding my breath.
We live in interesting times!
I feel the opposite. Eich's opinion (which I don't agree with) was unlikely to impact his work. Rice was part of the administration that created PRISM. I don't want her anywhere near a company I'm supposed to trust with all my files.
Yet some people see it worse that Eich, the inventor of Javascript which arguably powers the modern web, was the CEO of Mozilla.
It's an interesting rationalization process.
But if you believe all colored people should be enslaved and donate money towards making it happen, then we all should fault you because that's not an acceptable opinion, it's bigotry. Similarly, stripping gay men and women of their civil liberties is bigotry that should not be tolerated.
Rice's actions have also resulted in harming our civil liberties and I don't support her, but I can't fault Drew Houston for wanting her on their Board. Anybody who has the chance to add somebody as powerful and well-connected as Rice to their Board would be stupid not to. She is there to advise, not lead. I don't believe her presence on the Board will make Dropbox any more or less trustworthy with our data than before. If Dropbox is going to leak our private data now, then that's a company that would've done so without Rice as well.
It would be closer to Mozilla hiring Mike Huckabee or similar as CEO.
The leap from open source to pro-gay sounds like a complete non sequitur to me. What is the reasoning there?
I like the way Torvalds put it.
For example, the GPLv2 in no way limits your use of the software. If you're a mad scientist, you can use GPLv2'd software for your evil plans to take over the world ("Sharks with lasers on their heads!!"), and the GPLv2 just says that you have to give source code back. And that's OK by me. I like sharks with lasers. I just want the mad scientists of the world to pay me back in kind. I made source code available to them, they have to make their changes to it available to me. After that, they can fry me with their shark-mounted lasers all they want.
Open source means just that.
Your characterization of it being a "leap to pro-gay" is a bit much. Supporters of Prop 8 are actively trying to deny other Americans rights, many people find this offensive, regardless of the grounds for denial. It echoes racial, gender and age discrimination of the past -- things that many find to be un-American. The fact that the people affected happen to be gay is secondary for many who opposed Prop 8. No American should be legislated as a second class citizen.
Open Source is about open access, both to contribute and use. Prop 8 was trying to deny people access to government, rights and benefits. These attitudes are in direct opposition.
Beyond the ideological friction, you are dividing the community of users and contributors -- people who support gay rights and marriage equality somehow feel like they are supporting somebody who is trying to change society by denying people rights.
Mozilla isn't driven by profit, it's driven by the goodwill of its users and contributors. Mr. Eich was well aware of the sensitive nature of people's attitudes towards his contribution -- he's tried for years to make it a non-issue, but it has kept following him.
It's not that Open Source is "pro-gay rights", it's that it is pro-open access and equality. Mr. Eich's contribution shows contempt for this ideal at some level. It appears that many had issue with this.
Additionally, Google, Mozilla's largest financial contributor, is a company that has actively taken a strongly anti-Prop 8 stance. Having the leader of the Mozilla Foundation be openly in opposition to Google's stance brings questions about if this will ultimately affect Mozilla's funding.
Mr. Eich's technical leadership and history with Mozilla probably qualifies him as a very competent leader for the organization, however the political realities of Mozilla's relationship with Google and the open source community's ideals creates doubt about the realities of his ability to manage these important relationships between Google, users and contributors.
As I can see now here in HN, a lot of people idealize the idea of Open Source to mean the stereotype of the current zeitgeist good side, when it does not.
You may find that literally hundreds of good and/or services you currently use are the brainchild of someone or is being headed by someone who has many ideals you also disagree with. You might be left with nothing.
Eich's politics weren't all that important. There was a minor issue of whether it would cause trouble for Mozilla's gay employees (or employees who just felt strongly about it) and a big public relations problem, but the technical functioning of the company wouldn't be affected.
With Dropbox and Rice, I think there's a decent chance (not huge, but decent) that she's sitting down and giving everybody pointers for how they can most efficiently and effectively cooperate with the NSA. She's out of the administration but people like this never truly leave.
Same with contributing code to Firefox: of course my small patch for the bug affecting me personally looks like a big deal, but if i look at a big picture, my contribution isn't even comparable to what Brendan Eich did.
I don't say that dropping dropbox is a good thing, but i don't see how one can think logically that harassment of Eich was something for greater good, and this is a non-issue.
Unfortunately emotion is a strong thing, much stronger than logic.
Rice is a former National Security Advisor, and is looped into the political structure. So now, when the three letter agency of your choosing needs to have a frank conversation with someone at Dropbox, Condi will be a trusted conduit.