Please elaborate.

They’re suggesting it is or might become a CCP Trojan horse

Curiously, there is a similar tool made by GCHQ (UK's intelligence) https://github.com/gchq/CyberChef which I don't use neither because of trust issues (even though it's open source)

In that case, wouldn’t it make sense to use an English name and a fake profile picture of a white male? These 2 things are one click away. If I were trying to spread malware, I wouldn’t use a chinese name!

Exactly. This is just reactionary fear-mongering. Once you start thinking about it a bit more, it completely falls apart: - what about expats living in China? - what about Chinese citizens living abroad? - what about Chinese born citizens that have switch nationalities?

Again, the point I’m making is that we’re even entertaining the discussion because of the target country.

What's so bad about the developer living in China?

OP thinks it’s ok to discriminate if China-x is the subject of discrimination, or watches too much anti-CN fear porn which has normalized this type of behavior.

And yet... the repo has no source code, posted a github link to HN crowd that expects an a github link to actually be some sort of open source.

This is certainly not the typical "Show HN look at what I've done" post. I'm not accusing the OP of being malicious, but also caution is advised (as always).

I’m sure everyone will make the same type of remarks and take the same kinds of precautions the next time a closed-source project from someone in SanFran gets posted here.

Let’s not dance around the topic, the whole “take head” thread has to do with CN, not because it’s closed source else he may have mentioned it, but he didn’t.

I don't know if we read the same HN, but I read the complaints about something not being open source (or not being *true* open source) all the time. JoeFromSanFran is certainly not exempt from those issues. Nothing to do with where the author comes from.

You're implying that the problem is exclusively because of country of origin. But my comment did not even mention that and was only about the software not being open source, while at the same time a link posted was github link.

So why not post a link to a website? Or app store? Why github?

I don’t know what’s confusing. You’re replying to a post which references a parent post that doesn’t mention open source and is fond of everything until Parent learns OP is living in China.

> And the developer lives in...China. Hard pass.

This isn’t complex. Parent is rejecting OP’s work because he’s from China, not because it’s closed source, otherwise he would have mentioned it, he didn’t and now you’re acting as though _you_ mentioning open source should also somehow apply to OP?

I’m referring specifically to OP, not sure why you’re muddying the waters with “well not all HN posts say x,y”.

My comment actually added information (not being OS while posting a github link), to a previous China being hard pass comment.

While I agree that being from China is not problem, you continue harping on with it and completely disregard any discussion on my comment. Yes, this is really not complex.

I don’t know what clarifications are needed or why you felt the need to reply “yes but” to a “racism is bad, don’t do it” comment, it’s not a good look.

It’s kind of irrelevant that Open > close source. Many other comments have pointed this out, yours included but the issue at hand here is the remarks regarding OPs nationality/origin. If you want your ideas validated there are tons of comments in this thread doing so, you don’t need me to agree with it. I personally prefer OS, but don’t have any issues with closed source software. However, that’s not the issue at hand.

Comments like these and follow-ups like “yeah but actually it’s closed source”, that don’t immediately call out racism, end up normalizing this type of behavior which is not acceptable.

Would you also have sidestepped the obvious racism had OP been from Africa?

Say yes to OS software and no to racism, it shouldn't need to be said that ignoring racist remarks and/or glossing over them like they aren’t there promotes/enables that behavior.

There’s nothing bad faith about calling someone out for being a bigot but I agree with your sentiment that there’s probably not much left to discuss.

As an aside, is it really so hard to ask not to get bombarded with state department red scare propaganda anytime anything CN pops up? OP happens to be from CN, shares his work, and CPC comments are made.

There’s a serious lack of empathy around these parts and there really doesn’t need to be.