alt Hacker NewsOne comment really nails the problem with this sort of thing:
" People in Western countries don't realize how bad the situation on the ground actually is¹; random Ukrainian flags showing up on your work monitor can result in severe problems for you (like losing you job, or worse), especially if you work in the government sector. If they show up on your laptop in a random cafe or an airport, you might very well get a beating from one of many "war heroes" that walk around the cities these days.
No, the government sector doesn't just make missiles and bombs, it also covers schools, hospitals, many other things."
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Note that xsnow already displayed such flags randomly, and this just changes the probability.
So, if you're in a location where displaying the Ukraine flag will get you shot, 1) it was already not safe to run xsnow, and 2) much more importantly, I genuinely hope you can successfully escape your situation.
When the war started, Europeans were forcing famous Russians living in Europe to denounce their government's evils. For example an opera house demanded a Russian opera singer to say something against the regime or be "blacklisted".
As if it's so fucking easy to denounce a dictator who has murderous tendencies and who rules your homeland, as if it's so easy to insult him, and then what, not be able to return home and see your friends and family until that dictator is defeated?
I found those demands so unthinkingly heartless, it's responding to tyranny with your own tyranny...
Slackware-current upgraded xsnow to the latest version in June 20th but applied a patch from ALT Linux that removed the protestware bits just because of this reason. I support this.
They don’t have to use the software. It’s such a non issue. Xsnow is closer to art than critical software, you can easily ditch it
That's also a good argument for completely removing rainbow flags from everything, in more countries than one. Will we see that happening?
Yeah, but is open source so if some of the extra rare "good Russians" do not like this super small chance of getting hurt then they diserve their regime, they will finally protest when the regime will affect their own lives but stay silent while other people get genocided.
I do not own any popular software to put anti Zed/Putin shit in it so sorry I can inconvinience those super rare good Russians.
I thought it would talk about the situation on the ground in Ukraine, but no...
Will anyone think of the poor Russians just trying to go on with their lives?
Do people in Russia realize how bad the situation is on the ground for Ukrainians?
>No, the government sector doesn't just make missiles and bombs, it also covers schools, hospitals, many other things.
Schools forming future soldiers, hospitals healing soldiers so that they can go back to the front...
The naivety here is astounding. The commenter, those who agree with him and all "normal" Russians would benefit to read Hannah Arendt:
https://philosophybreak.com/articles/hannah-arendt-on-standi...
Cue the famous quote...
This sounds like a you problem. Suppose you have software that shows famous faces and quotes as a screensaver would you make it by default not show anyone of color so it would be acceptable in rural Oklahoma or make it show no women so it would be acceptable in Iran?
Wouldn't that be.. acceptable, if not entirely the point? Raising awareness? Some rando getting arrested for a screensaver they didn't know contained a flag is pretty efficient propaganda and would likely turn at least the involved people and their inner circles? It might not be the point but I doubt they'd be disappointed
How is this an issue? Xsnow is a novelty. You have to make two decisions: the first to still be using Xorg at all, the second to install the application itself which is essentially a gag screensaver.
The idea that some govt employee would get fired for this is extremely far fetched.
And that's not even so bad compared to what would happen to somebody in occupied Ukraine: they would be sent to "the basement." That's the euphemism for the local torture chamber, outside of which they deposit the dead bodies of the tortured to let everybody in the area know what happens if they do something like speak Ukrainian.