to GitHub on Wednesday asking the Microsoft-owned code-sharing service to cancel its contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and set new ethical standards.
The contract puts GitHub at odds with the values of the open-source development community, its primary user base, the 55 signed developers wrote in the letter. They called on the company to set higher ethical standards for its business dealings and share those standards publicly. "At the core of the open source ethos is the idea of liberty," the developers wrote in the letter. "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."
GitHub did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter. But company CEO Nat Friedman has previously defended the contract, sayingThe company renewed its ICE contract in September. The deal provide an enterprise server license to the agency, which has been at the center of the Trump administration's controversial immigration policies, including the separation of families at the US border with Mexico.