Re: Excessively energy-consuming software considered malware?

[Ryan Sundberg <ryan@arctype.co>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2656 bytes --]

I'd prefer to steer clear of passing value judgments on individual packages of free software as a policy. All of the tools we provide can be used for good or evil. It is up to the user to bear responsibility for their own actions with the software they choose to build.

Sincerely,

Ryan Sundberg


-------- Original Message --------
From: Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be>
Sent: February 20, 2022 2:05:44 AM PST
To: guix-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Excessively energy-consuming software considered malware?

[CC'ing some people in Guix I know to be interested in cryptocurrency]

Hi,

Guix packages some cryptocurrency(*) software (bitcoin, monero, some
people have been working on packaging ethereum).  So far, it only
appeared that clients are being packaged.

More recently, a ‘miner’ for monero has been packaged
(https://issues.guix.gnu.org/54068).  At least for bitcoin, mining is
known to consume an absurd amount of energy (the footprint of a whole
country, and 1 Bitcoin transaction is said to be equivalent to 735121
Visa transactions)[1].

Guix has a policy against including malware[citation needed 2], and
furthering global warming[3] (and energy prices[4], if [3] is not bad
enough for you) seems rather bad behaviour to me.

Would these miners be considered malware in Guix?

TBC I'm not making a case for rejecting all inefficient software, only
software that is absurdly inefficient by design -- a, say, math library
not using vectorised operations might be quite a bit less inefficient
than a math library using vectorised operations, but that can be
resolved with some programming work and it would seem to pale in
contrast to the mining situation.

Greetings,
Maxime.

(*) For this e-mail, I'm only considering cryptocurrencies based on
some ‘mining’ system and assuming that monero and ethereum have the
same energy problems as Bitcoin, although possibly with a smaller
constant factor.

[1]: See, e.g.,
https://www.nytimesn7cgmftshazwhfgzm37qxb44r64ytbb2dj3x62d2lljsciiyd.onion/2021/03/09/business/dealbook/bitcoin-climate-change.html
/
https://www.nytimesn7cgmftshazwhfgzm37qxb44r64ytbb2dj3x62d2lljsciiyd.onion/2021/03/09/business/dealbook/bitcoin-climate-change.html

[2]: zero hits when searching for "malware" in the manual!

[3]: I'm sure you can find some sources about destabilising climate
systems, species extinctions, fish getting third-degree burns, island
nations gradually disappearing because of raising sea levels ...

[3]: I'm not sure actually that mining would be (partially) responsible
for increasing energy prices but it seems plausible to me.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3344 bytes --]