Meaning of protestware | Babel Free

Definitions

Software subverted to serve the ends of a political protest, for example by deleting files or displaying propaganda messages.

neologism, uncountable

Examples

“Commenting on the malicious code added to the “Vue-cli” application, GitHub user “nm17” said a continued expansion of protestware would erode public trust⟳ in open-source software.”

“In January, two other popular modules called colors and faker were intentionally sabotaged by their maintainer. Is protestware going to become⟳ a common problem?”

“In fact, what we've seen over the last⟳ week is something called “protestware”, and that is some damaging and non-damaging code put⟳ into open⟳ source projects, specifically focused on organizations in Russia and Belarus. Now, they are making a statement, and that falls under what we call⟳ “hacktivism”.”

“developers and project maintainers themselves sometimes engage⟳ in this activity as a form⟳ of protest⟳ or advocacy for their beliefs. This form⟳ of hijacking, often referred to as protestware is a concerning trend because it can be difficult for an organisation to recognise⟳ it before it’s too late.”

“The roots of protestware date⟳ back to the early days of computing. However, recent events in the Russo-Ukrainian war has^([sic]) sparked a new wave⟳ of protestware.”

CEFR level