3 ms·

As I pointed out in the mailing list, there has been practically no development on OO this year though.

mindcrime 10y ago
As I pointed out in the mailing list, there has been practically no development on OO this year though. And? I mean, yeah, it would be nice to have more cool new stuff coming out, but it's not like AOO owes the world anything. It's open source, it's volunteer driven. If people want more new features, more development, etc, then more people need to volunteer. If they don't, well... the world gets what it gets from the folks who are contributing.
- davidgerard 10y ago
  > it's not like AOO owes the world anything. It arguably owes its users not distributing security holes to them. Sitting on the vulnerability since October 2015, only revealing it in July because the reporter said they were going public with it ... there is no way that is responsible stewardship of end user software. In fact, I just checked - I went to www.openoffice.org, went all the way through to download, and it still gives me the vulnerable version and doesn't give me information that there's a vulnerability or a fix. You're an AOO dev. What do you see as your responsibility in this regard?
  - rectang 10y ago
    The OP explains what the ASF expects in this regard. "In the case of Apache OpenOffice, needing to disclose security vulnerabilities for which there is no mitigation in an update has become a serious issue. In responses to concerns raised in June, the PMC is currently tasked by the ASF Board to account for this inability and to provide a remedy. An indicator of the seriousness of the Board's concern is the PMC been requested to report to the Board every month, starting in August, rather than quarterly, the normal case. One option for remedy that must be considered is retirement of the project. The request is for the PMC's consideration among other possible options."
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    In the strictest sense, as a volunteer who gets paid nothing for participating in this, my responsibility is "nothing". In a sense related to my personal sense of commitment, I think it goes without saying that we want to ship secure software, all the time, every time and to fix security holes as soon they appear. But what we want and what we have the resources to do aren't always the same thing. In terms of the various security issues that have cropped up, I'd say that if we reach a point where we simply cannot ship a fix AND it's a serious vulnerability, then we have an obligation to inform users of the situation so they can make up their own minds what level of risk they are comfortable with.
    - rectang 10y ago
      Note that informing the user is not sufficient for an Apache project. If the project cannot respond effectively to security reports, it must retire. This is part of the ongoing discussion on the dev lists. The OP quotes Dennis, the OpenOffice Chair to this effect.

As I pointed out in the mailing list, there has been practically no development on OO this year though. And? I mean, yeah, it would be nice to have more cool new stuff coming out, but it's not like AOO owes the world anything. It's open source, it's volunteer driven. If people want more new features, more development, etc, then more people need to volunteer. If they don't, well... the world gets what it gets from the folks who are contributing.

davidgerard 10y ago
> it's not like AOO owes the world anything. It arguably owes its users not distributing security holes to them. Sitting on the vulnerability since October 2015, only revealing it in July because the reporter said they were going public with it ... there is no way that is responsible stewardship of end user software. In fact, I just checked - I went to www.openoffice.org, went all the way through to download, and it still gives me the vulnerable version and doesn't give me information that there's a vulnerability or a fix. You're an AOO dev. What do you see as your responsibility in this regard?
- rectang 10y ago
  The OP explains what the ASF expects in this regard. "In the case of Apache OpenOffice, needing to disclose security vulnerabilities for which there is no mitigation in an update has become a serious issue. In responses to concerns raised in June, the PMC is currently tasked by the ASF Board to account for this inability and to provide a remedy. An indicator of the seriousness of the Board's concern is the PMC been requested to report to the Board every month, starting in August, rather than quarterly, the normal case. One option for remedy that must be considered is retirement of the project. The request is for the PMC's consideration among other possible options."
- mindcrime 10y ago
  In the strictest sense, as a volunteer who gets paid nothing for participating in this, my responsibility is "nothing". In a sense related to my personal sense of commitment, I think it goes without saying that we want to ship secure software, all the time, every time and to fix security holes as soon they appear. But what we want and what we have the resources to do aren't always the same thing. In terms of the various security issues that have cropped up, I'd say that if we reach a point where we simply cannot ship a fix AND it's a serious vulnerability, then we have an obligation to inform users of the situation so they can make up their own minds what level of risk they are comfortable with.
  - rectang 10y ago
    Note that informing the user is not sufficient for an Apache project. If the project cannot respond effectively to security reports, it must retire. This is part of the ongoing discussion on the dev lists. The OP quotes Dennis, the OpenOffice Chair to this effect.