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Open source code now carries a moral maintenance obligation? Do we say the same thing about any large company that uses openssl or any other open source libs th

by lolsal 10y ago

Open source code now carries a moral maintenance obligation? Do we say the same thing about any large company that uses openssl or any other open source libs that people use or depend on? That doesn't seem fair or reasonable.

plange 10y ago
Not only moral, but mostly legal. Warranties are not included. So it's a bit lame to blame "a popular third party library". The OP was trying to say a company of Atlassians size should dedicate the resources to vet (and fix) those libraries if they use them for these purposes.
- lolsal 10y ago
  I don't think anyone is trying to shift blame, just to explain what happened. I am not affiliated with Atlassian so I'm only guessing.
  - plange 10y ago
    Sorry, i wasn't trying to imply they shifted blame. But atlassian does bare the legal&moral burden of securing their product here.
    - lolsal 10y ago
      I agree with you. I don't agree that they have a moral obligation to make pull requests to the open source library that had the issue. Hopefully they will, but there is no obligation there in my mind.
sithadmin 10y ago
>Open source code now carries a moral maintenance obligation? Many have always argued that it has. >Do we say the same thing about any large company that uses openssl or any other open source libs that people use or depend on? Many do. >That doesn't seem fair or reasonable. Many argue that any company that failing to contribute to the OSS projects they depend upon isn't fair or reasonable.
- lolsal 10y ago
  > Many have always argued that it has. Alright, I'm arguing that it doesn't. > Many do. shrug I don't. > Many argue that any company that failing to contribute to the OSS projects they depend upon isn't fair or reasonable. This sort of attitude bothers me. At this point the software is not really free in my opinion. I am not a lawyer :P Just my $0.02
  - plange 10y ago
    Nothing in life is free. Quality software doesn't create itself out of thin air (yet, if ever). That means someone has to make an investment. You don't have to invest in the upkeep of the foundation of your house, but if some bugs, say termites, were to sneak in you can't blame the original builders for the donated foundation. Please downvote for the bad analogy.
    - lolsal 10y ago
      I think of it like the Heartbleed vulnerability - was everyone affected to blame for the vulnerability? Was everyone simultaneously morally obligated to be contributing patches back to openssl? I don't think so.
      - geofft 10y ago
        Everyone affected was to blame for their own vulnerability, to the extent they relied on OpenSSL. I worked for a company that needed to push out an out-of-cycle patch for Heartbleed. We were building a virtualization product that included a OpenSSL and other free-software libraries in the core product, plus an entire Linux distro to support our install-this-on-dedicated-hardware product. We made the business decision that we could reuse Ubuntu and not develop our own operating system and control plane. Others, like Microsoft, made the decision to implement it all themselves. Others, like VMware, took a decision sort of in the middle. We got a significant amount of functionality for free - and a significant amount of risk for free. Whatever code worked for our needs, we could profit from. Whatever code introduced security vulnerabilities in our application (and it was not all upstream security vulnerabilities, since we intentionally designed our system to anticipate that local root exploits would be easy), we took responsibility for. That was part of saying that this was our product, and not just a shell script for building a similar product on your own.
eropple 10y ago
> Open source code now carries a moral maintenance obligation? Yes, and it always has and it can't be discharged. Pay-it-forward is the right thing to do. > Do we say the same thing about any large company that uses openssl or any other open source libs that people use or depend on? I certainly do. A red line, I-will-quit condition is and always has been "I won't participate in the development of private forks of open-source software" and I have at multiple employers gotten checks straight-up cut to open-source software maintainers. I have also entreated (and in two cases succeeded in convincing) maintainers to start up maintenance programs so we could pay them a yearly fee--because donations are way harder to push than support plans. And, in turn, I open-source useful tools[1][2][3], including major parts of my consulting business, because it, too, is the right thing to do. You should do likewise, because it is the decent and human thing to do. > That doesn't seem fair or reasonable. I consider not paying forward kindnesses paid to you way, way more unfair and unreasonable. [1] - https://github.com/bossmodecg https://github.com/bossmodecg [2] - https://github.com/eropple/auster https://github.com/eropple/auster [3] - https://github.com/eropple/cfer-provisioning https://github.com/eropple/cfer-provisioning
- lolsal 10y ago
  > Yes, and it always has and it can't be discharged. Pay-it-forward is the right thing to do. Interesting - it may be a nice thing to do, but I don't agree that there is any sort of obligation to the project just for using the project. > I certainly do. A red line, I-will-quit condition is and always has been "I won't participate in the development of private forks of open-source software" and I have at multiple employers gotten checks straight-up cut to open-source software maintainers. I have also entreated (and in two cases succeeded in convincing) maintainers to start up maintenance programs so we could pay them a yearly fee--because donations are way harder to push than support plans. I have also worked at companies that funded open source projects through donations or maintenance, but there was never a moral obligation there. It was more a method of risk management than altruism. > I consider not paying forward kindnesses paid to you way, way more unfair and unreasonable. Paying forward kindness and being morally obligated to maintain an open source library just because you use it are different things in my mind. It seems like being paid a kindness creates an obligation, which is not that nice. --- Interesting perspective even though I strongly disagree. I'll continue to use open source projects 'AS IS'[0] and I still wont feel morally obligated to maintain them. Similar to how I use linux/BSD and don't feel obligated to maintain the kernel. I'm certainly grateful of course, but I don't feel like there was any sort of contract/exchange between myself and the maintainers that creates an obligation on my part. [0] https://github.com/eropple/auster/blob/master/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/eropple/auster/blob/master/LICENSE.txt

by lolsal 10y ago

plange 10y ago

Not only moral, but mostly legal. Warranties are not included. So it's a bit lame to blame "a popular third party library". The OP was trying to say a company of Atlassians size should dedicate the resources to vet (and fix) those libraries if they use them for these purposes.

lolsal 10y ago
I don't think anyone is trying to shift blame, just to explain what happened. I am not affiliated with Atlassian so I'm only guessing.
- plange 10y ago
  Sorry, i wasn't trying to imply they shifted blame. But atlassian does bare the legal&moral burden of securing their product here.
  - lolsal 10y ago
    I agree with you. I don't agree that they have a moral obligation to make pull requests to the open source library that had the issue. Hopefully they will, but there is no obligation there in my mind.

sithadmin 10y ago

>Open source code now carries a moral maintenance obligation? Many have always argued that it has. >Do we say the same thing about any large company that uses openssl or any other open source libs that people use or depend on? Many do. >That doesn't seem fair or reasonable. Many argue that any company that failing to contribute to the OSS projects they depend upon isn't fair or reasonable.

lolsal 10y ago
> Many have always argued that it has. Alright, I'm arguing that it doesn't. > Many do. shrug I don't. > Many argue that any company that failing to contribute to the OSS projects they depend upon isn't fair or reasonable. This sort of attitude bothers me. At this point the software is not really free in my opinion. I am not a lawyer :P Just my $0.02
- plange 10y ago
  Nothing in life is free. Quality software doesn't create itself out of thin air (yet, if ever). That means someone has to make an investment. You don't have to invest in the upkeep of the foundation of your house, but if some bugs, say termites, were to sneak in you can't blame the original builders for the donated foundation. Please downvote for the bad analogy.
  - lolsal 10y ago
    I think of it like the Heartbleed vulnerability - was everyone affected to blame for the vulnerability? Was everyone simultaneously morally obligated to be contributing patches back to openssl? I don't think so.
    - geofft 10y ago
      Everyone affected was to blame for their own vulnerability, to the extent they relied on OpenSSL. I worked for a company that needed to push out an out-of-cycle patch for Heartbleed. We were building a virtualization product that included a OpenSSL and other free-software libraries in the core product, plus an entire Linux distro to support our install-this-on-dedicated-hardware product. We made the business decision that we could reuse Ubuntu and not develop our own operating system and control plane. Others, like Microsoft, made the decision to implement it all themselves. Others, like VMware, took a decision sort of in the middle. We got a significant amount of functionality for free - and a significant amount of risk for free. Whatever code worked for our needs, we could profit from. Whatever code introduced security vulnerabilities in our application (and it was not all upstream security vulnerabilities, since we intentionally designed our system to anticipate that local root exploits would be easy), we took responsibility for. That was part of saying that this was our product, and not just a shell script for building a similar product on your own.

eropple 10y ago

> Open source code now carries a moral maintenance obligation? Yes, and it always has and it can't be discharged. Pay-it-forward is the right thing to do. > Do we say the same thing about any large company that uses openssl or any other open source libs that people use or depend on? I certainly do. A red line, I-will-quit condition is and always has been "I won't participate in the development of private forks of open-source software" and I have at multiple employers gotten checks straight-up cut to open-source software maintainers. I have also entreated (and in two cases succeeded in convincing) maintainers to start up maintenance programs so we could pay them a yearly fee--because donations are way harder to push than support plans. And, in turn, I open-source useful tools[1][2][3], including major parts of my consulting business, because it, too, is the right thing to do. You should do likewise, because it is the decent and human thing to do. > That doesn't seem fair or reasonable. I consider not paying forward kindnesses paid to you way, way more unfair and unreasonable. [1] - https://github.com/bossmodecg https://github.com/bossmodecg [2] - https://github.com/eropple/auster https://github.com/eropple/auster [3] - https://github.com/eropple/cfer-provisioning https://github.com/eropple/cfer-provisioning

lolsal 10y ago
> Yes, and it always has and it can't be discharged. Pay-it-forward is the right thing to do. Interesting - it may be a nice thing to do, but I don't agree that there is any sort of obligation to the project just for using the project. > I certainly do. A red line, I-will-quit condition is and always has been "I won't participate in the development of private forks of open-source software" and I have at multiple employers gotten checks straight-up cut to open-source software maintainers. I have also entreated (and in two cases succeeded in convincing) maintainers to start up maintenance programs so we could pay them a yearly fee--because donations are way harder to push than support plans. I have also worked at companies that funded open source projects through donations or maintenance, but there was never a moral obligation there. It was more a method of risk management than altruism. > I consider not paying forward kindnesses paid to you way, way more unfair and unreasonable. Paying forward kindness and being morally obligated to maintain an open source library just because you use it are different things in my mind. It seems like being paid a kindness creates an obligation, which is not that nice. --- Interesting perspective even though I strongly disagree. I'll continue to use open source projects 'AS IS'[0] and I still wont feel morally obligated to maintain them. Similar to how I use linux/BSD and don't feel obligated to maintain the kernel. I'm certainly grateful of course, but I don't feel like there was any sort of contract/exchange between myself and the maintainers that creates an obligation on my part. [0] https://github.com/eropple/auster/blob/master/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/eropple/auster/blob/master/LICENSE.txt