4 ms·

This argument confuses and saddens me. If I give away free food which I and others know to be contaminated with foodborne pathogens, is it wrong for them to cri

This argument confuses and saddens me. If I give away free food which I and others know to be contaminated with foodborne pathogens, is it wrong for them to criticize it? What if I don't know, but I obtain it from a supplier which is known to persistently sell contaminated food? What if I put up a sign in very small print saying that the food comes with no warranty whatsoever and all consumers eat it at their own risk? What if I put up a large sign? What if instead of pathogens, I intentionally add lead-based decorations on the basis that they look and taste good, even if they may be slightly carcinogenic if consumed? What if I clearly state that the decorations must be removed before eating? At what point do I acquire moral culpability for the harms suffered by my customers? These sorts of comments seem to imply that there is no problem with me doing any of this, as long as the food is provided for free and consumers have the choice to not take the food. I would vehemently disagree with that claim. Uninformed choice is not a true choice, and even informed choice cannot excuse certain foreseeable harms.

Myrmornis 7y ago
There's a difference between leaving poisoned but attractive looking food on a sidewalk, and putting code on github. You're losing perspective regarding open source programming -- it's supposed to be fun. There seems to be a political / ideological dimension to this disagreement. Your nanny state would be correct to punish someone for leaving poisoned food out. But we don't need your nanny state in open source software. People can choose to use or not use free software. Anyone whose software has life or death implications would indeed be culpable if they make those choices rashly. But the responsibility does not lie with the maintainer.
kelnos 7y ago
That is an entirely specious analogy. This code will not cause someone to get sick or die. And "contaminated" vs. "not contaminated" is a binary result for food -- one is the case and one is not the case. With code, there's nearly always room for reasonable disagreement as to what is the right/good or wrong/bad way to do things, and often people argue over two (or more) perfectly fine ways of doing things that just come down to a matter of style.
- smt88 7y ago
  I'm not sure if this will change your mind, but in the Rust world, there's a concept of "unsafe" code that can lead to vulnerabilities. The difference here is that a code consumer can check a Rust project for unsafe code, whereas a food consumer cannot check for unsafe contaminants.
  - phkahler 7y ago
    If it's OK to demand a project use only Rust and not unsafe Rust, then it must be OK to bitch at every C or C++ project and demand they rewrite in Rust. If that sounds absurd, that's because it's supposed to.
    - smt88 7y ago
      That's not really an apples-to-apples comparison. From what I can tell, actix was using unsafe code to improve benchmark performance, not because safe code was extra work. That's fine, but it was misleadingly marketed as more than a toy project, and it shouldn't have been. Further, rewriting a project is very different from just making different coding decisions when maintaining an existing project. I still think the actix critics are showing how irresponsible they are for blindly using a library without researching it well.
- root_axis 7y ago
  Indeed. Not to mention, embracing this analogy means literally all food is poison because every piece of software has critical security vulnerabilities whether they are widely known or as of yet discovered.
- torstenvl 7y ago
  Are you seriously claiming that food contamination is a "binary" thing? That it's impossible for food to be only a little contaminated, at a level that won't make you "get sick and die?" Its common knowledge that a certain amount of food contamination is considered safe. And, although specifics are not generally common knowledge, it's easy enough to find that, e.g., the FDA views < 100 ppb of lead in candy as safe. I don't think hyperbole is helpful to this conversation.
didibus 7y ago
I mean, the license state: > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. So if some random person on the side of the street gave away browny, and had a sign like that, I'd do a bit of personal investigating first before eating it, like looking at the ingredients, asking for expiry, and all that. Which you can do for open source software, by just looking at the source code.

Myrmornis 7y ago

There's a difference between leaving poisoned but attractive looking food on a sidewalk, and putting code on github. You're losing perspective regarding open source programming -- it's supposed to be fun. There seems to be a political / ideological dimension to this disagreement. Your nanny state would be correct to punish someone for leaving poisoned food out. But we don't need your nanny state in open source software. People can choose to use or not use free software. Anyone whose software has life or death implications would indeed be culpable if they make those choices rashly. But the responsibility does not lie with the maintainer.

kelnos 7y ago

That is an entirely specious analogy. This code will not cause someone to get sick or die. And "contaminated" vs. "not contaminated" is a binary result for food -- one is the case and one is not the case. With code, there's nearly always room for reasonable disagreement as to what is the right/good or wrong/bad way to do things, and often people argue over two (or more) perfectly fine ways of doing things that just come down to a matter of style.

smt88 7y ago
I'm not sure if this will change your mind, but in the Rust world, there's a concept of "unsafe" code that can lead to vulnerabilities. The difference here is that a code consumer can check a Rust project for unsafe code, whereas a food consumer cannot check for unsafe contaminants.
- phkahler 7y ago
  If it's OK to demand a project use only Rust and not unsafe Rust, then it must be OK to bitch at every C or C++ project and demand they rewrite in Rust. If that sounds absurd, that's because it's supposed to.
  - smt88 7y ago
    That's not really an apples-to-apples comparison. From what I can tell, actix was using unsafe code to improve benchmark performance, not because safe code was extra work. That's fine, but it was misleadingly marketed as more than a toy project, and it shouldn't have been. Further, rewriting a project is very different from just making different coding decisions when maintaining an existing project. I still think the actix critics are showing how irresponsible they are for blindly using a library without researching it well.
root_axis 7y ago
Indeed. Not to mention, embracing this analogy means literally all food is poison because every piece of software has critical security vulnerabilities whether they are widely known or as of yet discovered.
torstenvl 7y ago
Are you seriously claiming that food contamination is a "binary" thing? That it's impossible for food to be only a little contaminated, at a level that won't make you "get sick and die?" Its common knowledge that a certain amount of food contamination is considered safe. And, although specifics are not generally common knowledge, it's easy enough to find that, e.g., the FDA views < 100 ppb of lead in candy as safe. I don't think hyperbole is helpful to this conversation.

didibus 7y ago

I mean, the license state: > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. So if some random person on the side of the street gave away browny, and had a sign like that, I'd do a bit of personal investigating first before eating it, like looking at the ingredients, asking for expiry, and all that. Which you can do for open source software, by just looking at the source code.