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> Even if the author legitimately didn't mean to do harm, and was acting in good faith, he should never (or at least, for a very very long time) be trusted I d

> Even if the author legitimately didn't mean to do harm, and was acting in good faith, he should never (or at least, for a very very long time) be trusted I disagree. Let people learn from their mistakes. > ... to contribute to software that isn't subject to someone else's review. That's hard to do when it is the author's own software. This "someone else must be lord and master" solution often doesn't apply to reality. Also, I've seen entire companies full of bosses managing people who "are not to be trusted" to do the right thing eventually end up doing the worst possible evil. Let the author learn, and move on. > He knowingly merged _malware_ into his software and then did the minimum amount of plausible deniability Or he asked his most active users, and they said it was fine as long as I can turn it off. Who knows... To assign any intent other than to make some money would be assuming a lot of facts that are not in evidence. The good guys won on this. Let's move on to actual problems instead of punishing someone for learning.

roywiggins 5y ago
Maybe the best way for the author to learn from his mistake is to get yelled at and the project forked away from him. Like, I dunno, but if someone decides to feed my dog a KitKat, I probably wouldn't trust them around my dog anymore, you know? Yeah, they've learned their lesson about dogs and chocolate, but what other stuff don't they realize?
- indymike 5y ago
  > Maybe the best way for the author to learn from his mistake is to get yelled at and the project forked away from him. If you feel like that is appropriate, you could do that. I'm just glad the author removed the malware, and hope he's able to find a way to make money that doesn't involve a commercial botnet.
domador 5y ago
> Let people learn from their mistakes. I'm interested in finding out to what degree you hold this viewpoint. How severe do the negative consequences of an action have to be where you would switch from saying "let them learn from their mistakes" to "we can't trust them again". (I'm honestly interested in knowing, this isn't just a rhetorical statement.)
- indymike 5y ago
  If a crime has been committed is one such line, and were the author to do this kind of stuff repeatedly, there's another such line there. But if we hang everyone on the first offense, there will be no one left to hang anyone.
  - domador 5y ago
    I wouldn't necessarily "hang" a first-time offender, but I'd definitely be wary, and cautious of how much I'll trust them in the future. Personally, I'm not a fan of making statements that say "I'll never again buy/use such-and-such a service or product". I might be willing to consider using their software again in the future. (I'm speaking in the context of this argument, since I've never actually used ImageGlass.) Regarding crime, there a lot of behaviors that aren't legally defined as crimes, but are still objectionable (sometimes very). As such, there is no court to prosecute them with the legal system's presumably objective processes, so it's up to the general public to make our own assessments. Finally, I'm curious as to your level of tolerance to questionable, unexpected behavior by software developers. Maybe not this one, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were certain actions by software developers where you wouldn't tolerate even a single offense. In any case, our differences regarding tolerance to questionable behavior is why we're all discussing this incident anyway.

roywiggins 5y ago

Maybe the best way for the author to learn from his mistake is to get yelled at and the project forked away from him. Like, I dunno, but if someone decides to feed my dog a KitKat, I probably wouldn't trust them around my dog anymore, you know? Yeah, they've learned their lesson about dogs and chocolate, but what other stuff don't they realize?

indymike 5y ago
> Maybe the best way for the author to learn from his mistake is to get yelled at and the project forked away from him. If you feel like that is appropriate, you could do that. I'm just glad the author removed the malware, and hope he's able to find a way to make money that doesn't involve a commercial botnet.

domador 5y ago

> Let people learn from their mistakes. I'm interested in finding out to what degree you hold this viewpoint. How severe do the negative consequences of an action have to be where you would switch from saying "let them learn from their mistakes" to "we can't trust them again". (I'm honestly interested in knowing, this isn't just a rhetorical statement.)

indymike 5y ago
If a crime has been committed is one such line, and were the author to do this kind of stuff repeatedly, there's another such line there. But if we hang everyone on the first offense, there will be no one left to hang anyone.
- domador 5y ago
  I wouldn't necessarily "hang" a first-time offender, but I'd definitely be wary, and cautious of how much I'll trust them in the future. Personally, I'm not a fan of making statements that say "I'll never again buy/use such-and-such a service or product". I might be willing to consider using their software again in the future. (I'm speaking in the context of this argument, since I've never actually used ImageGlass.) Regarding crime, there a lot of behaviors that aren't legally defined as crimes, but are still objectionable (sometimes very). As such, there is no court to prosecute them with the legal system's presumably objective processes, so it's up to the general public to make our own assessments. Finally, I'm curious as to your level of tolerance to questionable, unexpected behavior by software developers. Maybe not this one, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were certain actions by software developers where you wouldn't tolerate even a single offense. In any case, our differences regarding tolerance to questionable behavior is why we're all discussing this incident anyway.