5 ms·

But it was an extortion attempt

• smoldesu 3y ago
  Extortion implies an illegal abuse of power to obtain property. A cursory glace at the MIT license (which mitmproxy is licensed under) proves you wrong: > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software [...] It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal. They knew what they were getting into when they agreed to the license of the software they use. Hell, IBM could fork the project and sell the code back to the original developer, if they wanted. If they disagree with the license, well... caveat emptor: > 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.
• petee 3y ago
  Demands for output are met with request for compensation. Was there a threat made? No, so not extortion, by definition. If they said, "Since you asked I want money or ill plant a backdoor to ruin you", sure thats extortion, but that didn't happen.
• justinclift 3y ago
  Hmmm. Lets say you have a plumber install a sink at your house, and you're happy with it. If you later on decide you want something extra done to the sink, and the plumber says "oh, that's easy I can do that for you for free in a few weeks..." that would generally be a positive right? But lets say you wanted it done Real Soon Now instead. Like tomorrow or the next day. If the plumber's response was "Well, that can be done but I'll have to charge you our normal rates", that doesn't sound unreasonable does it? That's what this situation seems like to me. I'm not sure why you're thinking there's attempted extortion involved?
  • harrid 3y ago
    Bad analogy. There is reasonable expectation that security related bugs will be fixed in a reasonable time. And that it won't be a premium feature. Not legally of course as it's free etc. But that's commonly how the world works. A better analogy would be Microsoft asking for money to fix a security bug in Windows.
    • justinclift 3y ago
      Heh Heh Heh. On a tangent, that seems to be what Canonical is doing with Ubuntu subscriptions these days. :/
    • Skunkleton 3y ago
      Most Free Software projects are not professional. Time is spent on them for personal reasons. Those reasons may not align with users of that project, but that is just too bad. If you don't like it, all you are entitled to is the source code. > A better analogy would be Microsoft asking for money to fix a security bug in Windows. Microsoft has the exact same practice. If you want to tell Microsoft how to spend their time, you better be prepared to fork over lots of money.
      • harrid 3y ago
        Ok then how if Firefox would only release a critical Bugfix to paying users. Same thing - they would rightfully be called out on that.
        • Skunkleton 3y ago
          Firefox is maintained by paid employees. This is not the same thing. There is no talk of making this a paid only release anywhere. Please avoid strawmen.
          • harrid 3y ago
            That's irrelevant as they're not paid by the user.