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you see it as a failure of the tech industry to finance open source. I see it as a failure to provide security systems like this without the need for financial

• megraf 3y ago
  Considering the scale of ImageMagick- $629 is a very, very small amount of money considering the value that IM has generated.
  • CogitoCogito 3y ago
    Have you considered volunteering to pay for and run the signing infrastructure?
    • keepamovin 3y ago
      There's a better way to see this: once can make a statement about the principle of the necessity of having transactions to exchange value, but not have a particular demand for the offered good or service themselves. I think that's what's going on here, so it might be better to keep these seeming "gotcha" type questions, which are irrelevant, either out of the discussion, or at least remember how they are misplaced! :)
      • CogitoCogito 3y ago
        Mine wasn’t a “gotcha” question. If the poster’s answer is “no” (i.e. that they don’t want to pay for or run such a system), then maybe they should consider that the same applies to everyone else.
        • keepamovin 3y ago
          That's the definition of a "gotchat". Yes: problem solved, no issue. No: problem solved, no issue. Ha, gothca! Hahaha :) Thanks for the laugh, pal. I'm outta here fer now! :) ;p xx ;p
          • CogitoCogito 3y ago
            I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here, but I’m glad you could at least have a laugh.
            • keepamovin 3y ago
              Really? It means the way you defined it, there are only two possibilities, and both make you right. So it's a "gotcha", and it's false. Sorry for the typo! If that tripped you up I get it :)
              • CogitoCogito 3y ago
                I'm not really sure what your point is anymore. Earlier you wrote this: > There's a better way to see this: once can make a statement about the principle of the necessity of having transactions to exchange value, but not have a particular demand for the offered good or service themselves. I think that's what's going on here... You may think that's what's going on here, but I believe it's the opposite. Everyone involved has concluded that there is not enough value to the process of signing the installer. Those that concluded this are probably quite similar to you and me (except maybe that they know _more_ about the work and payoff involved) so if you ask yourself why _you_ wouldn't do it, you probably will know why others choose not to as well. Anyone who thinks this really is important is free to devote time and money to making it happen. Pointing out that it's worthy of doing to people involved in the project who have decided it's not worth doing isn't that helpful really. Better is to do some self-reflection and ask yourself why you might be wrong in your belief that it is a worthy endeavor considering those in the know have concluded the opposite. Regardless, I don't really see how it's a gotcha question or whatever.
  • kergonath 3y ago
    The problem is that available funding is not commensurate with value generated. And the value is in the hands of some companies that have very little incentive to give much of it to the upstream project.
  • midasuni 3y ago
    629 centss, Or 6 cents, is too much. It’s not the cost, it’s the walled garden. Same with iPhone development - at least when I looked at it - you couldn’t it’s download a Free sdk and get hacking, you had to apply and agree to all sorts of onerous legal restrictions. Compare that to the days of dos, where you could type “qbasic” and away you went
• keepamovin 3y ago
  Good point about the size of fees. However, I don’t mostly view the problem as the tech industry failing to fund open source. I think that framing overly emphasizes an existing problem, which is the perception that OSS is sort of a charity. This misperception only reinforces the negative sense of entitlement that people have towards open source. A couple of ways that the sense of entitlement manifests itself is the expectation that OSS should be free and, if money is involved, then it should be in the form of pay-what-you-want donations, or subscriptions, not tied to a specific exchange of value. The concept of funding can encompass this vagueness. The word ‘Transactions’, I think, is a more precise and correct term, as it more clearly relates to desired and sustainable goal of a defined and measured exchange of value. So instead of the issue being merely the providing of funding, rather, I see it as an issue with the open-source community not fully recognizing that it’s an industry in its own right. This lack of awareness hampers its ability to participate effectively in the marketplace, including financial transactions to sustain itself. On another note, I share your view that these fees are troublesome. While I agree that small fees can serve as proof of identity—verifying that the software indeed comes from the claimed source, which seems to be one main intent of signatures—I don’t understand why these fees have to be exorbitant. It seems more like artificial price inflation, perhaps even a form of cartel behavior.
• kenjackson 3y ago
  I have to pay money to access the Internet. That seems like a much bigger deal for a more core service than this. If we want to talk about financial gate keeping this isn’t in the first ten thousand items I in the list.