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Not only were they a co-maintainer, but if you're relying on code review to ensure correctness and security, you've already lost the battle. Code reviews are m
by jghn 3y ago
Not only were they a co-maintainer, but if you're relying on code review to ensure correctness and security, you've already lost the battle.
Code reviews are more about education and de-siloing.
- ajross 3y agoYeah, no. Code review isn't going to catch all bugs, but it does catch a ton as long as it's done sincerely and well. You'd have an extremely hard time trying to sneak code with a syntax problem like this into Linux, for example. The community values and rewards nitpickery and fine-toothing, and for good reason.
- barfbagginus 3y agoAssume your co-contibutor was not always malicious. They passed all past vetting efforts. But their motives have changed due to a secret cause - they're being extorted by a criminal holding seriously damaging material over them and their family. What other controls would you use to prevent them contributing malicious commits, besides closely reading your co-contributor's commits, and disallowing noisy commits that you don't fully comprehend and vouch for? We assume that it'd be unethical to surveil the contributor well enough to detect the change in alliance. That would violate their privacy. Is it reasonable to say, "game over, I lose" in that context? To that end, we might argue that an embedded mole will always think of ways to fool our review, so this kind of compromise is fatal. But let's assume it's not game over. You have an advanced persistent threat, and you've got a chance to defeat them. What, besides reviewing the code, do you do?
- malkia 3y agoCorporative espionage comes to mind....
- edflsafoiewq 3y agoIn open source, code review is absolutely about correctness and security.
- ted_dunning 3y agoIn some open source, this is true. In an awful lot of open source, code review is a vanishingly rare commodity because there aren't enough committers left.