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I'm under no illusions that this is a totally new thought, but for me first with cryptocurrencies, then "AI", and now this, the fundamental issue that the bigge
by dwb 3y ago
I'm under no illusions that this is a totally new thought, but for me first with cryptocurrencies, then "AI", and now this, the fundamental issue that the biggest problems come back to is one of trust. Cryptocurrencies try to code around it, LLM boosters try to dazzle you into it, and the attacker here half-succeeded in laundering it. The most consequential (rightly or wrongly) technologists of our time are failing to properly think about trust. In this case, the failure was 100% understandable – I have all the sympathy for burnt-out and (almost always) unpaid open source developers. In each case, capital either lures people away from thinking about trust, or neglects and exploits people to the point that they're broken down.
- zvmaz 3y ago> The most consequential (rightly or wrongly) technologists of our time are failing to properly think about trust. It is implicit in your statement that you know some "proper" way to think about trust. If it is the case, please do share with us your thoughts on trust.
- cassianoleal 3y agoI didn't read it that way. I read it as in "actually giving it thought" as opposed to just barely acknowledging it or even at all. So, not so much a judgement of the quality of the thought but rather of its existence in the first place.
- dwb 3y agoYes, exactly this. I certainly don't claim to have any big answers, but at the same time I think these problems with trust were very clear very early on.
- o11c 3y agoTrust is a lot easier if real-life identities and real-life consequences are involved. Unfortunately the Open Source community has a long history of ties to anonymity culture, which is fundamentally untrustworthy.
- lifeisstillgood 3y agoSo I see software as a form of literacy. And we treat some literacy as “fun” (most books) yet privilege some literacy (law, a DMV policy manual). Laws are highly regulated. The DMV policy manual is, like most government day to day policy, run through “managers” who report to a elected official (ie it can be very well written and considered or made up on the good after a bad newspaper headline) Anyway I think I am saying there is likely to be a consolidation of FOSS - where we spend a fortune trying to bring it under some “approved and controlled” process. We can call that trust. I am not sure.
- concordDance 3y ago> The most consequential (rightly or wrongly) technologists of our time are failing to properly think about trust. Because that's an insanely hard problem that's outside our area of expertise. Consider how much money governments spend on all the red tape they add to increase trust. If there was naturally perfect objective alignment and trust I bet any infrastructure project would cost about 10% of what it does.
- dwb 3y agoIt is hard, but I think corporate open source users and entrepreneurial software developers have a moral responsibility to do more than I see being done in the areas that I listed. To be crystal clear, in this case where I don't think Lasse is at all culpable, the responsibility would be with the companies that profit from the work done on xz-utils.
- someguydave 3y agoA few minutes reflection on “who can I trust” would lead one to discard the extremely egalitarian ethos built up around open source software. But casting out meritless ankle-biters will immediately lead to being attacked as an unreconstructed egotist who needs to be hung from the neareat Code Of Conduct
- dwb 3y agoI have never seen a code of conduct that would prevent a polite rejection of whatever new suggestion or help to a project.
- someguydave 3y agoI have never seen a Code of Conduct that emphasized that the overriding goal of all social interactions under the domain of project is to deliver a quality product
- dwb 3y agoThe conversation is about trust in software systems, not some code of conduct grievance you want to wedge in here.
- someguydave 3y agoas I wrote originally, trust implies discernment which contradicts egalitarianism. Most codes of conduct take egalitarianism for granted. If one does not treat all comers equally, one will eventually be accused of violating someone’s code of conduct. In my book, software quality is much more important than emotions.
- dwb 3y agoI agree that codes of conduct generally promote egalitarianism. I like egalitarianism. I disagree that means that you just have to take everything that anyone throws at you. That's an absurd claim that I'm happy to leave here without further argument, for any readers to make up their minds on.
- twelfthnight 3y agoI think the biggest problems come from single points of failure. This wouldn't be as problematic if _everyone_ didn't use the same libraries. I guess you could argue that's similar to trust. In any case, I agree technologist aren't thinking about it because the only way to extract massive amount of wealth is by centralization/monopoly. Hard problem though, the appropriate amount of redundancy is hard to know.