3 ms·

> "It's not a perfect solution" Is it a solution at all? Say Oracle offer Lasse Collin $200k for maintaining xz but he doesn't want to work for Oracle so he re

> "It's not a perfect solution" Is it a solution at all? Say Oracle offer Lasse Collin $200k for maintaining xz but he doesn't want to work for Oracle so he refuses, then what? Amazon offer Lasse $200k but they require fulltime work on other open source packages which he isn't experienced with or interested in, so he refuses, then what? Google employ someone else for $200k but they can't force Lasse Collin to hand over commit rights to xz to Google, or force him to work with a fulltime Google employee pestering with many constant changes trying to justify their job, and they can't force Debian to accept a new Google fork of xz, so then what? And NetFlix, Microsoft, Facebook, Uber, they can't all employ an xz maintainer, xz doesn't need that many people, but if they just employ 'open source maintainers' scattering their attention over all kinds of random projects they have no prior experience with, how would they catch this kind of subtle multi-pronged long-term attack on some low-attention, slow moving, project? Google already employ a very capable security team who find issues in all kinds of projects and publicise them, they didn't find this one. Is it likely this attack could have made its way into ChromeOS and Android if it wasn't noticed now, or would Google have noticed it? > "1) don't make everyone so mad that everyone on the Internet asks for you to be fired" So it's a sinecure position, doing nothing is the safest thing? > "and 2) name a suitable replacement when you're ready to move on" How could Lasse Collin have named a more suitable replacement than someone who seemed technically capable, interested in the project, and motivated to work on some of the boring details like the build system and tests and didn't seem to be doing it for the hype of saying "I improved compression by 10%" for their resume? Are they needing to be skilled in hiring and recruitment now?

coldpie 3y ago
I think you've misunderstood my suggestion. I said the job has two responsibilities. No more. You added a bunch of other responsibilities, I'm saying those wouldn't be allowed. It would be in the employment agreement that is purely payment for doing the maintainership tasks they were already doing. It would be a culture expectation that the company not apply pressure on maintainers. > but if they just employ 'open source maintainers' scattering their attention over all kinds of random projects they have no prior experience with They would pay the people who are doing the work now. Under this hypothetical, one of the Big Companies would have hired Lasse as the xz maintainer, for example. His job responsibilities are to maintain xz as he had been doing, and identify a successor when he's ready to move on. Nothing else. > So it's a sinecure position, doing nothing is the safest thing? No. Not doing the maintenance tasks would make everyone mad, violating one of the two job responsibilities. > How could Lasse Collin have named a more suitable replacement than someone who seemed technically capable, interested in the project, and motivated to work on [it] Lasse would suggest Tan as a suitable replacement. Big Company's hiring pipeline would approach Tan and start the hiring process (in person interviews, tax docs, etc etc). At some point they would realize Tan isn't a real person and not hire him. Or, the adversary would have to put up "a body" behind the profile to keep up the act, which is a much higher bar to clear than what actually happened.
- jodrellblank 3y ago
  Leaving aside issues of how it could work, Lasse Collin wasn't the one who saw this attack and stopped it so how would paying him have helped against this attack? > "Lasse would suggest Tan as a suitable replacement. Big Company's hiring pipeline would approach Tan and start the hiring process (in person interviews, tax docs, etc etc). At some point they would realize Tan isn't a real person and not hire him" What if they find that Tan is a real person but he doesn't want to work for Amazon or legally can't (This is before knowing of his commits being malicious, we're assuming he's a fake profile but he could be a real person being blackmailed)? Collin can't leave? Collin has to pick someone else out of a candidate pool of people he's never heard of? Same question if they find Tan isn't a real person - what then; is there an obligation to review all of Tan's historical commits? Just committing under a pseudonym or pen name isn't a crime, is it? Would the new maintainer be obliged to review all historic commits or audit the codebase or anything? Would Amazon want their money back from Lasse once it became clear that he had let a bad actor commit changes which opened a serious security hole during his tenure as maintainer? > "No. Not doing the maintenance tasks would make everyone mad, violating one of the two job responsibilities." What he was doing already was apparently ignoring issues for months and making people like Jigar Kumar annoyed. Which is fine for a volunteer thing. If "Jigar Kumar" is a sock-puppet, nobody knew that at the time of their posts; Lasse Collins' hypothetical employer wouldn't have known and would surely be on his case about paying him lots of money for maintenance while complaints are flowing on the project's public mailing list, right? Either they're paying him to do what he was doing before (which involved apparently ignoring work and making some people mad) or they're paying him to do more than he was doing before (which is not what you said). It doesn't seem like it would work - but if it did work it doesn't seem like it would have helped against this attack?
  - coldpie 3y ago
    > Lasse Collin wasn't the one who saw this attack and stopped it so how would paying him have helped against this attack? Well, there's a few issues I'm trying to target. I'm trying to work backwards from "how do we stop bad actor Tan from getting maintainer access to the project?" Creating an identify-verified relationship (employment) is a good fit for that, I think. And it nicely solves some other related issues with the current volunteer maintainership model. Lasse may not have felt the strong pressure/health issues if he was being paid to do the work. Or, if he was feeling burnt out, he may have felt more comfortable passing the torch earlier if there was a clear framework to do so, backed by an entity that can do some of the heavy lifting of naming/validating a successor. > What if they find that Tan is a real person but he doesn't want to work for Amazon or legally can't I think this would be a fairly rare occurrence, but it's one I called out as a potential problem in my original post, yeah ("smaller pool of possible maintainers"). If there isn't a clear successor, I think the maintainer could inform the Big Company that they'd like to move on in the next year or two, and Big Company could maybe find an internal engineer who wants to take over the role. Or maybe this more formal sponsored-maintainership arrangement would create incentives for outside contributors to aim for those positions, so there's more often someone waiting to take over (and then be verified by Big Company's hiring process). > is there an obligation [for the maintainer] to review all of Tan's historical commits? Would the new maintainer be obliged to review all historic commits or audit the codebase or anything? Would Amazon [fire] Lasse once it became clear that he had let a bad actor commit changes which opened a serious security hole during his tenure as maintainer? (I tweaked your questions a tiny bit to rephrase them as I interpreted them. I think the spirit of your questions was kept, I apologize if not.) If these tasks fall under the "don't make everyone mad" job responsibility, then yes. If not, then no, to all of these. There are no obligations other than the two I mentioned: don't piss off the community and help name a successor. It's up to the project's community to decide if the maintainer is not meeting their obligations, not the sponsoring Big Company. > What he was doing already was apparently ignoring issues for months and making people like Jigar Kumar annoyed. I'm not sure. It seems like Kumar was a bad actor. Was there actually a real maintenance issue? If so, maybe it could have been avoided in the first place by the sponsorship arrangement, like I mentioned at the top of this reply. Or, the community could raise the problem to Big Company, who can do the work of verifying that there is a problem and working with the maintainer to resolve it. Instead what happened here, which was for one burned out guy deciding to hand the keys over to some email address.

coldpie 3y ago

I think you've misunderstood my suggestion. I said the job has two responsibilities. No more. You added a bunch of other responsibilities, I'm saying those wouldn't be allowed. It would be in the employment agreement that is purely payment for doing the maintainership tasks they were already doing. It would be a culture expectation that the company not apply pressure on maintainers. > but if they just employ 'open source maintainers' scattering their attention over all kinds of random projects they have no prior experience with They would pay the people who are doing the work now. Under this hypothetical, one of the Big Companies would have hired Lasse as the xz maintainer, for example. His job responsibilities are to maintain xz as he had been doing, and identify a successor when he's ready to move on. Nothing else. > So it's a sinecure position, doing nothing is the safest thing? No. Not doing the maintenance tasks would make everyone mad, violating one of the two job responsibilities. > How could Lasse Collin have named a more suitable replacement than someone who seemed technically capable, interested in the project, and motivated to work on [it] Lasse would suggest Tan as a suitable replacement. Big Company's hiring pipeline would approach Tan and start the hiring process (in person interviews, tax docs, etc etc). At some point they would realize Tan isn't a real person and not hire him. Or, the adversary would have to put up "a body" behind the profile to keep up the act, which is a much higher bar to clear than what actually happened.

jodrellblank 3y ago
Leaving aside issues of how it could work, Lasse Collin wasn't the one who saw this attack and stopped it so how would paying him have helped against this attack? > "Lasse would suggest Tan as a suitable replacement. Big Company's hiring pipeline would approach Tan and start the hiring process (in person interviews, tax docs, etc etc). At some point they would realize Tan isn't a real person and not hire him" What if they find that Tan is a real person but he doesn't want to work for Amazon or legally can't (This is before knowing of his commits being malicious, we're assuming he's a fake profile but he could be a real person being blackmailed)? Collin can't leave? Collin has to pick someone else out of a candidate pool of people he's never heard of? Same question if they find Tan isn't a real person - what then; is there an obligation to review all of Tan's historical commits? Just committing under a pseudonym or pen name isn't a crime, is it? Would the new maintainer be obliged to review all historic commits or audit the codebase or anything? Would Amazon want their money back from Lasse once it became clear that he had let a bad actor commit changes which opened a serious security hole during his tenure as maintainer? > "No. Not doing the maintenance tasks would make everyone mad, violating one of the two job responsibilities." What he was doing already was apparently ignoring issues for months and making people like Jigar Kumar annoyed. Which is fine for a volunteer thing. If "Jigar Kumar" is a sock-puppet, nobody knew that at the time of their posts; Lasse Collins' hypothetical employer wouldn't have known and would surely be on his case about paying him lots of money for maintenance while complaints are flowing on the project's public mailing list, right? Either they're paying him to do what he was doing before (which involved apparently ignoring work and making some people mad) or they're paying him to do more than he was doing before (which is not what you said). It doesn't seem like it would work - but if it did work it doesn't seem like it would have helped against this attack?
- coldpie 3y ago
  > Lasse Collin wasn't the one who saw this attack and stopped it so how would paying him have helped against this attack? Well, there's a few issues I'm trying to target. I'm trying to work backwards from "how do we stop bad actor Tan from getting maintainer access to the project?" Creating an identify-verified relationship (employment) is a good fit for that, I think. And it nicely solves some other related issues with the current volunteer maintainership model. Lasse may not have felt the strong pressure/health issues if he was being paid to do the work. Or, if he was feeling burnt out, he may have felt more comfortable passing the torch earlier if there was a clear framework to do so, backed by an entity that can do some of the heavy lifting of naming/validating a successor. > What if they find that Tan is a real person but he doesn't want to work for Amazon or legally can't I think this would be a fairly rare occurrence, but it's one I called out as a potential problem in my original post, yeah ("smaller pool of possible maintainers"). If there isn't a clear successor, I think the maintainer could inform the Big Company that they'd like to move on in the next year or two, and Big Company could maybe find an internal engineer who wants to take over the role. Or maybe this more formal sponsored-maintainership arrangement would create incentives for outside contributors to aim for those positions, so there's more often someone waiting to take over (and then be verified by Big Company's hiring process). > is there an obligation [for the maintainer] to review all of Tan's historical commits? Would the new maintainer be obliged to review all historic commits or audit the codebase or anything? Would Amazon [fire] Lasse once it became clear that he had let a bad actor commit changes which opened a serious security hole during his tenure as maintainer? (I tweaked your questions a tiny bit to rephrase them as I interpreted them. I think the spirit of your questions was kept, I apologize if not.) If these tasks fall under the "don't make everyone mad" job responsibility, then yes. If not, then no, to all of these. There are no obligations other than the two I mentioned: don't piss off the community and help name a successor. It's up to the project's community to decide if the maintainer is not meeting their obligations, not the sponsoring Big Company. > What he was doing already was apparently ignoring issues for months and making people like Jigar Kumar annoyed. I'm not sure. It seems like Kumar was a bad actor. Was there actually a real maintenance issue? If so, maybe it could have been avoided in the first place by the sponsorship arrangement, like I mentioned at the top of this reply. Or, the community could raise the problem to Big Company, who can do the work of verifying that there is a problem and working with the maintainer to resolve it. Instead what happened here, which was for one burned out guy deciding to hand the keys over to some email address.