3 ms·

One man's funny easter egg is another man's non-deterministic trigger for errant behavior in their workflow with possible real-world consequences, I suppose...

One man's funny easter egg is another man's non-deterministic trigger for errant behavior in their workflow with possible real-world consequences, I suppose... Yet another reason I have a hard time trusting software that is the product of integrating many disparate pieces with different engineering processes into something used in any life-safety or mission-critical application.

kibwen 2y ago
If you want serious software, then pay for it. If you want free-as-in-beer software, you'll take what I give you, easter eggs and all. Anything else is just entitlement.
- chgs 2y ago
  Absolutely, if you’re precious about it review the code, remove the lines, and away you go. Your pipeline will error with an unexpected result from man, you can grep the man code for “gimme” and remove it in 2 minutes, far quicker than reading a man page. I miss the Linux world of the 90s before all the money grabbers came. I accept I’m in a tiny minority, and that would be fine. Sadly corporate interests overwhelm the ecosystem now.
- retsibsi 2y ago
  You can have, and share, opinions about a thing without feeling that you're 'entitled' to have it conform to your wishes! I'll take it or leave it, but I'll also feel free to say what I think about it (within bounds of politeness and decency).
- Ekaros 2y ago
  I wonder how many paid for Linux distributions patched this out? As surely they have reviewed all pieces of code for exactly this sort of malicious behaviour.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  I have skepticism for anything that has a free/paid tier. The reduced functionality version has typically been gimped in a way that doesn't make much sense. You end up with cases where the button for the paid functionality is just missing so users don't even know that the thing is possible... and other such problems. It ends up feeling rather 1984. But I'd respect a maintainer who had a paid tier which differed in some kind of goofy way: - the free version does something goofy at 11:11, but works fine otherwise - the paid version is identical to the free version, but it doesn't do anything goofy at 11:11 Of course it would be trivial to just do this: if time.now() == time(hours=11, minutes=11): sleep(60) freeversion() But if you've got a pipeline which absolutely must not fail then you should probably be paying the maintainer. Hacking around the easter egg would hopefully feel enough like an admission of guilt to just talk your boss into paying.
- larodi 2y ago
  Indeed. This... like expectation that free programs should work the way somebody other than the author expects it, and particularly when it comes to opensource, which is most often made available under no promises and liabilities, seems from the side as some sort of cognitive dissonance mixed with a little too much self-centeredness. Even though the e.egg broke s.o.'s pipeline, it should yet be celebrated. Why? Cause otherwise you get libfuse's author rage quitting over endless pressure on himself and his codebase for little fun and no profit. Easter eggs are much less invasive and nasty compared to mid-video yt ads, which the world gladly takes alongside free content, including people who hate having their pipes tweaked with. Besides, there is enough evidence internet and the whole computing business works on workarounds and now with LLMs - on pure chance.
- bloppe 2y ago
  I agree that nobody has any business making any demands of FOSS maintainers whatsoever, but at the same time, software that's full of jokes (especially ones that cause code health problems) will be treated as a joke
Denvercoder9 2y ago
> non-deterministic trigger This easter egg was entirely deterministic, though.
- bloppe 2y ago
  Depending on how closely you look at it, literally everything is deterministic.

kibwen 2y ago

If you want serious software, then pay for it. If you want free-as-in-beer software, you'll take what I give you, easter eggs and all. Anything else is just entitlement.

chgs 2y ago
Absolutely, if you’re precious about it review the code, remove the lines, and away you go. Your pipeline will error with an unexpected result from man, you can grep the man code for “gimme” and remove it in 2 minutes, far quicker than reading a man page. I miss the Linux world of the 90s before all the money grabbers came. I accept I’m in a tiny minority, and that would be fine. Sadly corporate interests overwhelm the ecosystem now.
retsibsi 2y ago
You can have, and share, opinions about a thing without feeling that you're 'entitled' to have it conform to your wishes! I'll take it or leave it, but I'll also feel free to say what I think about it (within bounds of politeness and decency).
Ekaros 2y ago
I wonder how many paid for Linux distributions patched this out? As surely they have reviewed all pieces of code for exactly this sort of malicious behaviour.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
I have skepticism for anything that has a free/paid tier. The reduced functionality version has typically been gimped in a way that doesn't make much sense. You end up with cases where the button for the paid functionality is just missing so users don't even know that the thing is possible... and other such problems. It ends up feeling rather 1984. But I'd respect a maintainer who had a paid tier which differed in some kind of goofy way: - the free version does something goofy at 11:11, but works fine otherwise - the paid version is identical to the free version, but it doesn't do anything goofy at 11:11 Of course it would be trivial to just do this: if time.now() == time(hours=11, minutes=11): sleep(60) freeversion() But if you've got a pipeline which absolutely must not fail then you should probably be paying the maintainer. Hacking around the easter egg would hopefully feel enough like an admission of guilt to just talk your boss into paying.
larodi 2y ago
Indeed. This... like expectation that free programs should work the way somebody other than the author expects it, and particularly when it comes to opensource, which is most often made available under no promises and liabilities, seems from the side as some sort of cognitive dissonance mixed with a little too much self-centeredness. Even though the e.egg broke s.o.'s pipeline, it should yet be celebrated. Why? Cause otherwise you get libfuse's author rage quitting over endless pressure on himself and his codebase for little fun and no profit. Easter eggs are much less invasive and nasty compared to mid-video yt ads, which the world gladly takes alongside free content, including people who hate having their pipes tweaked with. Besides, there is enough evidence internet and the whole computing business works on workarounds and now with LLMs - on pure chance.
bloppe 2y ago
I agree that nobody has any business making any demands of FOSS maintainers whatsoever, but at the same time, software that's full of jokes (especially ones that cause code health problems) will be treated as a joke

Denvercoder9 2y ago

> non-deterministic trigger This easter egg was entirely deterministic, though.

bloppe 2y ago
Depending on how closely you look at it, literally everything is deterministic.