8 ms·

To quote Theo De Raadt: My favorite part of the "many eyes" argument is how few bugs were found by the two eyes of Eric (the originator of the st

• javert 13y ago
  This is just a nasty and unjust way to bring down ESR, whose intellectual contributions are valuable. I don't personally know Theo De Raadt but if he spends his time bringing down other people, he's probably not a very happy person himself.
  • tptacek 13y ago
    The comments you perceive to be nastily and unjustly bringing down ESR are presumably being made by people who do not agree with you about the value of his intellectual contributions. In fact, those comments are directly rebutting his best-known intellectual contribution. So your objection begs the question.
    • bittercynic 13y ago
      Thank you for using "begs the question" correctly. It is far too rare to see that on the web. </tangent>
      • SimHacker 13y ago
        A+++++ Speedy delivery. Well packed. Top notch. As listed. Great value. Good communication. Would do business again.
    • enneff 13y ago
      Indeed. A lot of people just see the criticisms and think that he is unfairly targeted, but you don't have to look far to find the obnoxious and arrogant behavior that earned him the derision he attracts today.
    • javert 13y ago
      Theo de Raadt's argument (as presented here) isn't logically valid. A character attack is not an argument. So he's just hurting his cause. That's my point here. As an aside, I'm not really begging the question because I defended ESR's "Linus' Law" thing in a different comment.
      • copergi 13y ago
        >Theo de Raadt's argument (as presented here) isn't logically valid Yes it is. >A character attack is not an argument His argument is not a character attack. It is pointing out two problems with Eric's hypothesis. The reality that simply saying "lots of eyes" doesn't actually mean there are lots of eyes. And that the eyes have to be attached to people who actually know what bugs look like or they won't be found. ESR himself does not bother to look at code, thus providing counter evidence to his own claim that open source software is seen by many eyes.
        • hueving 13y ago
          >ESR himself does not bother to look at code, thus providing counter evidence to his own claim that open source software is seen by many eyes. Do you not see how this basic statement is completely illogical? "One guy doesn't audit code much, therefore nobody audits code." Seriously?
          • copergi 13y ago
            One guy is the example, not the proof.
            • Natsu 13y ago
              Then where is the proof? This code was found wanting years ago....
              • copergi 13y ago
                That's the point?
  • vithlani 13y ago
    Not many people would know Theo "personally" but you do know his reputation. You do right? That's all that is required to give his statements some weight.
    • gonzo 13y ago
      Do you know Theo? Because the Theo I know was kicked out of the netbsd project for being an asshole. He hasn't changed, really.
      • luckydude 13y ago
        Um, I've had Theo in my house. I've known him for a long time, we've had technical conversations about the kernel that 99% of the people here couldn't understand (maybe it is me but I am so sick of "look at me I've figured this out" and it is stuff you should have learned as an undergrad. Go code more and talk less.) My opinion is until you have done as much as Theo has done you should maybe not talk so much.
        • baq 13y ago
          being an asshole and getting shit done are orthogonal characteristics.
        • SimHacker 13y ago
          Theo has earned my respect and the right to be as much of an asshole as he wants. The important things he's so good at doing often require that of him, so it's not counter-productive or self defeating. I also have a tremendous amount of respect for RMS, and forgive his personality quirks, although I'd never want to work for him. Unfortunately, a lot of his personality quirks and ways of communicating are self defeating. But more importantly, his beliefs are totally logical and consistent and well thought out, and he sticks by them. It's his priorities and his way of communicating them that people have problems with. He's also got a brilliant sense of humor, that a lot of people just don't get, and take offense at, when he was just trying to make them think. But at the same time, he's incredibly easy to wind up by mentioning Open Source Software. But I think he's in on the joke and it's just a theatrical performance, like Saint IGNUcius. My Emacs Hacker Boss from UniPress Software and I ran into him at a scifi con, and my "Evil Software Hoarder" colleague asked him "I heard a terrible rumor about your house burning down. Is it true?" He fired back without missing a beat, "Yes, but where you work, you probably heard about it in advance." We all had a laugh and no offense was taken: he's got a sharp sense of humor and he's quick on his feet! Here he is being a total dick, by chastising someone for posting a baby announcement (who is now 21 years old) to a mailing list about having dinner on the other side of the continent as he was on. But he's fucking brilliant and hilarious and makes some excellent points that are totally consistent with his beliefs, even through he wound everyone up and was repeatedly told to fuck off in various ways, which he took in stride. http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html "You people just have no sense of humor. I thought the original message was pretty funny and made a few good points (if it didn't, nobody would have been offended). I guess it's a shock for smug self-righteous breeders to learn that not everybody in the world thinks babies are cute and special. -Wayne A. Christopher" "Finally, someone read the message as it was intended to be read. -RMS" "I'm somewhat surprised by the idea that a mere message from me could torpedo the happiness of parents. I'd think it wouldn't even come close to doing that. Not that I wanted to do that. The most I thought it could do was to discourage the posting birth announcements. -RMS" RMS is like William Shatner, in that he's in on the joke, and can have a good laugh at himself, and at least he isn't the mean kind of narcissist. To extend that metaphor further than I should: RMS = Captain Kirk, Theo = Spock, ESR = Harvey Mudd, Microsoft = Klingons, and Free Open Source Software = Tribbles.
  • enneff 13y ago
    Read the quote in context. It makes a lot more sense: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=129261032213320 http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=129261032213320
• Crito 13y ago
  What a pointless and content-less rebuttal. I mean shit, I don't need to be an aeronautical engineer or work in the FAA to say that several people investigating an airliner crash will be more effective than one single dude sifting through a literal field of debris. ESR's quote isn't wrong (perhaps hyperbolic, but in spirit it isn't wrong). It's just an uninteresting observation. What do you do when something has you stumped at work? You ask the guy across the hall to look over your shoulder for a second... It's just common sense. People simultaneously revere and hate the quote only because ESR said it. If Joe Shmoe had said it all those years ago, it would have just been met with "no shit" and never given second thought.
  • smsm42 13y ago
    I think there's a point here. The point being much more people talk about many eyes than actually audit existing code. The fact is, there are quite a number of bugs that stayed in the code for a long time despite being not that deep. Maybe that says we don't have enough eyeballs, but most of people quoting that sentence quietly assume we do, equating number of participants in FOSS communities with number of people actually auditing the code. Unfortunately, the former is much bigger than the latter. We pretty much have the same situation as we have in science publications where a lot of results are not reproducible and a lot nobody even bothers to check for reproducibility, despite reproducibility being the basic tenet of open publication and peer review and being necessary to validate the result. Unless there's a reason to - e.g. an identifiable bug - not many bother to go back to existing code and check it for correctness.
    • Crito 13y ago
      The quote is hyperbolic for the "all", and should probably use the word "shallower", but otherwise I don't see anything wrong with it. "much more people talk about many eyes than actually audit existing code" is true of free software, but is also true of just about everything. More people think "I feel comfortable crossing this bridge because plenty of engineers have looked at it" than there are engineers actually looking at bridges. I haven't read the quote in it's original context for several years, but I don't remember it conflating software users with software developers.
• einhverfr 13y ago
  I am with Theo on this one. The many eyes argument is a poor one for a large number of reasons. Bugs are one issue regarding security but software design is a much bigger one. It is good design that ensures that software is robust even when bugs surface and that's a far larger issue than the question of bugs. The problem with ESR's view here is that it occurs in a more general essay on this matter come up with the idea that open source has the advantage because of eyeballs, distributed design and so forth. But you can only distribute design so far, and almost every successful open source project has a small design and engineering team. This being said there are plenty of cases where I do in fact rely on many eyes. It's not that it makes the bugs shallower but that repetitive review and discussion helps to shake out both design flaws and software bugs. I tend to push a lot of security stuff to the underlying platform for this reason. But part of it is also trusting the design team. Code auditing is tough work and I generally assume it doesn't get done. What is good however is that a lot of other people are depending on software that is professionally developed in a relatively transparent manner and so chances are somewhat better that people will audit the code at some point.
• agumonkey 13y ago
  I kinda agree, if with many eyes come as many pair of hands writing potential bugs, then you don't reduce anything. We need eyes-only 'developpers'.