Mixing responsibilities

Posted Apr 3, 2006 9:08 UTC (Mon) by Shanep (guest, #36879) [Link]

I am not trying to direct anger towards you, by the way. You could be my best friend, playing devils advocate or not and I'd still be putting my position forward in the same manner. Conversations escalate as they go back and forth, which brings new content into potential conflict on both sides.

Your gripe with IBM has cannibalized this thread which dealt with Sun and responsible disclosure. I don't know what IBM said or how or when, without which information this discussion is turning into a one-sided flamefest.

I have tried to remain civil and I think I mostly have. Don't confuse content with flaming. I assume when you say one sided flamefest, you are refering to flames coming from me? I have merely tried to put forward reason and evidence. You have tried to shoot it down, even with a few snide remarks. I felt flames but tried not to give them back.

They obviously did something very wrong in your eyes, and I'm ready to accept it; but it is not easy to see the relationship with the topic under discussion. De Raadt only mentions them in passing. Finally, mixing IBM's responsibilities to their users with IBM's responsibilities under the OpenSSH license is not helping.

IBM claims OpenSSH is responsible for something OpenSSH clearly disclaims in a legal licence. IBM, in some cases like Sun, want their cake and to eat it too. IBM are in the wrong. Sun are not legally in the wrong, but they have not played nicely, so I hardly see why Theo should play nicely "for the sake of Sun's customers" when were talking about a derived work for which Sun does NOT want to assist the OpenSSH team into helping Sun and their customers. A work which Sun passes off as their own. If Sun want to exploit the licence to it's fullest potential and ignore good-will, then more power to Theo for doing the same.

Finally, even if IBM and Sun are the devil incarnate, this does not justify leaving a lot of users in the cold.

Theo and the OpenSSH project have not left a lot of users in the cold. Sun users are free to replace SunSSH with OpenSSH. The users of IBM and Sun should look at the completely disgraceful slap in the face and lack of good will which their vendor has shown to a software team which has been selflessly providing some important software under some very free terms. Sun inviting and paying for an OpenSSH developer to attend interoperability events, is in the best interests Sun's customers also.

I don't feel bad if Theo acts "unethically" towards Sun, because Sun's users choose to be customers of an unethical company. The politics which go back and forth as a result of Sun being unethical or choosing to not uphold good-will, results in an impact on Sun's users (they live with SunSSH without the benfit of responsible disclosure, or they have to replace it with OpenSSH). Sun and IBM give OpenBSD an uphill battle, needlessly.

A company acts unethically and their users suffer as a result. If I was treated like crap over and over again, all because I was trying to uphold the greater good, I'd come to a breaking point to.