On Thu, Nov 02, 2017 at 10:47:11AM -0400, Martin Owens wrote:
> Dear Board,
> 
> Under my role as website administrator I got an unsolicited email from
> 'Freddie D. Silva' in which he documented five bugs in the inkscape.org
> deployment which would be security issues.
> 
> After fixing the issues and thanking the contributor for their valuable
> service, they then asked for a security bounty.
> 
> I've tried a couple of times to explain that Inkscape is a volunteer
> project and I've offered to add a credit and link to the website
> instead. But they don't seem to understand or be interested.
> 
> I'm bringing this to the board's attention so that I can get some
> feedback on how to deal with this kind of contributor-case.

Pretty cut and dried, security bounties haven't been offered.

Furthermore, Inkscape is a userspace desktop application, not server
software, and while people do run it that way it is a small subset of
our userbase.  It's not really a use case we have actively pursued as a
project.

Even if we did, I have worked on open source server-side projects yet
have never dealt with bounties for security work.  How can we be sure
this is not simply some form of a shakedown?

If further exploration on this is desired, before tackling anything at
the board level, I would recommend bringing in someone with a background
in security for open source, such as Kees Cook (a past Inkscape
contributor that is a security engineer for Google currently).

I also wonder why this request came in through the webmaster alias
rather than a more normal channel.  Does a lot come through the
webmaster alias?  If so, perhaps it should be directed to a mailing list
or a ticket system.

Bryce

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