Theo de Raadt wrote:
I will ask this honestly:
Why should we bleed our little hearts over a company who acted like
assholes towards us for years, and only changed their policy due to
public pressure?
To make ourselves feel better? I think it is pointless. They still
did not apologize.
I agree with Theo, and yet I agree with others who subscribe to the
'reward for good behaviour' line of thinking. I think the issue is one
of perspective, and the scale for rating companies over at
vendorwatch.org is too simple.
Obviously for the developers it is frustrating that they have to push
and push and push for years with no results, only to blow up and cause a
community outcry which finally gets the vendor to open up. In the
meantime, Theo has been painted (again) as abrasive, whiny,
thick-headed, and who knows what else by the larger Open Source
community, thanks in large part to outlets like Slashdot which present a
snapshot which completely fails to report the scope of this ongoing
problem. And now that the docs are open again, there will be pressure on
the OpenBSD team to fix the errors in the Hifn code - for a product
which has been a source of frustration for quite a while. When one
thinks about it one should be able to sympathize with the developers a
little more than the companies which jerk them around.
For the users who jumped on the bandwagon less than four weeks ago it
seems like a great victory. For the developers it's not so easy to set
aside the hassle they've gone through and pound on that code. A primary
motivation for the developers is, after all, to have fun working on code.
And still, if companies that do respond favourably after a public outcry
continue to get badmouthed after the fact, there won't be much incentive
for companies to open up in the future. We do need a way to recognize
that something positive came about after putting up with a lengthy
negative period.
What does 'Somewhat Friendly' mean, anyway? To turn the tables, if
OpenBSD was rated on the same system, would it be 'Friendly', 'Somewhat
Friendly', or 'Unfriendly'? And what relevance would that have? The
developers may not be a bunch of hand holding saps, and could be rated
as 'Hostile' on occasion, but that doesn't change the fact that OpenBSD
is a kick ass system governed by some very strong goals and philosophies.
I think we need a more objective rating system. Here's a five point
system which is more useful: 'Supplies Hardware', 'Donates Money',
'Supplies Docs Freely', 'Works Well With Developers', and 'Listens To
Customers'. This is not necessarily the rating system we should use, but
it seems to me to be a step in the right direction.
A major issue is ensuring that this process works with developers which
working against them. Theo et al are busy working on OpenBSD and they
don't likely want to spend all their time complaining about vendors on
vendorwatch.org. However, their participation is necessary to ensure
that vendorwatch.org meets its mandate.
Hopefully the process can be improved. We turned around Hifn in under
four weeks (I expected it to take at least four months!) with a heated
mailing list discussion and some poorly organized free press. Think of
what we could do if we had a smoothly working process which put everyone
on the same page!
Breeno
