[wp-hackers] Plugin update & security / privacy

[Travis Snoozy]

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:17:24 -0500, "Amy Stephen"
<amystephen at gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

> I must say, it catches my breath to hear this accusation "it really
> gave a sense that he (Matt) has something personally to profit/gain
> from this feature." within FOUR WORDS of an admission that "I haven't
> looked into the code enough yet."

<snip>

Public opinion is what it is; that is the reaction you will get if you
hear someone is scooping up information without disclosure. While one
should "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to
[oversight]", users have been burned by all sorts of nasties, and are
sensitized to this sort of thing now.

Very few people know how their computers work. We rely on trust. When
that trust is violated, or _feel_ that it's violated... well, it's
upsetting.

<snip>

> What isn't legitimate is for end users to develop a sense of
> entitlement where we start to believe we have the right to call the
> shots and developers must respond lickity split to what we say. They
> freely offer their code. We can choose to use it. We can choose not
> to use it. If we like most of it, but not all of it, we can even
> change it! We can even distribute our changes to others. Get this -
> we can even charge for that distribution. I kid you, not.

Yes, but at a point, with all good OS software, it becomes owned by the
community just as much as by the authors. One should not forget that
their software is neigh unto nothing without users, for free or for
profit. Clearly we have some lack of communication flow between the
two, and it's caused some misunderstanding and discord.

<snip>
> In closely, let me say, people often ask - how do we build more
> contributors in our open source projects? As a "just off the top of
> my head" response, might I suggest we not attack key contributors -
> at least so viciously?

Also, on the web, one tends to develop a rather thick skin. Without
such, it's hard to stay sane. I'm sure that said contributors are able
to take e-mails like this with the grain of salt it deserves. More
aggravating, at least in my perspective, is managing the relationship
with the community -- doing something wildly unpopular can cause
backlash leading to a "I'll take my ball and go home" reaction. Again,
this is why it's critical for everyone to communicate and be clear.


If I may suggest, can we stop and analyze what went wrong here? What
could we have done to made sure that this issue came out sooner? How
can we -fix- the process, so that this is less likely to happen again?

Also, with the 2.3 release looming, I think it would be nice to know if
this issue is blocking or not. I have seen no posts on the development
blog one way or another on the matter.



Yours truly,

-- 
Travis