On Mar 24, 2006, at 11:17 PM, Theo de Raadt wrote:
I did not decide that OpenSSH should become a critical part of the internet, or that it should become a virtual monopoly. We made itfree. Again, the community decided to make it Internet infrastructure.Now you want to tell us that because the Internet community made decisions like these, that we should be held responsible. That we have to follow YOUR procedures. That we have to answer to YOU. What if we ignore your procedures? What if we say no? What will you do then? Continue to verbally attack us? To what end? To show that you are thankless dogs?
Mr. De Raadt,Perhaps you had no intention for your software to have such an influence over the internet. You did not create it in a vacuum either, on dangerous ground as I may be in second guessing people's motivations, I cannot imagine a developer releasing a quality piece of software, not hoping for it to be used by a large group of people. When you rise to such a position of influence, there comes the inevitable fact that many people will have opinions on how you use this influence, especially where it affects their daily lives. Getting upset about this is as pointless as it is for a rockstar to complain about the paparazzi.
It is true that a developers of a free product, even if their product rose to the level of popularity that it can be considered critical infrastructure, have no formal obligations towards their userbase at all. It would be silly to claim, however, that they are not responsible for the effects their decisions have on a larger community. People of character like yourself understand this responsibility. Where people's decisions have such tremendous impact, declaring outside criticism invalid counters that.
This is not to say that I don't feel empathy for your despair in the face of thousands of people that are probably overloading you with 'helpful suggestions' for your projects, but I think it is best to utter such frustrations in the privacy of one's home and let the people make their noise. Who knows, sometimes interesting sound rises up from such noise.
Kind Regards, Pim van Riezen