Do the "Ernest needs to add more maintainers to KBin!" comments remind anyone else of the xz social engineering malarkey?
Do the "Ernest needs to add more maintainers to KBin!" comments remind anyone else of the xz social engineering malarkey?
Comments such as:
letting more people help with Kbin development.
...
Why not getting some help? I know that Ernest already said he has a problem trusting people, but
Why has Ernest insisted on being the only developer to work on this? This creates a potential “single point of failure” situation.
I understand the desire to keep kbin a solo project in order to maintain control over it, but if this is going to see any success in the long term, then there needs to be a team.
come up in almost all threads about KBin's performance. At the time I just read them as nincompoops being whiners.
In hindsight does remind one a bit of similar social pressure leveled against Lasse Collin, does it not?
Not saying people are trying to backdoor this place or anything. The similarity just seemed worth pointing out.
I typed a reply about how bad actors will use reasonable arguments to get their way, so we'd need genuine evidence
my comment didn't send properly tho and i got an error message, so if you see me commenting twice, sorry
I mean, he's developing and administrating what's essentially a Reddit clone all on his own.
I mean, he’s developing and administrating what’s essentially a Reddit clone all on his own.
And doing a damn fine job.
The question was if you saw similarity in the pressure to add maintainers to the project with the social engineering that lead to xz getting backdoored.
No, he's not. Kbin was recently down for a week. Then voting and comment counts broke. Before all that I had to get into the habit of reloading the page I was on every time I wanted to vote on something. It's a terrible user experience.
That's not to say I don't like him or he's not a good dev or whatever. Just that people have limits and it sure seems like he's bumping against his.
He is doing an excellent job, and I do not mean to denigrate his work when I say the task is beyond any one person, no matter how talented and dedicated. Look at the issues that went on recently while Ernest was indisposed, and we had months of federation issues that led to communities migrating away and Kbin.social getting defederated by other instances.
This project is getting too large for any one person, and it's far too important to have one point of failure. And even someone as great as Ernest needs an understudy.
Yes, there is some similarity. You're not wrong.
However, it's much more likely to be due to the common experience of solo devs whose projects blow up than it is about bad actors on kbin.
If you're so inclined, you can always check the profiles of those who were pushing for it and particularly those who were volunteering; the boehs.org link should supply some helpful red flags to look for. Ernest would be wise to check IP activity and even ask for IRL credentials of those he would consider giving any real level of access to. Beyond that, it's firmly in the realm of "mildly interesting."
It's not the boeh.org link, but here is a similar timeline of events: https://research.swtch.com/xz-timeline
I don't know what this xz thing is about, first time hearing it. But people saying he should get more help are trying to help him, not having malicious plans like installing backdoors or whatever.
I do think people should ask less for more maintainers — the project is already opensource, so it's up to maintainers to join, not him to seek them out. But he should still get some help with managing the instance. Pauses in development are fine imo, but the instance shouldn't be swarmed with spam and account deletion requests lost in limbo just because ernest got sick or something, which can happen with the best work life balances.
I don't know what this xz thing is about, first time hearing it.
Someone pressured the maintainer of a compression tool used in a bunch of open source software to hand over the keys by citing burnout and offering to "help" then spent ~3 years slowly adding tiny changes that combined to form a backdoor in SSH that nearly compromised the entire internet or something.
It was only barely caught by accident because it made some thing some guy was doing that wasn't even related a fraction of a second slower.
Been all over the FOSSiverse for days, and the social engineering that was used on the xz maintainer reminded me personally of similar pressure certain people have applied to Ernest in most threads about kbin performance I have seen.
The reason it worked is because sometimes burnout is a real problem, and getting extra help is a real solution. The fact that this was exploited in one situation doesn't mean that all of a sudden there isn't any real burnout or genuine offers to help any more.
A project can sometimes benefit from help even if there is no burnout. People have limits.
xz was successful because it was believable, but a malicious actor would more likely target libraries that are depended on by many, like xz.
its open source. it can and has been forked. he can do what he likes. The call for moderation made sense but code is different. Granted I think he should bring in help for himself but that is for him to decide.
Ernest Adds More Maintainers to Kbin is one of my favorite 80s comedies
This is an absurd thread. By collecting together critical comments, and picking back up a loud fight that previously died down over a week ago, you are absolutely adding to any pressure towards our lad in charge.
Touch grass
Touch grass
Suck ya mudda
Honestly, no. Kbin has been barely usable for a long time and I'm starting to consider giving up.
I have a notification waiting for me, but I get a 404 on the page to check it out. /sub also didn't work yesterday. I spent a few minutes trying to edit a comment just an hour ago.Nothing against Ernest, a page of this size is hard to manage alone or almost alone, but it's still a pain as a user.
I have a notification waiting for me, but I get a 404 on the page to check it out.
Append
?p=1at the end of the URL; that sometimes fixes it.Next, relax.
I switched away because kbin seemed stuck and unresponsive to users and uncommunicative. Changes that were made seemed to be ones the Ernest wanted to and not addressing issues that people were feeling in some cases.
I am a software developer for a living and I can tell you that you can both have more people contributing and be secure. Most projects do not have bad actors who successfully poison things. When someone does, they get caught in the review process. If this is your concern, then prove that Ernest himself isn't a bad actor? I don't believe he is, but being one person in control would certainly make that easy.
Erm, I thought kbin was open source? Can't anybody fork it if they have a problem with it? This sounds like a whiny nothingburger.
Erm, I thought kbin was open source? Can’t anybody fork it if they have a problem with it? This sounds like a whiny nothingburger.
They can. That's what mbin is.
That's part of why I don't get why people always pressure Ernest to add maintainers.