← Back to context

Comment by bcardarella

2 years ago

I just don't buy this argument. None of what you've listed gives the right to install binaries without permission. A simple opt-in notification could resolve this but they decided against this for ease of use. Free or not, pre 1.0 or not, small team or not this puts users at risk for a pretty bad attack vector.

If DockYard.com had a security incident for a free/beta service, I'm sure you'd want users to show some compassion.

(It doesn't make it right, all I'm saying is - showing compassion goes a long way with developers while they re-evaluate)

  • Actually, I'll do one better. For a rather large framework we are developing an engineer at DY introduced a somewhat similar problem. A binary was being installed, from a trusted source in this case but a binary was being compiled/installed none the less. It never made its way to an actual release and I personally took the time to change this approach so that we weren't installing binaries on people's machines without their permission. We now pre-compile and vendor. This approach likely isn't what Zed can do as in this case we can target just Intel/Apple Silicon machines but the point here is I recognized the problem and rather than just hand-wave dismiss it as a #wontfix I took responsibility for it and fixed it myself. It cost money, it cost time. I still fixed it because that's the right thing to do.

    https://github.com/liveview-native/liveview-client-swiftui/p...

    Compassion for those putting others in harms way is such a stupid take.

  • I'll add that security incidents through mistakes happen. Conscious decisions to punt on user security in the name of faster release cycles isn't something I am willing to have compassion on.

  • oh god, no. users exist to give you money and feedback, not emotional support.

    when your software enters other people's personal devices, their concern is their safety, security, and privacy, not your feelings.

    • I actually completely agree with you, although at the very least users can be expected to not be rude. Although, I don't think anyone in this thread (so far) has been rude.