Agree - after they started bundling adware in downloads (2013ish?), all the decent projects seemed to move to github en masse.
Those projects that stayed were mostly already stagnant, or the maintainers didn't use git and didn't want to learn, or had some other reason that allowed them to accept advertising on their work.
since the plain text isnt stored
I'm not sure I'd accept a bet on that assumption.
robots.txt does not work. I don't think it ever has - it's an honour system with no penalty for ignoring it.
I have a few low traffic sites hosted at home, and when a crawler takes an interest they can totally flood my connection. I'm using cloudflare and being incredibly aggressive with my filtering but so many bots are ignoring robots.txt as well as lying about who they are with humanesque UAs that it's having a real impact on my ability to provide the sites for humans.
Over the past year it's got around ten times worse. I woke up this morning to find my connection at a crawl and on checking the logs, AmazonBot has been hitting one site 12000 times an hour, and that's one of the more well-behaved bots. But there's thousands and thousands of them.
Looks like the server's having a day off
By its own shareholders?
Are they just trying to get some money out before class actions from its customers decimate the company?
And, unlike CentOS, it can't be legally taken over by a corporate entity and changed into something entirely different. Debian is owned by Debian.
Anyone else find themselves singing this headline to the tune of The House of the Rising Sun?
I think bus factor would be a lot easier to cope with than a slowly progressing, semi-abandoned project and a White Knight saviour.
In a complete loss of a sole maintainer, then it should be possible to fork and continue a project. That does require a number of things, not least a reliable person who understands the codebase and is willing to undertake it. Then the distros need to approve and change potentially thousands of packages that rely upon the project as a dependency.
Maybe, before a library or any software gets accepted into a distro, that distro does more due diligence to ensure it's a sustainable project and meets requirements like a solid ownership?
The inherited debt from existing projects would be massive, and perhaps this is largely covered already - I've never tried to get a distro to accept my software.
Nothing I've seen would completely avoid risk. Blackmail upon an existing developer is not impossible to imagine. Even in this case, perhaps the new developer in xz started with pure intentions and they got personally compromised later? (I don't seriously think that is the case here though - this feels very much state sponsored and very well planned)
It's good we're asking these questions. None of them are new, but the importance is ever increasing.
Ever read some of the microsoft forums? Just as many people seeking help there - the only difference is we don't have an over eager paid employee replying with scripted answers which don't help.
Linux is as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. Most of the mainstream distros "just work" on most hardware. I've installed Mint, Rocky, Ubuntu and Debian on laptops and desktops for relatives, including those who aren't remotely technically gifted. It was as easy/easier as Windows to install, set up and get running. The users are happy - they can use cheaper hardware (and don't need to upgrade a perfectly good laptop for Windows 11) and are entirely free of software costs and subscriptions. Everything works and things don't break - just like Windows and Macs. Most people just want their computer to turn on and let them run stuff. All three do that equally as well.
I've also installed linux on hardware clusters costing hundreds of thousands of pounds and that definitely wasn't a simple or quick process, but that's the nature of the task. Actually, installing the base os was probably the easiest part. Windows just isn't an option for that.
You ask a fair question - you're not unique in your viewpoint and that's probably hampered takeup more than anything else. What makes you a bit better than most is that you actually ask the question and appear to be open to the answers.
Because it was also the best show of 2023?
Getting fed up strimming our 4 acre, very steep field.
I looked at remote control mowers. At the time they were all well over £6k, so I thought I'd try building one. Well, I've done it and it works well, but it's taken three years and cost over a grand so far in parts.
That is very concerning to me, also.
Large parts of the internet relying on one or two tiny one-man FOSS projects? (UBO and ADguard are often cited as the only two reliable-ish and safe adblockers)
If he can't be bothered with that nonsense, how secure is UBO's future? How secure is the future of adblocking?
I would bet that advertising companies are rubbing their hands now and planning to ramp up pressure against these poor devs.