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On 01/07/2019 10:54, Robert J. Hansen wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:8fa2ef83-6f65-b1c4-6347-134c331a4b0c@sixdemonbag.org"
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<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I think not.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
Thankfully we live in free societies where dissent is allowed: on good
days, even tolerated and encouraged. You're wrong, of course, but
please understand I encourage you to be wrong. :)
Also, if it isn't clear: although I emphatically disagree with you, this
is not a personal dispute. I plan on turning your idea into a pinata,
but on a personal level as far as I'm concerned there's nothing but
peace between us.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I can see that you are (rightly and understandably) very, very angry
that this has been done and that you have been personally targetted
but it nevertheless seems to me that it is not a childish act. Its
very carefully targetted nature strongly suggests to me that is was
done to produce specific results (which should actually be
beneficial for the community as a whole).<br>
<br>
This does not mean that I condone the act. I do not! It was a bad
thing to do in this form.<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:8fa2ef83-6f65-b1c4-6347-134c331a4b0c@sixdemonbag.org"
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<pre wrap="">You yourself say that the SKS system has had known problems for well
over a decade and yet nothing has been done about it.
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">
No. No. No. I have not said that. In the last ten years the
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:sks-devel@nongnu.org">sks-devel@nongnu.org</a> community has explored pretty thoroughly the
problem space and concluded it cannot be solved at the SKS level, given
the community's level of manpower and funding.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
And yet, despite this, SKS is still in use and not currently fully
replaceable, as I understand it.<br>
<br>
Is that not a problem of inertia? It certainly seems like it to me.
No natter what the issue of lack of manpower or lack of funding, if
these have not been overcome in 10+ years despite there being widely
recognised problems then that's inertia. (No, this is not
"victim-blaming". Read on for why not).<br>
<br>
However, all is not so dark as it might seem. You go to say...<br>
<br>
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cite="mid:8fa2ef83-6f65-b1c4-6347-134c331a4b0c@sixdemonbag.org"
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<pre wrap="">In a very real sense, WKD, Autocrypt, Hagrid, dkg's work in
abuse-resistant keyservers, and so forth, all sprang from the sks-devel
community's recognition of the problem and the inability of SKS to
effectively fix it. If SKS were in better shape it's likely none of
those projects would have ever started.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
But this is good. It means that, in large part, inertia has in fact
been overcome from new directions. People have contributed to
improving things through innovation and new approaches.<br>
<br>
It just needs to go that little bit further, it seems.<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:8fa2ef83-6f65-b1c4-6347-134c331a4b0c@sixdemonbag.org"
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<pre wrap="">There is a line of thinking which I find to be morally appalling, and
you describe it quite clearly in your footnote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">1: You referred to this inertia as "powerful technical and social
factors" which is true but they still represent a bug, not a
feature. These factors are in effect societal excuses, not legitimate
reasons for lack of action.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
If the sks-devel community has repeatedly made it clear over the course
of a decade that "we lack both the manpower and the financial resources
to fix this problem", never receives manpower or financial resources,
and then ten years later this happens... our reward is to be
victim-blamed? "If you were really serious you would've done something
by now"?</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Don't be silly. I was merely pointing out how change is sometimes
needed to overcome roadblocks. In corporate circles they (annoyingly
enough) call it "thinking out of the box".<br>
<br>
Furthermore, I am not "victim-blaming" as you claim. Lack of
manpower and funding is not what I regard as victimhood. Lack of
manpower and/or finding is just normal life for many, many projects
or human endeavours and is a natural and normal issue that needs to
be overcome somehow for any project or endeavour of almost any type
to initially succeed and then to be maintained.<br>
<br>
In my own case, I am involved in a project that I would dearly like
to do better and it is in fact held back by lack of both manpower
and funding. However, when people tell me that I need to overcome
these issues, no matter how difficult they are to overcome, I do not
claim victimhood or say that my critic is "victim-blaming" me.
Instead I agree and ask my critic for possible sources of manpower
or funding, or for other ways to address the issues that the project
is intended to solve. And you will note in the footnote I did in
fact mention an initiative that Eric S. Raymond is working on that
might, at least in part, address issues of funding. So I have not
made the mistake of criticising without at least offering some
possible solution to the obvious problem.<br>
<br>
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<pre wrap="">of this community, they have brought absolutely unavoidable attention
to the fact that something needs to be done *now*.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
At a tremendous price. A price that I, and many others, think is
morally appalling. These people are not our friends and have done us no
favors.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Time will tell. Do you think that something substantive will now be
done that could not be done before because of previous lack of
manpower or funding?<br>
<br>
Sometimes, the obvious and undeniable existence and public
highlighting of an egregious flaw prompts the new availability of
manpower and/or funding that was not available before because the
flaw was too easy to ignore. It does look to me as if this is what
might now happen.<br>
<br>
You (and others) should not have been the victims to make this
happen, of course. That was unfair, wrong, and criminal.<br>
<br>
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<pre wrap="">Good can come of this attack on you and DKG.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
I seem to recall people saying the same after 9/11: that yes it was a
horrific thing, but that "good can come of this tragedy".
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I think that this is something of an extreme comparison, and extreme
comparisons always stretch reason. Nevertheless, I'll go along with
it for now: In truth, some good did come of 911. But, yes, the world
would certainly have been better off if 911 had never happened.<br>
<br>
However, the issue at hand here is a little different. There has
been no widespread attack. It's been targetted. I say again that the
attack being targetted does not excuse it but it does mean that the
dynamics of the situation are very different. In this case, unlike
911, a very specific and very longstanding (you did say that it has
been very longstanding) flaw has been publicly and undeniably
highlighted. This could provide, and most certainly *should*
provide, the catalyst for something new to be done; a new incentive,
new motivation, new urgency.<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:8fa2ef83-6f65-b1c4-6347-134c331a4b0c@sixdemonbag.org"
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<pre wrap="">But it is also barbarous to claim the good
that may come out of a horror should be counted to the horror's credit.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I did not "credit" the horror. In fact I said that it was probably
criminal! It was a bad thing to do to you!<br>
<br>
And yet, no matter how bad it was, it does seem that the attacker's
motivation is blindingly obvious and that good things definitely can
and *should* come of this shock to the system. The inertia to which
I referred was and is real.<br>
<br>
And, let's face it, it's not as bad as either 911 or a suicide. This
is bad, but it's not a disaster. And a disaster *can* still be
avoided in this context. At risk of sounding like a politician, this
is a wakeup call.<br>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Mark Rousell
</pre>
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