The truth can absolutely be a bad thing. If google reports an important vulnerability, then buries it in CVE slop for 90 days, and publicly announces details of the important vulnerability that hasn’t been fixed yet, it would be worse than if they had never reported it
The 90-day publishing window is tough when OSS projects are getting buried in AI slop reports
Then Google would have to put out of the fire of that vulnerability in their dependent software.
Not disclosing a vulnerability doesn’t stop attackers from exploiting it.
A report simply indicates someone who noticed bothered to report it.
The problem is the vulnerability.
False urgency is nothing more: Google’s urgency isn’t the maintainer’s & the maintainers don’t need to “meet the window”.
Companies will be left with their pants on fire if they don’t act, too, but it will cost them more.
Maintainers can just ignore the window to shift the burden back on moneyed interests as I explained before.
Kind of, in this case its a vulnerability in a portion of code that you need to compile with special flags to even include in the library (ie its not in the default build, you need to rebuild it and opt-in) so its super low impact and just ends up giving the maintainers excessive paperwork.
Again, ignoring/postponing is an option.
At work, we’d just move that to the backlog of shit we may never touch: having it there is good for tracking the issue & gathering notes on our thoughts regarding it, which saves time approaching it like new each time it comes up.
It’s no different for open source maintainers.
Marking an item as won’t fix, deferred, or help wanted or closing redundant items isn’t much paperwork.
Again, the objective reality is the defect exists, and that reality doesn’t change with our awareness of that fact: it’s better to know & track for planning even if the plan is to do nothing.
The truth can absolutely be a bad thing. If google reports an important vulnerability, then buries it in CVE slop for 90 days, and publicly announces details of the important vulnerability that hasn’t been fixed yet, it would be worse than if they had never reported it
The 90-day publishing window is tough when OSS projects are getting buried in AI slop reports
Then Google would have to put out of the fire of that vulnerability in their dependent software.
Not disclosing a vulnerability doesn’t stop attackers from exploiting it. A report simply indicates someone who noticed bothered to report it.
The problem is the vulnerability. False urgency is nothing more: Google’s urgency isn’t the maintainer’s & the maintainers don’t need to “meet the window”. Companies will be left with their pants on fire if they don’t act, too, but it will cost them more. Maintainers can just ignore the window to shift the burden back on moneyed interests as I explained before.
Kind of, in this case its a vulnerability in a portion of code that you need to compile with special flags to even include in the library (ie its not in the default build, you need to rebuild it and opt-in) so its super low impact and just ends up giving the maintainers excessive paperwork.
Again, ignoring/postponing is an option. At work, we’d just move that to the backlog of shit we may never touch: having it there is good for tracking the issue & gathering notes on our thoughts regarding it, which saves time approaching it like new each time it comes up. It’s no different for open source maintainers. Marking an item as won’t fix, deferred, or help wanted or closing redundant items isn’t much paperwork.
Again, the objective reality is the defect exists, and that reality doesn’t change with our awareness of that fact: it’s better to know & track for planning even if the plan is to do nothing.