{"id":26627,"date":"2019-09-17T16:10:02","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T20:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=26627"},"modified":"2023-11-20T14:54:56","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T19:54:56","slug":"the-internet-relies-on-people-working-for-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/17\/the-internet-relies-on-people-working-for-free\/","title":{"rendered":"The Internet Relies on People Working for Free"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/onezero.medium.com\/the-internet-relies-on-people-working-for-free-a79104a68bcc\">Owen Williams<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ow\/status\/1173746873863159813\">tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/onezero.medium.com\/the-internet-relies-on-people-working-for-free-a79104a68bcc\"><p>But when software used by millions of people is maintained by a community of people, or a single person, all on a volunteer basis, sometimes things can go horribly wrong. The catastrophic Heartbleed bug of 2014, which compromised the security of hundreds of millions of sites, was caused by a problem in an <a href=\"https:\/\/it.slashdot.org\/story\/14\/05\/03\/0129250\/free-can-make-you-bleed-the-underresourced-open-source\">open-source library called OpenSSL<\/a>, which relied on a single full-time developer not making a mistake as they updated and changed that code, used by millions. Other times, developers grow bored and abandon their projects, which can be breached <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.npmjs.org\/post\/180565383195\/details-about-the-event-stream-incident\">while they aren&rsquo;t paying attention<\/a>.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Survival of cURL is thanks to a set of sponsors who fund the project&rsquo;s hosting and other costs &mdash; though Stenberg says no major company pitches in &mdash; and contributors like Stenberg that give their time away for free. Stenberg says he believes that it&rsquo;s important that open source exists and that he has never regretted making cURL open source. What frustrates him is when companies demand his help when things go wrong.<\/p><p>Last year, a company overseas contacted him in a panic after they paused a firmware upgrade rollout to several million devices due to a cURL problem. &ldquo;I had to explain that I couldn&rsquo;t travel to them in another country on short notice to help them fix this [&#8230;] because I work on cURL in my spare time and I have a full-time job,&rdquo; Stenberg says.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>When Stenberg asked the company that needed him to fly to a different country to troubleshoot their problem to pay for [a support contract], they refused.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/02\/ending-the-npm-install-funding-experiment\/\">Ending the &ldquo;npm Install Funding&rdquo; Experiment<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/23\/github-sponsors\/\">GitHub Sponsors<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/27\/popular-npm-package-compromised\/\">Popular NPM Package Compromised<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/07\/curl-is-c\/\">curl Is C<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/10\/the-openssl-heartbleed-bug\/\">The OpenSSL Heartbleed Bug<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"the-internet-relies-on-people-working-for-free-update-2020-01-30\">Update (2020-01-30): See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hmemcpy\/status\/1222209975205998593\">Igal Tabachnik<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Owen Williams (tweet): But when software used by millions of people is maintained by a community of people, or a single person, all on a volunteer basis, sometimes things can go horribly wrong. The catastrophic Heartbleed bug of 2014, which compromised the security of hundreds of millions of sites, was caused by a problem in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2019-09-17T20:10:05Z","apple_news_api_id":"121f55f9-f555-47ec-a3fd-1855c5bc9e96","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2023-11-20T19:54:59Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AEh9V-fVVR-yj_RhVxbyelg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[101,1506,476,991],"class_list":["post-26627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-business","tag-curl","tag-networking","tag-open-source-software"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26627"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41132,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26627\/revisions\/41132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}