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Comment by tenken | Hacker News Reader

The lay public, aka everyone, isn't considered to be experts in this domain to address the issues. Hence, they disclosed to top tier OS distributions and partners.

It's similar to the Recalls of Takanas airbags in this regard. The manufacturers are informed and they tell us the consumer to bring in our cars. I'm not qualified to replace an explosive airbag, even though I drive a car daily as a lay person.

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There are other OSes and affected companies beyond the ones who were chosen to receive advance warning.

Imagine how it would work out in your airbag analogy if only Toyota and GM knew, and they withheld information for months while they worked on their own fixes, meanwhile the public remains in danger and other automakers have no chance to implement their own recall plans.

Can you mention which OS didn't get early enough warning? I'm sure there is some niche ones which may miss out but they are usually not the target of hacking either. And many of the derivative Linux distributions don't do active kernel development and just compile the stock kernel or derive from Red Hat, Ubuntu or others. The more people that are informed early, the more likely it will leak out early.

My particular interest is in OpenBSD, which was not included.

There is some drama over OpenBSD and KRACK that may have been why they didn't get told. But that is just pure speculation.

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