Comment by agwa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by agwa | Hacker News Reader

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The point is that public VCS doesn't benefit Wietse, and by extension Postfix, so why should he have one? A public VCS only benefits other people, most of whom aren't even contributing to Postfix development.

Postgres is a different project and they no doubt see a different cost/benefit ratio for public VCS, probably because they have many more core developers and contributors than Postfix.

I've actually had a patch accepted to Postfix and while I found it inconvenient not to use my usual VCS-based workflow, I also realized that the Postfix world revolves around Wietse, not me, and as a user of Postfix I benefit most when the project is optimized for him and not other people.

Let's rewrite this:

"The point is that public VCS doesn't benefit Wietse, and by extension Postfix, so why should he have one? A public VCS only benefits other people, most of whom aren't even contributing to Postfix development."

Like this:

"The point is that publishing source tarballs doesn't benefit Wietse, and by extension Postfix, so why should he? Publishing the source only benefits other people, most of whom aren't even contributing to Postfix development."

The answer to both question is "he doesn't have to, but if he takes seriously the goals of open source it would be silly not to." It's not unlike choosing to withhold your Makefiles, or documentation.

Wietse obviously wants to benefit people who use Postfix, which is why he releases tarballs, Makefiles, and documentation, so people who want to use Postfix can get it, compile it, and learn how to use it. VCS does not further those goals, but instead benefits would-be developers (and an insignificant minority of users who aren't worth optimizing for).

A writeable open VCS would also make heartbleed-like vulnerabilities more likely. As such the OP's comments should be evaluated as potential astroturf. Were the NSA looking to introduce new and effective backdoors, and we know they are, this would be one way to pressure IBM/Weitse for access.

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