Discourse Is Not Going Closed Source

> Open source creates a useful urgency: when your code is public, you assume it will be examined closely, so you invest earlier and more aggressively in finding and fixing issues before attackers do.

This should be the mentality of every company doing open source.Great points made.

> I want to be fair to Cal.com here, because I don’t think they’re acting in bad faith. I just think the security argument is a convenient frame for decisions that are actually about something else. […] Framing a business decision as a security imperative does a disservice to the open-source ecosystem that helped Cal.com get to where they are.

That sure sounds like bad faith to me.

"over a decade ago, the repository has been licensed under GPLv2. And that’s not changing"

Well - people can continue the GPLv2 fork anyway. So ultimately what Cal.com would do here does not matter; that's the beauty of GPL in general. It is a strict licence. I think GPLv2 was the better decision for the Linux kernel than, say, BSD/MIT.

> That code is exposed to constant scrutiny from attackers, defenders, researchers, cloud vendors, and maintainers across the globe. It is attacked relentlessly, but it is also hardened relentlessly.

It is clear that there is a business decision with regards to Cal.com jumping away from discourse, but the claim that open source is automatically better than closed source, when it comes to security, is also strange. Remember xz utils backdoor? Now, people noticed this eventually. Ok. How many placed trojans exist that people are unaware about? Perhaps there are more sophisticated backdoors. Perhaps AI is also used to help disguise them. I don't think that merely because something is open source, means it is automatically good or better with regards to security. Can you trust software? In California there are recent censorship bills to restrict 3D printing further, allegedly to curb on plastic guns (but in reality sponsored by lobbyists from the industry). Can a 3D printer print out a 3D printer that is not restricted? Is the state sniffing after people via laws not also a restriction? I guess it is possible to ensure a clean open hardware and open software system acting in tandem. But you kind of have to show that this is the case. See this old discussion about Trust, on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1m4mwn/a_simpl...

> Large parts of it are delivered straight into the user’s browser on every request: JavaScript, …

Ooh, now I want to try convincing people to return from JS-heavy single-page apps to multi-page apps using normal HTML forms and minimal JS only to enhance what already works without it—in the name of security.

(C’mon, let a bloke dream.)

This article raises a lot of good points that strengthen the argument against keeping models away just because they're "too powerful". I remain disappointed to see AI corporations gloating about how powerful their private models are that they're not going to provide to anyone except a special whitelist. That's more likely to give attackers a way in without any possibility for defense, not the other way around.

Never used it as it asks me to burn an email address to post.