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by stsp 3166 days ago
Hi, I am the person you are accusing of mischief.

I didn't break any agreement. I agreed with Mathy on what to do, and that's what I did.

The fact that Mathy decided to get CERT involved and subsequently had to extend the embargo has nothing to do with me.

(edit: typo)

2 comments

To be clear, I accuse you of nothing less than playing a rational response to the researcher's apparent "always coƶperate" strategy. "Defect" in a prisoner's dilemma context does not mean "breach" in a legal one. (For example, an OPEC member defecting has zero legal consequences. It does, however, affect their standing in the next round of negotiations.)
'Defect' doesn't mean 'breach' in a legal situation, it also doesn't mean 'sociopath and/or economics professor' in a psychological one, but people form connotations, so be careful what you accuse. Anyway I think you're playing the PD analogy too much... But I'll play a bit too. Construct a payoff matrix. What does real defection look like? It's patching mid-July, when the patch was received, instead of waiting to the agreed upon end of August time. I see no defect here. There could only be one if, after CERT was involved and set a new date, Mathy asked OpenBSD to postpone the prior date agreement, and instead of cooperating they patched immediately for the biggest gains to their users. There is no mention of such a request, hence it probably didn't come.
I support your decision.

If Mathy was concerned, why did he wait to notify CERT? Should that not have been the first priority?