[bayindirh]

Wow, indeed. To add insult to the injury, the whole message reads like this:

> Good news is several Google and Apple engineers have volunteered to help with libxml2 and libxslt security issues, despite your effort to sabotage libxml2 users...

I mean, c'mon. He's carrying the world on his shoulders and people are just pointing fingers?

Also, this shows how evil corporations are. I can understand Apple, it's their culture to avoid GPL code and and committing code to any public project needs permission from everyone plus the campus cat, but Google, the apparently bastion of open source software is doing the same thing without any shame...

They have morphed into the next Microsoft AFAICS.

Despicable.

[tristan957]

mcatanzaro frequently makes these over the top comments, and when called out, refuses to backtrack on them.

[hitekker]

What other over the top comments has Michael Catanzaro made?

[kasabali]

typical freedesktop.org developer

[matheusmoreira]

The accusation of sabotage was pretty disgusting but there's something that's arguably even worse deeper in the thread:

> maybe if you stop fixing things for free, perhaps somebody will suddenly be willing to pay you to do so

We should all remember that line every time we think about being generous or altruistic. He essentially called the maintainer a fool.

[overfeed]

I think mixing altruism with work is a mistake, which is the sentiment I read into the (sarcastic) comment. The maintainer has very little leverage for payment if they continue working on the project for free.

The maintainer has to pick a side and commit to it, and deal with the downsides. Alternatively, they may choose not to play.

[matheusmoreira]

I don't think he should be forced to pick sides. He made the thing, he knows the code base inside out. It would have been trivial for companies to hire him as a consultant or something since they're all depending on him. Why didn't they? It really makes no sense.

[aseipp]

Nick Wellnhofer did not create libxml2 or libxslt, David Veillard did. Nick has been the primary contributor since about 2015, though.

[matheusmoreira]

My mistake, I apologize.

Still, it looks like he maintained the library for a long time. He no doubt has more knowledge about the code base than outsiders. That ought to be valuable to corporations relying on the library and contributing security patches.

[overfeed]

> Why didn't they?

Why buy the cow if the milk is free? The license let's them use it without payment, and in a just world, they'd pay all the maintainers of libraries they use, but ours isn't a just world, and we need to formulate our strategies with that in mind.

[lovich]

> Why didn't they?

Because he continues to work for free? Companies are amoral actors. They aren’t going to donate out of charity and if someone wants to give them free work they won’t say no

[hulitu]

Google does _not_ fix things even for money, so he may have a point. /s