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Comment by 0des | Hacker News Reader

It feels like gradually things are getting 'less fun'. We can't have nice things, people can't do jokes, everything is like "your service must be completely professional even if it is just this thing you needed and built and offered to others for free". Everything is SO SERIOUS now, when one thing isnt how a small group feels it should be, suddenly everyone mobs up and more fun disappears.

Is there a generation thing that made this happen? It seems now that no matter what you do, if it deviates from what a paying user would expect, even if the thing is free, that as a developer you can get called up in front of these ad-hoc tribunals of the common man to answer and atone for your sins.

It's so dumb the way the internet is going, I thought when we invented it that things would be so much better. I have nothing but spite for the last 20 years of the way we have treated this golden resource.

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It's not a generation thing, it's a paycheck thing. curl is run many many billions of times per day in lots of critical workloads. There's nothing to stop anyone from developing a similar library with some jokes in it. I'd probably use it for ad hoc or personal stuff, but I don't want this in the thing I'm getting paid to built, and going to get paged* for when the joke shows up in the wrong place.

* Ages ago, when the millennials were still in grade school and CMS was still a multi-million dollar proposition, I wrote a nifty little copyediting tool for a Very Large Telephone Customer. Someone made a benign jokey edit in during a demo of the tool, which made it to production. The next day there was an emergency meeting with over 150 people across several offices about "what happened" that led to a page deep in the site showing people in New Jersey that calls from your basement were free.

I understand your argument; but it sounds to me like you expect hobby projects to be paying your wage.

I know we stand tall because we stand on the shoulders of giants (and, in our industry: many giants!) but I don't think you can expect any form of guarantee that curl continues to work exactly like you expect unless you're paying for it.

It's a different story if you have some kind of enterprise contract, but somehow I have the impression that we're all using cURL for free and paying nothing for support-- thus, there is no support and you shouldn't really expect any.

If you want to make cURL-Enterprise then that's fine..

but it's a bit unfair to co-opt someone else's project just because you and I chose to use it professionally.

(this applies to me also: I am guilty of this, I'm not pointing fingers at you specifically; just my, and our, collective attitude)

> somehow I have the impression that we're all using cURL for free and paying nothing for support

On the contrary, Daniel’s job is commercial curl support. See any of:

* https://daniel.haxx.se/

* https://curl.se/support.html

* https://curl-support.com/

Looking at it another way, you didn't need to set up any tooling to shepherd data into production because everyone involved understood the point of the joke. It was a very clear example of GIGO for your entire company and the cost was one meeting.

A lot of my joke errors boiled down to "you've hit an edge case I didn't handle, here's an easily searchable string to find the location". They were jokey because the subtext was another late night and you might as well soften the blow.

Actually, the opposite. The result of this, besides damaged reputations and hundreds of person-hours of time wasted, was more access controls and more reviews/oversight, which slowed things down and generally made things far less "fun" than the original joke could offset.

I’ve noticed the same thing, and I think it comes down to this: the Internet is important now.

I started online in the early 90s. The Internet was not important back then. Not much depended on it, there weren’t many people on it, so the folks who were there could fuck around and not worry about it. Jokes are easy and safe when they are low-stakes.

Now, the Internet is extremely high stakes. A huge part of society depends on it. People are just naturally less willing to tolerate jokes in things they depend on. Powerful emotions involving fear and safety and security and power can get invoked, maybe accidentally.

Let’s say you’re driving with some friends and one falls asleep. So as a joke, the driver gives the car a swerve and everyone yells. The friend wakes up in a panic and everyone laughs, hopefully including them, eventually.

Now let’s say you’re flying across the Pacific. You fall asleep, but then wake up as the plane starts to drop and the pilot is yelling over the intercom. But then he straightens out and says, “just kidding folks! Ha ha ha, you should see the looks on your faces.” To many people, that’s not so funny.

Basically the Internet started as a car full of friends and now is a giant airliner with everyone in it. So the “pilots” are held to a higher standard.

Seems to me that there are still communities of jokers on the Internet to be found. They just tend to operate at “joke scale,” which is now a lot smaller than “entire Internet” scale.

I'd also argue that jokes in the business world aren't that funny; they feel like advertising in another form, an attempt to ingratiate a brand through emotional means.

I think you are correct in your observations, but I'd attribute the real cause to something other than "fun:" our low-trust society. Things can be fun when one doesn't have to worry about attacks from every angle, in the case of software. There are so many malicious actors out there that one is no longer allowed to "have fun" with hidden software functionality. It might increase the attack surface of your application.

Easter Eggs have lead to do many security concerns over the years that software authors have had to get serious.

To put it another way, an easter egg in a TV show or movie is interesting and fun. An Easter egg in a critical system in a plane or car is not amusing.

Hang on, this exact situation is like if I make a cake, and as people walk by and see it, they want a slice too. So I say "sure have a slice, its free cake, I made it for myself but it's also free for you".

The person who decides that their steakhouse is going to make my free cake the centerpoint of their dessert cart and then expresses dismay that I like cream cheese icing on my free cake can fuck right off and bake their own cake.

In this case the author is saying that they don't do easter eggs because it would cause an erosion of trust, and that's fine, that's their prerogative and I get it. HOWEVER, let us not be fooled that there isn't an outrage contingent waiting to pounce every time someone dares to make free software the way it is most useful/accurate/fulfilling for themselves. This causes a chilling effect for a portion of us who write free software.

Quoting the article,

>curl is installed in some ten billion installations to date and we are doing everything we can to be responsible and professional to make sure curl can and will be installed in many more places going forward.

If you want to sell ten billion cakes and beyond, you better do your market research and listen to customer feedback

> sell

curl isn't sold.

It is used by millions and in secure systems.

Sure, it’s free and the author can manage it however they want. But the reason they choose not to is because it’s still falls into the enterprise software envelope even if it doesn’t command an enterprise level price tag.

Just because something is released for free it doesn’t mean the developers don’t take their own software seriously. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them doing so either (even if you personally would like your software to have all sorts of unexpected behaviours and side effects).

Open-source projects still have to sell themselves to get users (marketing/"devrel"). curl's author definitely makes money from curl: https://curl.se/support.html

I'm not 100% sure why you're being downvoted. While the choice of the word "sell" kind of feels at odds with FOSS, it's honestly not an inaccurate verb.

Everything is an attention game, if people stopped using curl, then it would stop getting donations, and the author(s) would probably have to stop working on it as much. They aren't being "greedy" or anything, but they do have some level of incentive just to have a reasonable living working on curl.

That’s not an Easter egg. But also I would expect the baker to warn me that it had cream cheese if just to set my expectations.

I have a tea jar in the kitchen and it’s full of Earl Grey instead of builders tea (eg Darjeeling). If anyone makes their own tea I warn them that the tea jar is Earl Grey and I have builders tea in one of the cupboards above the kettle.

I don’t do this because the Earl Grey is an Easter egg. I do this because I’m not a dick and actually want people to enjoy their cup of tea.

> expect the baker to warn me

Your expectations of someone's free cake are too high, or you didn't understand the analogy. I don't think we will find a resolution between us, but I'll leave you with a bit of wisdom my father once gave me as I made a similar complaint about a free donut: "You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."

Good day

You’re conflating disagreement with misunderstanding. I understood your point fine, I gave a counterpoint on why I disagreed.

Also calling your cake story an “analogy” is giving it far too much credit given it had nothing to do with Easter eggs; let alone my original rebuttal regarding critical systems.

> I'll leave you with a bit of wisdom my father once gave me as I made a similar complaint about a free donut: "You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."

That’s both crass and irrelevant.

I'm only now noticing you've replied to almost everything I've said, and quite negatively, so I think some apology is in order as it seems I've maybe touched a nerve I was not aware of. I want to be the bigger person and wholeheartedly apologize to my esteemed colleague.

I'm sorry.

Original comment [1] made me aware that I've inspired some emotions in you about this particular topic, which was not my intent, bless your heart. Take care, have a great day, and hopefully we can both enjoy our own cake respectively.

> Your expectations of someone's free cake are too high, or you didn't understand the analogy

You’re conflating disagreement with misunderstanding.

Also calling your bullshit cake story an “analogy” is giving it far too much credit.

That’s both crass and irrelevant.

> I'm only now noticing you've replied to almost everything I've said, and quite negatively, so I think some apology is in order as it seems I've maybe touched a nerve I was not aware of.

I’ve only replied to my thread and one other post. Hardly everywhere. And you’ve not hit a nerve nor am I being unduly negative. This is a discourse and in conversations it’s not unusual for people to take opposing stances.

What I do dislike is people taking conversations to a meta level and arguing about the argument rather than discussing the topic directly. I’m obviously happy to agree to disagree if an impasse has been reached but please don’t deflect the discussion with assumptions about one’s emotional well being

Imagine making this complaint with regards to electrical, or plumbing work. How would you feel if your electrician put an easter egg in your home's electrical system?

These are not the same! Plumbers don't make piping for fun and then allow others to use it for free.

Motives are irrelevant. It’s the application that matters.

To use the example here. What if a plumber is wealthy enough to retire but continues to work because they enjoy it. And what if they then offer a job for free, eg for a community centre or church. Are they then allowed to put an Easter egg in where the pipes explode on Christmas Day?

> What if a plumber is wealthy enough to retire but continues to work because they enjoy it. And what if they then offer a job for free, eg for a community centre or church. Are they then allowed to put an Easter egg in where the pipes explode on Christmas Day?

This is a bad example because in what you describe the plumber is making a malicious "easter egg".

Fair enough the motives are malicious but would any kind of Easter egg be tolerated?

In secure software any kind of Easter egg can end up being a vulnerability (and all to often has become one).

Something written on a pipe would be an easter egg, likely tolerated.

Tearing down a building,, you could probably find many easter eggs. Things written on the inside of walls. A signature in concrete later being covered by materials. Etc.

Comparing adding a fun flag to a system with making a physical bomb is a huge strawman.

Exaggeration, sure. But not a straw man.

The rational behind the exaggeration was to illustrate how even seemingly innocuous software Easter eggs, like an additional flag, have often actually turned out to be security vulnerabilities.

Maybe there is a better way of illustrating that using the plumbing metaphor. Nothing immediately came to my mind but I do apologise if my choice of analogy was more of a distraction than an explanation.

It's a strawman in the sense that some here argue for the fun of adding a few bytes of output to some program, while your retorts argue against them wanting to blow up innocent people.

No one is stopping you from having "fun" with your free tool, it's just that if you do many/most people will not want to use your tool no matter how free it is.

I like to feed the birds with my less-awesome bread loaves sometimes, as I learn to bake. I am not at all disappointed that someone doesn't create stuffing or croutons with it.

I think this is more like some other baker saying "I don't put raisins in my bread because the people I am baking for don't like raisins" and you shouting "argh when did people become such prudes??"

Neither do the curl authors. This library is used basically everywhere, from your device over IoT applications to critical servers. Sure, people might have fun while writing this software, just like your plumber might enjoy his craft, but the end product is professional groundwork.

I wouldn’t read the article as a polemic against all Easter eggs, just not in critical lower level infra where reliability and security are paramount. So Easter eggs in my music player - sure. In my pacemaker - not so much.

> Everything is SO SERIOUS now, ...

Now? It's been serious since computers were originally built for business. It became a little more lax in the 90's and the 00's with the rise of the web. This has also coincided with a sharp increase in code size and decline in quality. Maybe we need to be more serious.

> This has also coincided with a sharp increase in code size and decline in quality

Lol this is one hell of a claim to just slip in.

Not exactly wrong per se, though..

curl is part of the network infrastructure. We want a lack of fun there. Putting an Easter egg in Minesweeper is a different basket of rabbits.

I mean, I don't think it's generational at all, there are plenty of libraries on Github that are meant to be fun and silly [1] [2] [3] [4].

I think we've largely just decoupled the fun and goofy projects from the mainline projects; I think businesses have less of a sense of humor than engineers.

[1] https://github.com/Herzult/SimplePHPEasyPlus [2] https://github.com/philipl/pifs [3] https://github.com/hubsmoke/bro [4] https://github.com/jneen/balls

> Everything is SO SERIOUS now

Actually, if you read the article the author explain why this only applies to curl, and explicitly says they understand if other software wants to continue including easter eggs

In a way, your comment is an example of itself.

I'm too young to really say, but I think the widespread use of code review and project management software has caused this.

I don't know how this post serves your "generational" observation when curl was introduced in 1996.

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