> Those days are pretty much behind us. Sure, you can compile code and tweak software configurations if you want to--but most of the time, users don't want to. Organizations generally don't want to, they want to rely on certified products that they can vet for their environment and get support for. This is why enterprise open source exists. Users and organizations count on vendors to turn upstreams into coherent downstream products that meet their needs.
> In turn, vendors like Red Hat learn from customer requests and feedback about what features they need and want. That, then, benefits the upstream project in the form of new features and bugfixes, etc., and ultimately finds its way into products and the cycle continues.
"and when the upstream is tainted, everyone drinks poisoned water downstream, simple as that!"
> The release tarballs upstream publishes don't have the same code that GitHub has. This is common in C projects so that downstream consumers don't need to remember how to run autotools and autoconf. The version of build-to-host.m4 in the release tarballs differs wildly from the upstream on GitHub.
Multiple suggestions on that thread on how that's a legacy practice that might be outdated, especially in the current climate of cyber threats.
Asking this here too: why isn't there an automated A/B or diff match for the tarball contents to match the repo, auto-flag with a warning if that happens? Am I missing something here?
Been saying this the whole day now, GitHub really needs an automated diff / A/B check-up on tarballs against the actual repo, flag everything with at least a warning (+[insert additional scrutiny steps here]) when the tarball isn't matching the repo.
> I would go further than that: all files which are in a distributed tarball, but not on the corresponding git repository, should be treated as suspect.
This and the automated A/B / diff to check the tarball against the repo, flag if mismatched.
I'm wondering is there i.e. no way to add an automated flagging system that A/B / `diff` checks the tarball contents against the repo's files and warns if there's a mismatch? This would be on i.e. GitHub's end so that there'd be this sort of automated integrity test and subsequent warning? Just a thought, since tainted tarballs like these might be altogether be (and become) a threat vector, regardless of the repo.
In the future: automated `diff` or any other A/B check to see whether or not the tarball matches the source repo (if not, auto-flag with a mismatch warning attribute), is that feasible to implement?
> Those days are pretty much behind us. Sure, you can compile code and tweak software configurations if you want to--but most of the time, users don't want to. Organizations generally don't want to, they want to rely on certified products that they can vet for their environment and get support for. This is why enterprise open source exists. Users and organizations count on vendors to turn upstreams into coherent downstream products that meet their needs.
> In turn, vendors like Red Hat learn from customer requests and feedback about what features they need and want. That, then, benefits the upstream project in the form of new features and bugfixes, etc., and ultimately finds its way into products and the cycle continues.
"and when the upstream is tainted, everyone drinks poisoned water downstream, simple as that!"