On the spectrum of grey areas from “request” to “demand”, we not only have to evaluate the literal words typed but also the context and expectations of open source. As the libxml2 maintainer indicates, they are no longer willing to participate in security bug secrecy and priority. In hindsight, those expectations that most take for granted as necessary must have demanded considerable time and energy from them. They could have said no at any time, but not as easily as turning down a feature request. For asocial-leaning maintainers (hi!) saying no to security processes is no more difficult than refusing any other request — but for the vast majority of maintainers, it will take an effort of courage and will to refuse the ‘demands’ — the social pressures, the contexts and expectations — of security’s best practices, reporting processes, and priority overrides. (Elsethread, the individual making demands in an issue is
also a case of ‘demand’ rather than ‘request’, that isn’t much in the in-between grey area at all.)
Psychologically, it hits different when a leecher — someone whose uploads are not greater than some minimum threshold — begins demanding something; what they receive then is not just a free copy of the maintainer’s work to profit from, but also the specialized work of the maintainer to satisfy or reject their request. The cumulative impact of dealing with parasites is distinct from the demotivating effect of profitable leechers who silently download their work and never say anything at all?(and also from the motivating effect of seeing millions of people benefiting from leeching — adoption is often a significant reward). Torrenting has no language for this difference, as in torrenting there is no such problem; so I did some research and chose ‘parasite’ here. I recognize that, scientifically, the animal ‘leech’ tends to be viewed as ‘parasitic’; but there’s a clear difference in connotations, as a torrent leecher is not viewed with – does not view themselves with — the same disgust and loathing as parasites are.
