[HN Gopher] Dhcpcd Will Need a New Maintainer ___________________________________________________________________ Dhcpcd Will Need a New Maintainer Author : elvis70 Score : 573 points Date : 2021-03-13 19:24 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (roy.marples.name) (TXT) w3m dump (roy.marples.name) | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: | He came over to NetBSD from Gentoo a number of years ago, | bringing dhcpd with him. An excellent acquisition for NetBSD. He | has been a dedicated and thoughtful BSD developer. This is very | sad news. | kblev wrote: | Was this a paid job or volunteer? | xianwen wrote: | Volunteer. | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: | :( | CamouflagedKiwi wrote: | A reminder that there's always a person behind software. It's | been a few years but for a long time I used OpenRC and dhcpcd, | made possible by Roy working away in the background. No matter | what happens with his cancer, I'll always be grateful for that. | KennyFromIT wrote: | Messages like these are so sad to read. The world will never | realize how many people are working tirelessly behind the scenes | to keep society moving forward. | | Cheers to all of the silent (and sometimes not so silent) people | that continue to give of themselves to make this world a more | wonderful place in their own little way. You all are awesome and | we literally couldn't go on with our way of life without you. | pjc50 wrote: | I call this "Postel decentralisation": everyone thinks there's | some kind of system or institution making everything work, but | in fact there's just a guy doing it all on his own. | Fordec wrote: | There's always a relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/2347/ | caslon wrote: | Interestingly, you seem to be the only person on the World | Wide Web to ever have used that phrase (three times over | three years?), but it's such a perfect description of such a | common phenomenon that I'm pretty sure its propagation could | save hours of time in typing for nerds on the Web. | AceJohnny2 wrote: | What does "Postel" refer to? | zeckalpha wrote: | Jon | sterlind wrote: | Presumably Jon Postel, who co-authored many RFCs | foundational to the internet such as TCP, IP and DNS. As a | single person he was very involved in the internet's | architecture. | smhost wrote: | i mean, even within institutions, it's usually just some | person hacking away behind the scene. what else would it be? | nealabq wrote: | Relevant: http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/CCSWP197/CCSWP197.html | | _Postel picked up the role of number coordinator because it | needed to be done._ | politelemon wrote: | It's the closest, or at least one of the closest, things to | altruism in this field. | wslack wrote: | Nadia Eghbal's work and writing about this subject was eye | opening for me. | Rebelgecko wrote: | I've been using a website for 15 years or so that had a similar | situation. The creator/maintainer got a short prognosis, but made | an effort to ensure that his service would outlive him. | | Even though I'll never meet Josh from Spamgourmet his work | continues to make my life a little bit easier on an almost daily | basis. I hope Roy's legacy is able to continue in the same way | and that he gets some comfort from that. | bombcar wrote: | Dan Jezek died way too early and his family worked hard to keep | BrickLink alive - and now it will continue as it's under the | umbrella of the LEGO Group. https://www.danjezek.com/ | jaynetics wrote: | I have used Spamgourmet almost since its inception. Maybe the | first great SaaS, and you couldn't help but immediately notice | it was built by a lovely person. | | Despite having only months to live, Josh was working on a plan | to shut the site down in an orderly fashion as long as he was | still able to notify all users, but then his son stepped in and | took over part of the operation. | azornathogron wrote: | A tragic message. | | > I have been dealing with cancer for some time and sadly the | treatment has not worked. My life expectancy is now fairly short. | | I'm not sure what to say in response, since I don't know Roy. | Though the prognosis is bad, nothing is certain. I hope he and | his family gets as much time as possible. | 40four wrote: | Very difficult to read. I think the only thing to say in this | type of situation is to offer them whatever gratitude and love | you can. | spijdar wrote: | The blog post mentions one person at the clinic he's being | treated at has lived for 7 years on this treatment. Although | the median is much lower, unfortunately :( | | Very sad to hear, even though (especially because?) I have | never heard of Roy before now but have used dhcpcd for many | years. I hope he gets as much time as possible, and enjoys what | he has left. | nextos wrote: | Besides, having a tumor during the pandemic is particularly | unfortunate as the standard of care has degraded mostly | everywhere. Sadly, I know first hand. | | I hope he gets as much time as possible. Immunotherapies are | improving all the time. | imglorp wrote: | So tragic. | | Generic cancer treatment in the US, with a few exceptions, | was already a horrifying, barbaric affair: unless you have a | cancer treatable with newer genetic or immune methods, it's | still approached with cut, burn, and poison, like it's been | for many decades, with varying results. | | Add to that a constant battle at every step with insurance | for pre-authorization pitting your doctor against a | corporation, then fight against oppressive rules for pain | management, all possibly while a family struggles to care for | the sick person and worry about going to work to pay for it | all. | | I can't imagine adding covid into the horror. Best of luck to | anyone facing this. | Teever wrote: | The developer's cancer blog seems to indicate that they | live in the UK and are receiving medical treatment from the | NHS. | enriquto wrote: | > Besides, having a tumor during the pandemic is particularly | unfortunate as the standard of care has degraded mostly | everywhere. | | Same here... I lost my dad to cancer at the height of the | first lockdown, and it was really painful to overhear the | oncologists that were treating him holding passionate | conversations about covid and nothing else. The nurses were | obviously overworked and did nothing else than provide | morphine. Cannot complain about the professionalism of the | care he received, given the circumstances. But I feel that I | could have spend a few weeks more with him if he had fallen | ill at a different time. | einpoklum wrote: | With many (most?) free software projects, implementing it and | getting it to a stable working condition is only a fraction of | the overall amount of work invested over time in maintaining the | thing. | | Compilers change, system libraries change, operating systems | change, build systems change, language standards change and so on | - and you, who just wanted to write, say, a DHCP server you or | your organization needed at some point in life, tear yourself | away from your day job, your family, your current pursuits and | interests - which have likely not included fiddling with that old | piece of code you wrote all those years ago - and bringing it in | line what the current state of things. | | Sisyphic work, which is usually rewarded mostly with complaints | about why the thing is not up to date. "But they only just broke | it! Do you expect me to spend my time also anticipating what | infernal subtle ways the rug is going to get pulled from under | me?" ... but you never tell people that. | | You dutifully write your fix and re-publish (which can also be a | bunch more work, since the platforms for publishing your FOSS | project also change). | | I salute you, Roy Marples! | | (and I donated.) | dumbneurologist wrote: | This is such sad news. | | > I did not accept this. I have young kids to watch grow up and a | loving wife to grow old with. Life and time are the two most | precious commodoties we will ever have. | | As sorry as I am that his hopes were futile, time and again the | universe shows us how little it cares for these sentiments. | | Regardless of what resources one might have to protest, we are | all slowly ground to dust. | userbinator wrote: | That's sad to hear, but to think about the situation a bit more | deeply, is DHCP software really something that needs | "maintenance"? The protocol is decades old and stable, and no | doubt the implementations in equally-old routers and other | equipment continues to function unchanged and interoperate with | much newer equipment. | spijdar wrote: | Yes, without a doubt -- network software especially needs at | least some maintenance to deal with security vulnerabilities. | I'll say that not all software needs constant security | supervision, but I think DHCP client/servers should. Among the | other duties of maintainers. Bless all those who take up the | thankless job... | bartvk wrote: | Of course it needs maintenance. Architectures change, packaging | methods change, software is started differently or earlier in | the boot process, etc. | mnd999 wrote: | It probably doesn't need many new features. But it needs | someone to release bug fixes, and ports to new architectures, | deal with CVEs etc. | bch wrote: | Browse his work[0] to see what's been going on with it. As a | NetBSD user, I'm always happy and impressed to see dhcpcd | getting the attention it does. | | [0] https://roy.marples.name/cgit/dhcpcd.git/log/ | anticristi wrote: | Wow! If I were in a similar situation, I don't think I would have | the strength to think about the future of my projects. | | Such a sad message. | bch wrote: | Roy and his work are brilliant. | ronnier wrote: | I'd like to donate but the PayPal app just spins :-/ | | I'll try web | exhilaration wrote: | If the link doesn't work open the app or website and search for | @rsmarples | ronnier wrote: | Web worked if any of you are having the same issue | magnetic wrote: | Do you need a PayPal account or is there a "take my credit | card and check out as guest" option somewhere? | ronnier wrote: | Not sure. I already had an account. | dgellow wrote: | Fuck cancer :( | | I don't know Roy but feel so sorry for him and his family. | bgorman wrote: | This guy is a machine. Roy fixed several bugs in dhcpcd that | allowed the megacorp I worked for to ship dhcpcd in millions of | devices. I donated. | moonbug wrote: | but did the megacorp? | kortilla wrote: | Unlikely. If you expect something different you're missing | the point of open source. Roy didn't have to fix anything if | he didn't want to. | ceejayoz wrote: | I mean, it's not a legal obligation, but it might be a | nicer world if we considered it an _ethical_ one. | sneak wrote: | I think perhaps you mean "moral" rather than "ethical". | | It is entirely ethical to use free software, even to | generate massive profits, without paying anyone anything. | That's literally the whole point of software freedom: | you're free. | Causality1 wrote: | It's very disappointing that a man can go to the doctor with a | rapidly growing lump and instead of cutting it out on the spot | they make him wait for months of tests to come back, after which | it's inoperable. Disgusting. | aeturnum wrote: | This is a sad reminder of the masses of invisible labor (unpaid | and paid) that hold up our world. Social scientists have been | studying how labor becomes visible (or invisible) for a while | without finding obvious solutions to "the situation." | | How can we build a world where an infinite procession specialists | like Roy can get the care they need and also find and train | successors in their important work? Not just because we will all | die, but also because we might all want to retire or go on long | vacations or, even if we are good at it, change careers. | numpad0 wrote: | There's this half formed view I'm finding interesting: currency | based economy is one way to assign workforces in the Earthian | human society, but not the only way, and not just in | motivational sense, there truly are other ways, in existence or | to be studied/theorized or the world is in need of. | | If I was super rich or in power I could gather and pay a group | of average people to make dhcpcd financially driven, but I | can't see that working. | numbsafari wrote: | Is there anything like an "Open Source Hall of Fame", for | recognizing and remembering significant contributors? It's not | perfect, but perhaps it is a way to at least preserve the | memory and the history. | einpoklum wrote: | Who is "significant"? If you make many people significant, | you have a hall of fame so big that nobody can remember | anybody. If you make few people significant, then most FOSS | labor is again performed by unsung heroes. | aerovistae wrote: | I think this is an amazing idea. This needs to exist. | david_allison wrote: | Google publishes a list a few times a year with their Open | Source Peer Bonus scheme: | | https://opensource.google/docs/growing/peer-bonus/ | | https://opensource.googleblog.com/2020/10/announcing- | latest-... | stefan_ wrote: | Linux has the CREDITS file where you end up once you drop out | of maintainership of some subsystem: | | https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/CREDITS | | (e.g. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/054c4610bd05) | folkhack wrote: | Ha - the last comment on that CREDITS list is pretty funny | =) | | Definitely worth the full scroll. | bombcar wrote: | Poor Leonard stuck at third to last - has to be a big hit | for someone with a name like that. | sjtindell wrote: | Just in my personal opinion, things like a UBI move us towards | that world. It wound allow people flexibility. | pm90 wrote: | UBI + Government funded, free healthcare for everyone. | | It makes no sense that, with all the excess industrial supply | that we have today, that we refuse to provide a basic minimum | standard of living for all human beings. | fastball wrote: | The problem with healthcare is that "basic minimum" is | wildly subjective. | | Healthcare is still _very_ expensive. There are diseases | (including cancer) we could easily spend millions per | patient on. Pulling out all the stops you could spend 10s | of millions. But we really _don 't_ have that kind of | societal overabundance, not yet. | | So how much do you spend per patient? Are there certain | diseases that you don't spend any public money on because | the interventions are so expensive compared to success | rates? It's really not a simple set of decisions to make, | and those decisions _do_ need to be made (or more to the | point: agreed upon). | jdavis703 wrote: | This complexity was one of the major reasons the | Affordable Care Act's public option was eliminated. There | was going to be a group of people who made these | decisions. But when the public found out they were deemed | as "death panels" that would get to chose who would live | or die. | chrisbennet wrote: | As opposed to insurance companies determining who would | die? | AussieWog93 wrote: | The only reason it costs millions to treat cancer | patients is because of medical patents allowing companies | to extract profit margins of several thousand percent (or | more). | | In countries like Australia, where drug companies have to | negotiate a fair price with a single government agency, | the cost of treatment is an order of magnitude lower. | fastball wrote: | This is not true. | | MRI machines are not expensive because of "patents". They | are expensive because they are _expensive devices_ that | utilize superconducting magnets which need a constant | supply of liquid helium. | | Various drugs are expensive because (regardless of | patents) there aren't enough patients to justify mass- | production, so the price stays high. Sometimes even with | mass production drugs are hard enough to make that the | price _still_ stays high. | | Doctors are not cheap to train, so their services will | always be expensive until we replace them with robots. | | There are a plethora of reasons why medicine and | healthcare is expensive beyond "patents" - remove patents | from the equation and you can still _easily_ spend | millions per patient for various diseases. | jpetso wrote: | For diseases where there are just a handful of patients | requiring sky-high treatment prices, it would be worth | investigating whether society can spread their costs | among enough people that the costs are bearable anyway. | And 10 people yearly requiring a $10m (each) specialized | treatment would cost a population of 100 million | taxpayers a dollar each. | | Of course, if these treatments are more common at the | same price, the social costs might be too high and we'd | have to let people live or die depending on their | financial situation or ability to fundraise. | cpach wrote: | Good point. Not only are physicians needed, nurses are | needed as well. They might be cheaper to train and hire | compared to physicians - OTOH, there are more of the them | and the numbers add up. Not all diseases can be cured by | simply taking a pill. | chadcmulligan wrote: | But millions per patient is the exception, most people | don't have that spent on them, thats why it averages out, | and why countries like Australia can afford public health | care. | fastball wrote: | So Australia does not have any caps whatsoever on what | they will spend for disease X? | _Microft wrote: | What problems do you see beside the ones that basically | any country with a public health care system has (/has | solved)? | fastball wrote: | What do you mean? A country having implemented a | nationalized healthcare system does not mean the problem | in question has been "solved", it just means that | particular society has managed to agree where to draw the | line. But this does not guarantee the population at large | will continue agreeing indefinitely into the future. | _Microft wrote: | Umm... yes? | grecy wrote: | > _There are diseases (including cancer) we could easily | spend millions per patient on. Pulling out all the stops | you could spend 10s of millions. But we really don 't | have that kind of societal overabundance, not yet._ | | My Mum in Australia had a rare and aggressive form of | lung cancer, discovered at stage four. | | She had almost three years of radiation, chemo, all the | associated drugs, scans, treatments and even two | different trial drugs. | | She never paid a cent, all of it on Australia's standard | "heathcare for all". | | If Australia and many other countries can manage it, then | more countries can too. | | Anything less is just an excuse. | fastball wrote: | The calculus is still not that simple. What if that | economic output could've instead been directed towards | better education for children, or reducing the use of | something which is known to cause cancer in the first | place (e.g. coal power plants)? | | The decision is simple for you, because it's your mom. | The decision is not a simple one for a society. | | We do _not_ yet live in a post-scarcity world. Spending | on one thing by necessity means less spending on | something else. | chadcmulligan wrote: | Australia has free education as well, and optional | private education. University is paid but fairly | reasonable, and there's a loan system, though it could be | better imho. | midasuni wrote: | Most (all?) advanced countries have government funded free | healthcare for everyone. It's UBI that's the hurdle. | paledot wrote: | All, by definition. Claiming to be a first world/advanced | nation without universal health care would be laughable | if it weren't so tragic. Maybe one day UBI will be the | same. | jimbob45 wrote: | In times of plenty, such socialism works well. In times of | struggle and famine, someone other than you gets to decide | how resources are allocated. Your hard work and instinct to | survive no longer belongs to you at that point. Many today | have only ever known times of plenty and think the USSR was | a failure because of selfish leaders, not because there | were genuinely hard decisions to make during struggle and | famine. | | You see the narrative today being that whites don't deserve | what they have. Whites don't deserve their hard work | because it was built on empire building and slavery and | privilege. To me, this is being set up to cripple | capitalism, pretending that the hard work capitalism | encourages is somehow false or fake. | | Yes, UBI would solve your problem in the short term. | However, I think proponents of UBI are deviously attempting | to downplay capitalism's benefits and entirely hiding UBI's | drawbacks when society is no longer as well off (e.g. | during wars) | winfred wrote: | The way I see it, we already have that world, with capitalism | functioning as a filter. | | I worked my ass off to reach financial independence, now I'm | dedicating the rest of my life towards helping other people. | | I've proven to be capable of using the system to a degree | where I can do whatever I want, which allows me the freedom | to help other people full time. | | It's not a perfect system, but I doubt UBI will be much | better. At least capitalism filters out many of the people | who shouldn't be helping others. | | Helping those in need isn't something everyone should be | doing. Not every needy person should be helped and helping | others in desperate need incurs a mental cost that's not easy | to carry. | duncan-donuts wrote: | Why should any single person carry the weight of the person | in desperate need? UBI + healthcare implies that there's a | social safety net that creates an entire network of people | to carry this weight. I don't have a clue if any | implementations would successfully do this but to just | throw people in desperate need to the wolves is inhumane. | einpoklum wrote: | > I worked my ass off to reach financial independence | | This is a false pursuit, and in a sense a vacuous | statement. | | You are never independent of society around you. You are in | constant need of others doing that invisible and visible | labor - in production and in services - to maintain your | way of life. | | It's only with Capitalism being the way it is that you need | to "work your ass off" to not be financially dependent on | your parents, or at the risk of a crisis and collapse upon | losing your job etc. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | Much of that "desperate need" is _created_ , or _worsened_ | , by capitalism.1 | | It isn't just a matter of "working hard". Say you're a | brilliantly capable developer for three months out of every | year, have around four months of chronic pain and bad | mental health unpredictably breaking up the remaining time. | Unless you're wealthy, capitalism doesn't let you get to a | situation where your bad mental health doesn't disrupt that | five month stretch where you could be doing worthwhile | things - even if you _would_ make enough money in those | three months to support yourself, when most of it 's going | into paying off the debt you got into because you lost your | job and _had to eat_ , it's difficult to do so. | | Think this is a bit much? Okay, how about this: you're in | jail on suspicion of committing some crime or other. This | lasts 11/2 weeks, before they realise that no, actually, | you weren't guilty. But in the meantime, you've lost your | job, and without the savings you'd usually gather prior to | job-hopping... what then? | | You might've worked really, really hard to get where you | are. For many, working really, really hard simply isn't | enough. | | --- | | 1: "Capitalism" here is shorthand for "society being | structured under the assumption that capitalism is a fully- | general ideal solution for allocating all resources, and | there are only a handful of narrow examples where it makes | sense to do something else". There's nothing inherent to | _capitalism_ that causes these things, any more than a | chainsaw is responsible for felled trees. But this is | pedantry, so I kept it out of the first sentence. | lovecg wrote: | > Much of that "desperate need" is created, or worsened, | by capitalism. | | In what way? The life in general from the beginning of | history to quite recently was horrible for most people | most of the time. The explosion of worldwide wealth (for | every single person) over the last 300 years was for a | lack of a better word miraculous. | | What are the "desperate needs" in your view, and what | magical system of government you're imagining that would | do much better? | smitty1e wrote: | Perhaps you're correct, and my cynicism misplaced. | aeturnum wrote: | I support UBI! I also suspect that we need to go beyond | universal benefits into grappling with the reality that | different people have different needs. We'll need to agree on | a way to discern which society should take on and which are | individual. | flatline wrote: | It would allow flexibility for those who can manage their | money successfully, and aren't horribly unlucky. | Unfortunately that population is relatively sparse - the | monthly stipend is going to be funneled into the pockets of | unscrupulous lenders as fast as you can say, "easy credit". | If it weren't the US, with our habit of lifestyle inflation | and tremendous consumer and educational debt, I'd be much | more optimistic about it. | | Would it be better than what we have now? Possibly! I'm | fairly confident a real social safety net would be better. Or | tight regulations around all that liquidity in the market, | presumably pulled from elsewhere in the public coffers. At | the end of the day it still sounds like wealth redistribution | away from properly funded public works. | justincormack wrote: | Roy has been an incredibly helpful and dedicated maintainer, | always helping people use it. Its the best dhcp client I know of | too. Very best wishes in a difficult situation. | rasengan wrote: | Dear Roy, | | It is unfortunate you are dealing with this. I am so sorry and | hope for the best. The Handshake founders had an airdrop pre | allocated for you in the Handshake Blockchain [1] so there is | about $64,000.00 in there that you can claim under marples.name | as of writing. | | [1] https://dns.live/top.html | ldng wrote: | Maybe he has more urging matter than claiming this ? Thought | about the paperwork and taxes handling ? Could you do that for | him ? | sleavey wrote: | What does this mean? Did the founders decide Roy's work was | worthy of the coin donation? | joshuaissac wrote: | I do not entirely understand how it works, but I think they | allocated coins to users on GitHub based on certain metrics, | and also reserved names in the top 100k sites on Alexa. | | I am not sure whether it is entirely automated, or if there | is a human element in the decision-making. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22504592 | tpmx wrote: | Has Roy been doing all of this essential maintenance work for | years without pay from some kind of corporate sponsor? | gigatexal wrote: | If there was ever a time for companies to step up it's now. I | feel terrible for his family. Donated what I could. | shadeslayer_ wrote: | This is so sad because if you read his blog post from January | 2021, he sounds so very hopeful and happy at the prospect of the | immunotherapy working. It sounds like he discovered a new lease | of life. Being thrown from that situation to the new prognosis | which is infinitely worse, sounds like a hammer blow. | vmception wrote: | Cancer requires clinging to glimmers of hope. Yes, he felt that | way at the time and yes, he wrote it down, but these | improbabilities are all anyone ever has, its not over till it's | over. | | I read that post too, going from a tiny undetectable bump under | the skin that only his partner noticed, to unbearable pain | pressing against his spine making him unable to sleep and think | clearly. | | It seems like 4 months were wasted just getting appointments. | genewitch wrote: | There's a progression that is "forced" when you get a cancer | diagnosis, especially if they have to surgically remove | anything. They won't start chemo or anything else for several | weeks post-op. It seems like you're trying to get | appointments or whatever, but realistically, they're getting | you in as soon as their liability (or patient care laws) says | they can. Stage III, stage IV, doesn't matter. If they | operate first, you're going to spend a lot of time waiting. | | If you're an american, remember that FMLA only lasts a | quarter, so if you can go back to work after the surgery but | before the chemo i strongly suggest you do that if there's | any concern about insurance or whatever, since you're | probably going to want to sleep for the first few weeks worth | of chemo dosing. Good luck to 1/2 of the american population, | because that's the rate of cancer in the US. | 1996 wrote: | > It seems like 4 months were wasted just getting | appointments. | | That's the NHS "free" healthcare at play. | | Remember, you get what you pay for! | sneak wrote: | > _Cancer requires clinging to glimmers of hope._ | | Does it, though? Is there anything that suggests the mental | state of the patient is a factor in the efficacy of | treatment? | | Pieter Hintjens has written a bit against the "fight" model. | alecst wrote: | A better mental state is its own reward, isn't it? | teddyh wrote: | https://xkcd.com/2347/ | samblr wrote: | I believe open source work is amongst the greatest works of | charities ever. It is just staggering the amount of work that | goes building/maintainer open source. And I possibly wonder every | week on who are these wonderful people creating/maintaining them. | | My heart goes to maintainer & family. | | Everybody in this forum needs to do a bit. | | Request everybody to donate generously via paypal mentioned in | the link. | samblr wrote: | @Dang : Could you please change the title to convey this | better. | | 'Dhcpd will need a new maintainer' - doesn't tell the real | story. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-13 23:00 UTC)