Anything they "maintainer of last resort" would actually be forks, or collectively a distribution. We already have hundreds of distributions acting as maintainer of last resort many times over, only with actual developers and not presuming to make themselves the new upstream for anyone else.
Microsoft controls NPM and GitHub. I would not put it past them to truly take over a project if they gauged it in their best interest (though it would be a massive violation of trust, so I'd imagine they'd tread carefully before going there).
If it's sent to Akrites, they can even pretend it's done responsibly – even though only megacorps get a seat around that table.
> We are joined by Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Chainguard, Cisco, Citi, Endor Labs, Ericsson, Google, IBM, JPMorganChase, Microsoft and GitHub, NVIDIA, OpenAI, RapidFort, Red Hat, Rust Foundation, Sonatype, Vodafone, and Zscaler
Many of the names on the list makes the initiative rather suspect. Companies who do a lot to undermine free and open-source software, who hide critical software behind their walls, preventing both its scrutiny and its adaptation and improvement, and two of the LLM giants - they'll "defend open source"? I don't know about that.
> Akrites gives critical infrastructure stakeholders a confidential, structured place to coordinate vulnerability discovery, remediation, and disclosure across the open source projects they depend on
So, a bunch of large corporations - some of who are known to be in bed with the US government - will share vulnerabilities among themselves, out of the public eye? Fishy.
I'm extremely concerned about the state of Open Source. The gamification of the whole thing & devstats means that people that are good at gaming metrics are rising up the ranks and people that are genuine high quality contributors and pushed to the sidelines unless they have a very popular profile. Mass generated AI slop and AI content gives people massive devstats boosts.
Why only a focus on Open Source? I feel like vulnerabilities in closed source products like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows, and Google Chrome to name a few can be just as essentially and foundational as other open source software for many businesses.
I think the idea is that automated source code processing is making it possible to find vulnerabilities at great speed and in an overwhelming way in software that does not have paid maintainers, whereas closed source software in active use has both less accessible code and paid maintainers.
A charitable foundation might be plausible to help companies secure their closed for-profit software but it doesn’t really have the same urgency for the fabric of the internet (or the same moral clarity)
Yet still important to be secured due to the impact vulnerabilities can have. And LLMs can work without source code access via utilizing things like debug symbols, disassembly, reverse engineering, etc.
>paid maintainers
Just like open source maintainers their time is already being spent on other things which they see as more important over making the project 100% security bug free. Just because they are being paid, that doesn't make security their number 1 priority.
You make a fair point but OSS is a communal resource that would benefit from communal stewardship.
Also not sure about saddling this Linux Foundation project with the corporate politics of navigating which closed-source software they will bless with subsidised/free labour? Their mission has been about open technologies.
Also I believe Google Chrome would have its OSS Chromium variant covered, no?
> Additionally, when a critical package has no one maintaining it, Akrites will stand as the maintainer of last resort so a fix can still reach everyone in a timely fashion.
Ambitious and interesting. I wonder how long this will last and on whose dime and time? Akrites employs no engineers, so who will make the fixes and who'll pay them?
Anything they "maintainer of last resort" would actually be forks, or collectively a distribution. We already have hundreds of distributions acting as maintainer of last resort many times over, only with actual developers and not presuming to make themselves the new upstream for anyone else.
Microsoft controls NPM and GitHub. I would not put it past them to truly take over a project if they gauged it in their best interest (though it would be a massive violation of trust, so I'd imagine they'd tread carefully before going there).
If it's sent to Akrites, they can even pretend it's done responsibly – even though only megacorps get a seat around that table.
> We are joined by Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Chainguard, Cisco, Citi, Endor Labs, Ericsson, Google, IBM, JPMorganChase, Microsoft and GitHub, NVIDIA, OpenAI, RapidFort, Red Hat, Rust Foundation, Sonatype, Vodafone, and Zscaler
Many of the names on the list makes the initiative rather suspect. Companies who do a lot to undermine free and open-source software, who hide critical software behind their walls, preventing both its scrutiny and its adaptation and improvement, and two of the LLM giants - they'll "defend open source"? I don't know about that.
> Akrites gives critical infrastructure stakeholders a confidential, structured place to coordinate vulnerability discovery, remediation, and disclosure across the open source projects they depend on
So, a bunch of large corporations - some of who are known to be in bed with the US government - will share vulnerabilities among themselves, out of the public eye? Fishy.
Yeah, a bunch of the worst free riders and malicious consumers all in one place.
All they're really missing is Oracle and Bambu Lab.
I'm extremely concerned about the state of Open Source. The gamification of the whole thing & devstats means that people that are good at gaming metrics are rising up the ranks and people that are genuine high quality contributors and pushed to the sidelines unless they have a very popular profile. Mass generated AI slop and AI content gives people massive devstats boosts.
Why only a focus on Open Source? I feel like vulnerabilities in closed source products like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows, and Google Chrome to name a few can be just as essentially and foundational as other open source software for many businesses.
I think the idea is that automated source code processing is making it possible to find vulnerabilities at great speed and in an overwhelming way in software that does not have paid maintainers, whereas closed source software in active use has both less accessible code and paid maintainers.
A charitable foundation might be plausible to help companies secure their closed for-profit software but it doesn’t really have the same urgency for the fabric of the internet (or the same moral clarity)
>both less accessible code
Yet still important to be secured due to the impact vulnerabilities can have. And LLMs can work without source code access via utilizing things like debug symbols, disassembly, reverse engineering, etc.
>paid maintainers
Just like open source maintainers their time is already being spent on other things which they see as more important over making the project 100% security bug free. Just because they are being paid, that doesn't make security their number 1 priority.
You make a fair point but OSS is a communal resource that would benefit from communal stewardship.
Also not sure about saddling this Linux Foundation project with the corporate politics of navigating which closed-source software they will bless with subsidised/free labour? Their mission has been about open technologies.
Also I believe Google Chrome would have its OSS Chromium variant covered, no?
> Additionally, when a critical package has no one maintaining it, Akrites will stand as the maintainer of last resort so a fix can still reach everyone in a timely fashion.
Ambitious and interesting. I wonder how long this will last and on whose dime and time? Akrites employs no engineers, so who will make the fixes and who'll pay them?
Who they employ then? AI?
> Today, the undersigned commit real resources — engineering talent, security expertise, and funding — to harden the software we share