As an aside, the part about how ROMs are writeable via manufacturer tricks is what makes "amateur" reverse engineering of drivers a potentially costly affair.
You never know when you pop a hidden write trigger, and subsequently fill the ROM of your expensive hardware with garbage.
I recall reading about such a incident involving a DVD burner, where the OEM had reused a seldom used signal (stupid on their part, but still) as the trigger for a firmware update...
I believe that was Plextor drives, although I can't find a reference.
Anyways, smart manufacturers these days put some sort of a signature on the firmware (even just a CRC will do), and don't write updates to flash unless they have a good signature. That makes it much more difficult to accidentally trigger an update.
It's quicker to write a stupid enhancement request than it is to write a response declaring why that idea is bad. Project outsiders are not entitled to a well-argued response on why something is going to stay the way it is. They are entitled to nothing unless they are paying for support.
That said, these rants themselves take much more time to prepare than a simple "we're not going to do that, sorry". Theo strikes me as someone who takes joy from hurling insults, rather than simply being busy and therefore curt.
The initial poster really does deserve some rebuke. People should not be posting messages/requests that require time to review, if they haven't even spent a small amount of time to check if their opinions/requests have any basis in reality.
This kind of OP is terrible for any community. Its one thing to not understand something ... its another thing to write messages as if you deeply understand the problems in the space. OP is making all kinds of elaborate requests about what the project should do ... based on what? What made him decide to make these requests? Think about that. Its just ridiculous that someone could sniff some little bit of scent somewhere about something, and then make sweeping prescriptions about what should be done for the project.
I find it slightly amusing that even his relatively harmless answers to relatively harmless questions are full of hate and rudeness. And can still be informative!
In this case at least, I can empathize.
But I have no sympathy for this and it certainly isn't one of the more constructive ways the matter might be handled.
Right, all I see is him coming off as an arrogant dickhead. The initial email from the user was nicely written and expressed the point clearly. De Raadt just started insulting the guy out of the blue. Yes, he did make a mistake and a bad point (we all do sometimes, what's the big fucking deal?), but he was very court.
Is it cool these days for open source OS/kernel development efforts to be run by these self-indulgent egotists?
It's not at all courteous for idiots to wonder into email lists and effectively steal a minute or more from every reader of the list. Now multiply this by the number of idiots in the world.
-- someone who has had to triage an email list for an open source project
The real self-indulgent egotist is the person writing the initial email to the mailing list. At the very least he/she could have spent the time to research facts. The majority of Theo's response is debunking things that could have been answered with a minimal amount of effort.
[1] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=143354954711286&w=2
[2] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=143355112811564&w=2