So I started to write a question about what makes curl such a complex application, that requires decades of dedicated development etc
But then I just looked at the man page (https://curl.se/docs/man page.html) and it is quite apparent that it's an enormously complex and capable tool. Support for tons of protocols, certs, and much more. And, as the article says, it runs on every operating system and architecture.
Evidently, it's a eminent example of one of those forgotten yet ubiquitous xkcd dependencies upon which the rest of the software world sits.
It's an absolute disgrace that the maintainers have to essentially beg for support like this, in a world where a trillion dollars is being lit aflame to produce little of value.
There are a lot of posts from prominent open source maintainers about this topic and from a far away, I always wonder if the solution is actually simpler than they want to admit: treat the project like a real business.
`curl` (and similarly important projects) have a tremendous leverage with the big tech and I don't see any of them on curl's sponsors page. Why not?
The sales pitch (and yes, treating the project like a business implies sales) would be simple: we are curl, you depend on us, pay us 1M/anually and with that money we'll hire the experts that we need to continue the development and support of the project. Raise a few millions (recurring) and secure the project's financial stability. Pay yourself a respectable salary, hire people.
If "the big tech" refuses, publicly call them out on it. Connect with other prominent projects and act together. The internet depends on you, you should be awarded.
I have a tremendous respect for curl as a project and Daniel as a person (based on his writtings, never met him) and I know it's easy to comment out the stuff on the internet from a safe distance, but I still wonder if things could be actually different.
> The curl project is not owned by a company. We are not part of any umbrella organization. This makes us a little under-powered at times, but it also gives us maximum freedom and flexibility. We act solely in the interest of making curl as good as possible for the world and curl users.
That interest could also be served through a dedicated curl entity, with the right legal structuring.
I would too suffer from fatigue from getting a wall of text every day where the effort to produce it might have been a coffee run, and I'd have to sift through it as it claims to end the world as we know it.
youd think thered be a way to setup a WASM vm as a proving ground for bugs.
it is disappointing harnesses dont have a real perscriptive protocol you can hook them into that limits their interaction to a dev environment besides placing the harness inside
I'm a simpleton whose curl experience is things like `curl -O https://mysite.com/page.html`
So I started to write a question about what makes curl such a complex application, that requires decades of dedicated development etc
But then I just looked at the man page (https://curl.se/docs/man page.html) and it is quite apparent that it's an enormously complex and capable tool. Support for tons of protocols, certs, and much more. And, as the article says, it runs on every operating system and architecture.
Evidently, it's a eminent example of one of those forgotten yet ubiquitous xkcd dependencies upon which the rest of the software world sits.
It's an absolute disgrace that the maintainers have to essentially beg for support like this, in a world where a trillion dollars is being lit aflame to produce little of value.
There are a lot of posts from prominent open source maintainers about this topic and from a far away, I always wonder if the solution is actually simpler than they want to admit: treat the project like a real business.
`curl` (and similarly important projects) have a tremendous leverage with the big tech and I don't see any of them on curl's sponsors page. Why not?
The sales pitch (and yes, treating the project like a business implies sales) would be simple: we are curl, you depend on us, pay us 1M/anually and with that money we'll hire the experts that we need to continue the development and support of the project. Raise a few millions (recurring) and secure the project's financial stability. Pay yourself a respectable salary, hire people. If "the big tech" refuses, publicly call them out on it. Connect with other prominent projects and act together. The internet depends on you, you should be awarded.
I have a tremendous respect for curl as a project and Daniel as a person (based on his writtings, never met him) and I know it's easy to comment out the stuff on the internet from a safe distance, but I still wonder if things could be actually different.
You're right, and I saw:
> The curl project is not owned by a company. We are not part of any umbrella organization. This makes us a little under-powered at times, but it also gives us maximum freedom and flexibility. We act solely in the interest of making curl as good as possible for the world and curl users.
That interest could also be served through a dedicated curl entity, with the right legal structuring.
I would too suffer from fatigue from getting a wall of text every day where the effort to produce it might have been a coffee run, and I'd have to sift through it as it claims to end the world as we know it.
This is more than grind...
youd think thered be a way to setup a WASM vm as a proving ground for bugs.
it is disappointing harnesses dont have a real perscriptive protocol you can hook them into that limits their interaction to a dev environment besides placing the harness inside