full-disclosure - "responsible disclosure" explanation (an example of the fallacy of idealistic thought)

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Date: Thu Aug 11 18:15:41 2005
From: fw at deneb.enyo.de (Florian Weimer)
Subject: "responsible disclosure" explanation (an
	example of the fallacy of idealistic thought)

* Matthew Murphy:

> Let me just define "responsible disclosure" first of all, so as to 
> dissociate myself from the lunatic lawyers of certain corporations 
> (Cisco, HP, ISS, et al) who define "responsible disclosure" as 
> "non-disclosure".  The generally accepted definition of responsible 
> disclosure is simply allowing vendors advance notification to fix 
> vulnerabilities in their products before information describing such 
> vulnerabilities is released.

Back in 2001, this was called "full disclosure", see:

  <http://www.wiretrip.net/rfp/policy.html>

(The document is probably even older, use archive.org to find out.)

In retrospect, "responsible disclosure" was always more a marketing
term than anything else (just like "blended threat").  The implicit
message that other disclosure processes were irresponsible was
invaluable.