Fair Software Installation

rossjudson writes: "There's a little war going on in your computer; it's a war that you might be aware of if you're an experienced computer user. If you're new to the game, there's very little chance you know about it, but it affects you, and it gets worse, not better. The battleground in this war is your CPU, your disk space, and your system's stability." He's got a particular beef with NEW.NET, but lays out (in the article below) what he thinks is a workable, generalized code of conduct for software installation.

Fair Software Installation These days, we all download and install software from the Internet. And that software is rarely written entirely by one entity; rather, components are combined to create the programs we want. There is an increasing and disturbing trend to ship components that perform-system level tasks and have system-level effects. These effects are magnified because many of these components are installed without adequate notification to the user (either by omission, or deliberately).

The NEW.NET domain resolution component is a good example. This component is installed by a number of freely downloadable Windows programs on the Internet. Some of those programs notify the user that they are going to install the NEW.NET software; others do not.

Installation of NEW.NET alters the basic functionality of your system: It causes your system to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with international standards. That this is done in a stealthy manner is unacceptable. The fact that NEW.NET is unstable besides is another issue that we will deal with separately.

If I am installing a program that calculates speaker enclosure volumes, I shouldn't have to worry about it redefining my network stack and destabilizing my computer.

What does a reasonable software program or component do? It should perform its defined, published task. It should not consume excessive resources. It should have a defined starting point and defined ending point. If it is defined to be a service, it should publish that fact and indicate the starting mechanism it uses.

Let me draw upon the realm of commercial software for an example of a program that is an offender. Creative's PlayCenter 2 application is used to move music to and from Creative Nomad MP3 players. It can also play media. When you run the PlayCenter application, you get the functionality you expect. When you start examining your system files afterwards, though, the picture changes.

PlayCenter installs a service, a disk detection system, and a news collection daemon. It does not attempt to inform the user that these daemon-level processes are being put in place. It does not offer the option to make them manually-startable. Worse, the news collection daemon would actually chew up all your CPU idle time.

I think creators of software have some basic obligations:

1. Inform users when drivers, services, or daemons are being installed.
2. Allow users to omit any of the above that are not strictly necessary for program operation.
3. Ensure that during uninstallation, system-level components are accurately removed, "leaving no trace."
4. System-level and daemon components must be subject to a higher level of quality control. It is possible that some level of legal liability should be present for the corruption of the system.
5. Transmit no information from a component to any party unless specification notification to the user has taken place, and is renewed on a periodic basis.
6. Collect no information on a user without prior agreement, and a renewal of that agreement on a periodic basis.

There's been a longstanding battle between virus writers and anti-virus software. The equivalent to anti-virus software in the component world is Lavasoft's Ad-Aware. If you haven't run it before and you have a Windows box, get it and run it. The first time can be a real shocker -- tremendous amounts of crap can build up in your system without you knowing about it.

The little war I mentioned earlier is going to get nastier soon. Uninvited components like Cydoor and NEW.NET are sure to take steps to defeat Ad-Aware and programs like it. If I wrote a stealth component today, I would have it seek out an Ad-Aware signature file and modify it to ignore me, or add my directory to the ignore lists. Ad-Aware could respond by digitally signing the files, or with other techniques. This cycle will escalate, with each side taking new steps to ensure its dominance. Users will pay the price in decreasing system stability.

I am hard-pressed to see the difference between NEW.NET and the Sub7 trojan horse. Both subvert a computer for the purposes of others; both do it in stealth. The good folks at NEW.NET will surely disagree; they'll say that those applications that install their software inform the user, and as such, it really isn't their responsibility.

I say it is. NEW.NET makes active use of the component on your computer; I think that they cannot duck their responsibility for its behavior. They are a not passive participants; they are not a library component being used by others.

I've been beating up on NEW.NET quite a bit in this article. I suppose it's because the deinstallation of their component trashed the IP stack on my Windows 2000 system and it took me a half day to put it back together again. What the hell were they thinking when they stuffed a buggy service deep into my IP stack without telling me? I think they should have to compensate me in some way. A $250 Small claims court action here in Virginia might be a way to do it.

The bottom line is, where does it end? Software installation programs should install components that the user expects. Full disclosure should be the order of the day. There will always be violators, though. There are a couple of remedies which could help:

1. A legal framework for "allowable" system modifications during installation can be created. By adhering to the requirements of disclosure and stability, manufacturers can avoid liability. The thread of liability may be required (although capped) to enforce conformance and responsibility.
2. A technical framework in the operating system can establish and protect secure boundaries around the system's core. Certain operating systems already do this (Unix), but the most widespread consumer OS does not.
3. A "signed installation" program, run by known entities, asserting that a given program and its installation don't violate the rules.

These remedies are necessary as the entities creating these components can't be counted on to do the right thing. Their business models are often predicated on the stealthy gathering of knowledge, and the altering of what goes into your computer.

Just think -- what if NEW.NET decided to start redirecting www.bestbuy.com to www.circuitcity.com? Is there a law somewhere or a technical remedy for this situation? I think there should be.

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Comments

Legal Framework?

[dgb2n]

I was with the author all the way up until the point that he mentioned a legal framework for enforcement.

While all of those objectives are admirable, at the mention of involving governmental organizations in the enforcement of such standards I begin to get nervous. We live in a litigous society in the US as it is. Do we really want to enable a new class of lawsuits based upon violation of software installation standards.

Sure, publish some guidelines and get corporations to sign up agreeing to adhere. I'm just not sure I need or want legal protection to enforce it.

I certainly don't want to have my installation routines prescreened by the legal department before I can ship my code. Sheesh.

Re:he has some valid points...but....

[Hiro Antagonist]

Funny; I grabbed all of my application software, from StarOffice to Opera, for free, off of the Internet, and it seems to work just fine. So do the numerous other, smaller applications, like 'mutt' and 'ssh' -- they haven't trashed my computer, either, and they were free.

I think what the author is trying to get across is that the user needs to be informed; and while this is taken for granted in the free software world, it seems to be largely absent nowadays in the world of commercial software.

When a Debian package is going to make changes to a configuration file, it asks me first (unless I tell it not to); when most Windows-based installers decide that it's time to replace the IP stack with a Jell-O recipe, it just goes ahead without informing the end user of squat. While Microsoft has made this easier, it's not totally their fault (for once); and it's something that applications developers need to keep in mind.

Disclosure, choice and the future (rant)

[legLess]

That's my summary of what we need: disclosure and choice. The user must know every single non-required system modification, and have the choice to not install any of them.

But this won't work, of course. Our favorite example is Microsoft, who blithely says, "It's all required; it's all part of the OS; either take the package or don't." Making choices confuses people, see, and we want to avoid that.

Without being elitist at all, some of what they say is true. One reason Microsoft has succeeded is that they remove those scary choices from the users. It's the software equivalent of "bread and circuses" - don't bother people with the details, wow them with flash, and they'll mostly ignore what goes on in the background.

This succeeds because it's what people want. My 72-year-old mother doesn't know about patches and updates and service packs, and for fuck's sake she shouldn't have to. For good or ill, most people view computers as slightly cantankerous, very expensive toasters. They have no idea that they have, sitting on their desks, a little machine that can do very nearly anything. They want to do a couple things, and they want those things to be easy.

I can see a couple ways for this to go:

1. Special-purpose machines. Instead of one computer, you'll have a few little ones. A web pad in the kitchen that downloads recipies, a glorified word-processor in the study hooked up to a printer, maybe with accounting software. Most people will go to Office Depot and spend a few $hundred on a black box, kind of like a cell phone now days, then throw it away when a newer model appears. Microsoft is set to own this market.
2. General-purpose machines. Geeks will still want a real, live computer that they can control. This is only going to get harder and harder. Twenty years from now, I bet there'll be fewer general-purpose computers than there were twenty years ago. The after-market parts business will dry up as copy-control gets more and more intrusive. I mean, I can build a box from a bunch of parts, but I can't build a fucking motherboard or hard drive.

Computers have to get easier to use while at the same time getting more complicated and doing more things. The only way to do this is to remove end-user control of the device. Fewer scary options, fewer things to screw up. For the most part this is a good thing. Most people using PCs today are basically helpless aside from a few well-known command sequences.

The hard fight will be to retain control of real computers while consumer boxes get dumbed-down. What will make this possible (IMHO):

1. No DRM. Period. This will kill general-purpose computing forever.
2. More standardization. As the parts market shrinks and specialty boxes become more common, it'll be harder for ASUS (e.g.) to sell mobos into the after-market channel. There will be consolidation, but as long as #1 above is avoided it shouldn't be fatal.
3. Concentration on software quality. The OSS community generally goes a better job of this than closed-source, but it will have to get better. Quality alons isn't enough; as we know, 500% better isn't better enough if you don't have good marketing.

This is a long, winding rant, and has gone a little off-topic. Back to the point: I don't think this situation will get better, or at least not in the way we hope. It's going to be incredibly difficult to hold software manufacturers liable for anything; it'll be even harder to hold them liable and let OSS off the hook.

The best hope, I think, is operating system diversity, which at this point means forced licensing of the Windows source code. If you can use Microsoft Windows that basically bends over for any cute-looking virus or trojan, or (e.g.) IBM Windows that flat-out refuses to install anything that isn't digitally-signed and verified (assume, for the minute, non-DRM verified), what would you pick? What would your mom pick? What would you want your mom to pick?

That's what you get...

[ebyrob]

When you don't compile everything from source yourself. Down with binaries!

Oh wait, does compiling and reading code actually take work?