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MS Cites National Security to Justify Closed Source
guacamolefoo writes: "It was recently reported in eWeek that "A senior Microsoft Corp. executive told a federal court last week that sharing information with competitors could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. He later acknowledged that some Microsoft code was so flawed it could not be safely disclosed."
(Emphasis added.) The follow up from Microsoft is even better: As a result of the flaws, Microsoft has asked the court to allow a "national security" carve-out from the requirement that any code or API's be made public. Microsoft has therefore taken the position that their code is so bad that it must kept secret to keep people from being killed by it. Windows - the Pinto of the 21st century."
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAH!!!!!!!!!!
no wait seriosuly though....
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAH!!!!!!!!
doesn't microsoft already fit into all three categories???
#1 and #2 are a given...
#3, can you say: the total cost of Melissa, ILOVEU, code red[1-*], etc, etc...
Riiight. i think, rather than make MS and other corporations less amazingly blase about the security of their users, OR make the gov't mandate OSS, this kind of catastrophe would be used to strengthen the power of corporations. Probably, the poor schmuck who made the math error causing the crash would be blamed, and we as coders would become liable, leading to coding insurance and probably, compiler licenses. Henceforth from this moment, ONLY MS would be able to sell software to the gov't, as they could afford the "mission critical" insurance, rather than just the lawsuit for lost playtime insurance that, say, EA would need. Rather than force code to be made well, i think it would just mandate the establishment of liability, so when something breaks, we know who to sue.
Not to mention the fact that we all know that only communists use open-source software...