Taiwan Asks Microsoft To Open Windows Source

Andy Tai writes "According to this China Times article (in Chinese), the Republic of China government has asked Microsoft to open Windows source code. The official, Lin Jua-Cheng, in charge of the 'e-government' initiative, says many other countries have also sent similar requests to Microsoft. Lin explains that without Windows source code, the government cannot add custom firewall functionalities to Windows based systems in wide use, and that is very bad for the information security of Taiwan. Microsoft refused to publicly release the source in the past using reasons of copyright protection, but Lin emphasizes this request is reasonable since it is based on (government users') necessity." Read on for a bit more, too. (Can anyone suggest an online Chinese English translation engine that produces other than gibberish?) Andy continues "Lin points out that GNU/Linux systems, because of their freeness and high security (due to the availability of the source code, which can be modified to add firewalls and other security measures), have become widely used in government computer systems (especially in militaries and intelligence agencies) of many nations and the Pentagon, the FAA, and the air force of the U.S. Lin says the government cannot rely on a single vendor, and to promote the alternatives, the government has set up a 'Free (libre) Software Steering Committee' directing government efforts. The two aims of the ROC government's current software policy is making Windows source code openly available and the development of Free (libre) Software in Taiwan."

Comments

Clouded minds...

[Inoshiro]

"More famously, there was a version of a very popular C compiler that would put in a back-door whenever it noticed itself compiling a common bit of Unix login code,"

Nope. This was a theoretical attack presented by Ken Thompson. It was never out in the wild, to the best of anyone's knowledge.

The point still remains that you can't trust code unless you can personally verify it at any level, because the moment you give any important code trust, the code can potentially use that as a way of subverting the entire system.

Disclosed source code is not equal to Open Source

[Bruce Perens]

MS might disclose its source code, as so-called "shared source". Shared source does not have the list of rights available for it that are included with Open Source. I think the request we are seeing is for MS to disclose its code, not for it to change its fundamental business model. There is a technical term for what is being asked for. It's called disclosed source code, not Open Source.

Bruce