China Prepares To Examine MS Windows Code

Stargoat writes "CNet reports that China is looking into MS's source code for Windows. They are looking both to increase security as well as perhaps create a Chinese version of Linux. Or are they perhaps concerned with rumors of deliberate holes left in the software for the NSA to exploit?" Here's an earlier Slashdot post about the Microsoft-China agreement.

Comments

NSA

[fyrewulff]

I would think the NSA would be able to infiltrate Chinese gov't mainframes, whether they be Windows or Linux, without a need for pre-built-in backdoors.. I hope.

Re:NSA

[Councilor Hart]

And why wouldn't the chinese version of your nsa be able to read the nsa mainframes?
If you can read theirs, than assumes they can read your stuff as well.

Re:NSA

[azzy]

I hope not. I want to use a secure OS. And an OS that the NSA can infiltrate is not secure.

Re:NSA

[CaffeineFreak]

And one assumes from this that the chinese government can infiltrate the NSA mainframes.

Does that make you feel safe?

Re:NSA

[kannibal_klown]

No offense, but I think the NSA could probably hack into a Linux/Unix/etc syem without any more problems that a Windows system.

However, by having the source (be-it an open source linux, or the ability to modify MS's source), the Chinese would have MUCH greater security than simply buying some off-the-shelf product.

In this regards, I'd say Linux or something of that nature would be BETTER, but nothing is completely hack-proof. And I'd link to THINK that the NSA has a couple of good hackers under their belt that could break into Windows WITHOUT any special back-doors.

Re:NSA

[nitrocloud]

On the contrary... broken computers cannot be hacked... unless you hack them to pieces. =D

Cool

[WindBourne]

What do you bet that a new form of Wine/Linux will show up in China with much better capabilities!

Re:Cool

[|Cozmo|]

These concerns and more are probably exactly why it says China is sending people to Redmond. They aren't going to just hand out all the source code on disc and say "here you go!"
They have a lab setup for this purpose, and I'm sure the Chinese won't be taking the source home with them.

Why on earth would...

[Zog The Undeniable]

looking at Windows source code help with a Chinese version of Linux?

Re:Why on earth would...

[richie2000]

Why on earth would looking at Windows source code help with a Chinese version of Linux?

Can anyone tell us what the Chinese symbols for "What not to do and how not to do it" are?

Re:Why on earth would...

[Fjornir]

Can anyone tell us what the Chinese symbols for "What not to do and how not to do it" are?

I'm not entirely sure how Slashdot handles unicode postings, but here's my best attempt to answer that question. Remember that Chinese ideograms can, of course, represent more than one English word. But my best translation is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="GB2312"?>
www slashdot org
</xml>

Re:Why on earth would...

[cocotoni]

It is best represented by a pictogram of a waiwing window :)

Re:Why on earth would...

[richie2000]

I'm not entirely sure how Slashdot handles unicode postings

Not at all, apparently (imagine the trolldom it'd inspire):

XML Parsing Error: syntax error
Location: /heyho.xml
Line Number 2, Column 1:

www slashdot org
^

But I appreciate the effort. :-)

This all brings back memories from my TenFour days, working TFS Gateway support when we first introduced some semblance of Big5 and GB2312 support... At one point, I installed the Japanese version of Windows 3.11, just to see what it looked like. Fortunately, this was before Microsoft thought it'd be l33t to shuffle around menu items at random.

Re:Why on earth would...

[Zocalo]

I guess it's the Ying - Yang thing. ;)

On a more serious note, I find this somewhat worrying given the allegations made by Taiwan about organized cyber attacks coming from the mainland. Whether this is being reciprocated or not, I can't help but get the feeling that this is akin to handing China the cyber equivalent of a fusion bomb to use against Taiwan. Who knows what other exploits are lurking in the Windows code waiting to be found by the Chinese hackers doing the code review?

Of course, they could always surprise us and give Microsoft a respectable advance notice to issue fixes before coming up with a zero day full disclosure bug report. I guess time will tell as to which way the outcome is going to lean, towards a blessing or a curse, but it's going to be an interesting time finding out. Looks like that Chinese proverb is right again!

Re:Why on earth would...

[Overly Critical Guy]

Actually, the NT kernel is considered a very advanced piece of technology. I'd heard many developers blast the Linux kernel in comparison. It's all the cruft written on top that sometimes causes problems (just like in Linux, amusingly).

Re:Why on earth would...

[richie2000]

Oh, I agree. Dave did a fairly good job of the kernel, it's just that it's been given the classic Microsoft treatment for so long now, I don't think anything's left of the original design... They stuck a graphics layer in where it had no business being and it's been downhill all the way since. In some ways, NT 3.5 with the shell preview rocked. Then again, I may be just nostalgic...

Re:Of course

[AndreasJ]

...and then they have to pay license fees to both microsoft and SCO?

Whats the use?

[zaroastra]

whats the use of inspecting some offsite code when you have ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY that the code you're looking at is the one that is delivered in your compiled version?
In my language we have an expresion for that, that could be roughly tranlated to trying to stop the wind with a fork.

Re:Whats the use?

[ahfoo]

Exactly. The security problem with the closed source model doesn't go away because they show you SOME source code. So what? They can show you whatever they please and you'll never be the wiser. The only way around that would be if they allowed the Chinese government to handle distribution as well. That would be interesting.
Hmm. There ya go. Give the Chinese government the Windows source code and let them distribute it for free. And then, they could let people modify it and enhance it without costing Redmond a thing. It would be like a global coperative effort. We'll call it distributed source. No, something more like free source. No let's see there's got to be a good name for this.

Re:Whats the use?

[spektr]

Depending on the amount of source code provided you could ofcourse compile it and compare the resulting binaries.

Microsoft doesn't give you a compilable version of their code. That's the point.

Re:Whats the use?

[bakuretsu]

It's like, as if you were to open the doors to worldwide development and collaboration... How about "open" source? Nah, that's too vague.

Re:Whats the use?

[dr.Flake]

You would want the source, the compiler AND the settings used to compile the source.

That would give roughly the same binary when you compile it again.

I say roughly, because as fas as i know even the above mentioned variables don't always give exactly the same result.
(something like the compiler using system settings for "random" values, or so...??)

Re:Whats the use?

[joostje]

Even if you do have a compilable version of the sourcecode, you cannot be totally sure:

See Ken Thompson's brilliant backdoor in gcc

Re:Whats the use?

[rupe]

Even that is not enough. They code might require the use of Microsofts compiler.

True example, the famous hole in cc, that whenever it noticed that it was compiling "login.c" would introduce a backdoor. Not only that but whenever it noticed it was compiling itself would reintroduce the same code, so that even by inspecting the compiler source you couldnt find the exploit.

Details can be found on google.

Re:Whats the use?

[__past__]

Not only compiler-generated random stuff, but most likely also build dates and timestamps. The FreeBSD binary update project had to deal with these kinds of issues and have written a nice paper that discusses them (51k PDF, Google HTML version).

Re:Whats the use?

[__past__]

Except that it wasn't in GCC. Of course, given the recent r00ting of ftp.gnu.org, who knows what is in GCC...

Re:Whats the use?

[greenhide]

You're talking about Ken Thompson's paper, "Reflections on Trusting Trust".

I don't believe this ever was a "famous hole in cc". Instead, Ken Thomspon merely pointed out that trust in the code you were compiling was not enough; you would have to trust the compiler as well, which inherently meant you had to trust the compiler compiling that compiler, and so on. Essentially the only compiler you could trust is one you wrote yourself in machine code, otherwise you can't be sure what its compiled, binary form contains.

Whether anyone ever acted on this potential exploit is up for further research, but for it to be effectively done in Open Source, it could only be executed on a per-machine basis. That is, they'd have to change the compiler on your machine, because if they put the exploit right in publically available source code, it wouldn't be too difficult to find it when the code was reviewed.

What I find interesting is that this is listed as a "Classic" article, and that page is dated 1995! This idea has been out for a while.

Re:Whats the use?

[wawannem]

What you are referring to isn't a True example. It is a theoritical example.

It is clearly presented in Ken Thompson's famous paper "Reflections on Trusting Trust." It is a very good point, how much can you trust, well, trust...

I trust things to the extent that, if such exploits exist, I would be 0wn3d and there would be nothing I could do about it...

However, so would everyone else, and I am sure there are much more interesting machines to r00t than mine. By the time the l337 haxx0rz got to my machine, the exploit would have been discovered and made headlines...

I have spent a little time in IRC, and I read /. I know that doesn't make me an authority, but I have learned that most of these black hat types are so driven to earn karma from others that they couldn't keep a secret if their livelihood depended on it. To me that means, if they knew about it, so would everyone else in the world. Also, if they find out about the existence of any exploits like this, they would blab.

Therefore, I don't lose any sleep over it, and I figure I'll deal with the problems as they are discovered, and not ponder how many ways a compiler can insert malicious code.

Re:Whats the use?

[zeds]

Background: I used to work at a government security testing / certification lab.

It's actually worse than the above posted stated.

If Microsoft is cooperating with the NSA in the name of national security, it will be nearly impossible for the chinese to detect any cleverly planted backdoors, even with full access to source code. Why?

1. Who said the source code is functionally equivalent to the binary?

2. Even if it is, if the source will only compile with a Microsoft supplied compiler, who says the compiler hasn't been subverted to insert backdoors into the source code? Ken Thompson (used this attack to put backdoors into Unix)

3. Access to the compiler source code? But if it only compiles itself, the binary compiler can still subvert the newly compiled one. So how do you verify source code / binary equivalence?

4. Even if the chinese have some magic way to solve the preceding points, detecting deliberately obfuscated backdoors in the source code can be made VERY VERY difficult. Imagine a backdoor[s] deliberately distributed across millions of lines of code.

5. Do the chinese realize how secure a default installation of windows is? Not very. So now you have to audit a continuing stream of updates, for the same clever subversions described earlier.

6. Even without deliberately planted backdoors, Windows is littered with holes. The level of sophistication of those that have been discovered and published (without access to source code) have been very basic. This strongly implies poor programming rigor on Microsoft's part from a security standpoint. So there are probably thousands, if not tens of thousands of security holes in Windows.

Unix was developed in the early 70s, it's been opensource for a while, and a community process has gradually discovered increasingly sophisticated class of security vulnerability. Windows doesn't have that community process. It enjoys access to the techniques developed by the security community, but not their effort.

7. The complexity of Windows is mindboggling, and it's very poorly designed from a security standpoint. Everything is overly complex and bloated. Even the security APIs are overly complex and bloated. And that's supposed to be a feature! Unless the chinese have secretly been developing magic auditing technologies far beyond the state of the art the rest of the world has, they have NO WAY of subduing that complexity and producing a secure version of Windows to use.

8. Since Windows is simply poorly designed (security-wise), producing a secure version would require substantial high-level changes. Doing that while keeping backwards compatibility, ease-of-use, etc. would be very expensive, even for Microsoft which has 40 billion spare cash lying around. Ain't gonna happen.

Conclusion: The chinese aren't stupid, they realize all of the above. So the real reason they're auditing Windows is:

1. to find security holes for their own nefarious purposes, in the OS the world's only superpower (not to mention the rest of the world) is using in military, government and commercial networks. I highly doubt the Chinese will publish anything they find on the security mailing lists.

2. Chinese intelligence could easily have gotten access to Windows source code before (spys, hackers, leaked Microsoft shared source initiatives). They could compare that with the official version given to them by Microsoft, assuming Microsoft and the NSA were stupid enough about editing the source code to remove the obvious NSA backdoor.

Then again, perhaps everything is just as innocent as it seems. Microsoft isn't cooperating with the NSA. The Chinese really do want to use Windows, and will publish everything they find in a friendly manner to the rest of us.

Right.

Re:Whats the use?

[fishbowl]

>True example, the famous hole in cc

That was always a hypothetical case. It never happened. It's folklore, not a true example.

Re:Whats the use?

[spektr]

Do you seriously think that the code that you get from microsoft isn't compileable? What would the point be in that?

Trying to give the impression to be open, I suppose.

The company for which I work has coppies of various bits of MS source and we don't have any problems in compiling it.

Most bits of the code will indeed be compilable, otherwise you couldn't do anything useful with it, that's right. But I doubt that you will ever be able to compile a whole windows system from source (and use it on production systems). This means that shared source and open source aren't playing in the same league. If you don't use a system you compiled yourself, you will never be sure what code is running.

Re:Whats the use?

[draney98]

Nitpick. It's a reprint...

"Reprinted from Communication of the ACM, Vol. 27, No. 8, August 1984, pp. 761-763. Copyright (C) 1984, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. Also appears in ACM Turing Award Lectures: The First Twenty Years 1965-1985 Copyright (C) 1987 by the ACM press and Computers Under Attack: Intruders, Worms, and Viruses Copyright (C) 1990 by the ACM press."

Almost 20 years seems classic...

Re:Whats the use?

[giblfiz]

well, sort of a per-machine basis. Remember all those .deb and .rpm files floating around? I would go so far as to say that if you crept it into a few key places it would propigate rather nicely. Not that those key spots are terribly accsessable.

Re:Whats the use?

[Tony-A]

Methinks the point is that if you must trust one single source, that source has to be you. It does not go into the standard mechanism of having a cashier trading tickets for cash and a doorman accepting the tickets for entry. The system is fairly trustworthy as long as the two are not in cahoots. It certainly does not mean that you trust either of them individually.

Also, if they find out about the existence of any exploits like this, they would blab.
That's where you get the security. Too many points for finding even a hint of some funny business. This is also why you can't really be concerned about flame wars.

Re:Whats the use?

[greenhide]

No, I know.

My point is that it was called a "classic" over 8 years ago -- an enternity for the Internet. That's how old it is.

Re:Whats the use?

[zaroastra]

I have learned that most of these black hat types are so driven to earn karma from others that they couldn't keep a secret if their livelihood depended on it. To me that means, if they knew about it, so would everyone else in the world.

The best h4ck3r i know is a very close friend of mine. Close enough for me to know that he is, and that almost none in the world know about it. He manages several farms, a TLD, and is considered a security expert. How did he manage to get those nice positions? Exactly by not doing what you said. Not once has he braged, we are not talking about script kid here, but a mature person that plays on both sides of the fence, while the rest of the world thinks he only plays in one.
Ok, i'll agree he represents about 1% (or less) hacker population, but there are probably more like him.

Re:Whats the use?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

You're talking about Ken Thompson's paper, "Reflections on Trusting Trust".

I don't believe this ever was a "famous hole in cc".

While I don't know if Ken (or someone else) ever actually DID install that bug in cc, I heard about it considerably before Ken's Turing Award lecture which you quote.

The version I heard claimed that the author of "strings" (on the BSD project, if I recall correctly) was trying it out against the various utilities that came with the early unix distribution he was working with. When he tried it on the various components of cc he noticed that one of the strings in the compiler was "login". He began to wonder WHY the c compiler should know that string and with a bit of work teased out the trojan horse / trapdoor combo in question.

Of course with a bit more difficulty one could write a similar hack where the strings to be inserted were encrypted in the binary and decrypted upon use, while the same was done with the target strings and/or a hash was used to identify them. This would be robust against detection by "strings" or similar utilities.

Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[reallocate]

Don't know about any backdoors in Windows, but we all certainly have reason to distrust any OS sponsored by the Chinese government. They may have adopted a friendlier demeanor, but the folks who gave us Tiananmen still run the place.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[r00zky]

What reason to distrust? Remember that the OS they're sponsoring is opensource
What about reasons to distrust the closed source OS from the country of the guys who gave us the Patriot Act and the Oil Crusade?

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[Elbow Macaroni]

The bad guys are winning. And I feel fine....

Just what we need, evil dictators who want to learn how to code.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[lanswitch]

The only 100% secure os is one that you write and maintain yourself. Provided your computer is physically secure as well...

So then you decide that you have to trust others in order to get an os. But who are you gonna trust? Governments like the Chinese? The EU? Multinationals like Microsoft? That doesn't sound secure to me. There is always the chance of compromise for various reasons, and you won't be able to find out.
The only way around this is very well known. The source must be available for all to see and scrutinize. This is the only way to ensure that software only does what you want it to do. This is one of the strong point of Open Source Software.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[ratamacue]

I wouldn't trust an OS produced by government, period. The Chinese government is arguably more oppressive than others, but they still have a lot more in common with other governments than a private organization. At the root, a non-criminal private organization operates on the principle of voluntary association. Government, by definition, operates on the principle of force.

(For those who haven't yet realized, everything and anything government does is bound to the principle of force. At a bare minimum, government wouldn't be able to fund itself without force. The fact that some governments allow their citizens to play a role in the electoral process does not, in any way, remove the element of force from government.)

Now, back to my point. Which type of human interaction is more exploitable, the one which is based on voluntary association or the one based on force?

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd trust it MORE than an American OS. What need does the Chinese Government have for backdoors in internally used software?? These are people that will simply grab you on vague suspicion of anything they don't like, torture you until you admit to whatever they like, and then execute you -- all before breakfast.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[Fjornir]

Just what we need, evil dictators who want to learn how to code.

And I, for one, welcome our new neophyte coder overlords.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[dalutong]

Well, Deng Xiaoping isn't, unfortunately. He was the greatest leader of China since independence.

I spent seven years in China, from 1992 to 1999, on U.S. government orders. They have done more than a face-lift. They are not perfect, but they are doing a pretty good job of transitioning their country into modernity. I hope that someday a governmental model similar to ours will be applicable, but it just isn't right now.

Every country has its own peculiarities. A government system can not be super-imposed. That is what led the the failure of the first communist government in China. This new version, a more malleable one, is close to the right thing. And if you want to speak about what is best while considering the past, this is it.

They need to continue to evolve base on the market and not on some odd 5 or 10-year plans, but they are doing that.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[Frodo420024]

But the folks who gave us Tiananmen still run the place.

Actually they left at the last party congress, it's a whole new generation of leaders. Not that I trust the new ones either, but I do give them the benefit of doubt.

But the whole 'See the source' thing looks more like a MS PR stunt to me. Chinese government gets to read, but not modify, some source. So what? They gain none of the real benefits of Open Source, and MS gets huge press...

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

The USA has also had it's share of killing student protesters, most notably the Kent State massacre .

I suggest you cast out the mote from your own eye before pointing out the mote in your brother's.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[reallocate]

Rah, rah. Hardly anyone has the expertise to understand OS code, so even with open source, you still have to trust some unknown "experts" to tell you if it is secure or not.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[reallocate]

I bring Tiannamen into it because the party, the ruling elite, and the government structure that brought about that atrocity are still in power. I see no reason to forgive them, only reasons to remove them.

All non-democratic governments are illegimate, have no right to exist, and should be eliminated.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[reallocate]

>> ... if you want to speak about what is best while considering the past...

I don't. I want to see the Chinese people free to democratically elect their own leaders. As long as the Chinese Communist Party, via the PLA, have power, that won't happen, no matter how prosperous the big cities become.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[reallocate]

Not by a long shot. Go read your history.

But, even if your assertion were accurate, so what? Is receiving a grade of moral perfection from you a prerequisite for condemning and deploring the evil actions of others? If so, how have you managed to escape culpability?

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[reallocate]

>> Americans are such hypocrites

No, were not. Americans believe that everyone has a right to rule themselves, that any non-democratic regime is illegitimate and has no right to exist, and the any non-democratic regime anywhere poses a threat, simply because it exists, to every democratic government.

Consider the implications of that...

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[bombom]

Is that why you propped up Saddam in the first place? Or the current Saudi administration? Or the Pakistani "president" *cough* military coup *cough*.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[be-fan]

Well, shit. If democratic governments are all we'd had, we'd be living in the stone ages. Take Napoleon, for example. Turned France from a back-water, rural country into a world power. Without the unifying rule of a dictator, France would still have its provinces bickering with one-another. Also, your view of government is steeped in your own world view, where the power of the individual is supreme. A lot of people don't share that view. Take Iran, for example. We look at it as a conservative, undemocratic theocracy. That is what it is. But it is that way not because some crazy dictator came to rule over the people, but the people themselves (the student revolution) chose to place that form of governmen there. To them, the traditional form of government (what they believe will save their souls) is more important than individual freedom. We can criticize all we want, but we have to remember that we were no different 500 years ago, and there is nothing to say that, 500 years from now, we won't have moved on to a different form of government.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[be-fan]

Then its time for an American Jihad to "free" all the oppressed peoples of the world, isn't it. For such a bible-loving country, why do we ignore the parts that tell you to MYOB?

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[Pave Low]

Wow..this straining, twisting, and bending to equivalate the US to the Chinese government is just too much.

You try to compare Kent State, where 4 people were tragically killed, to Tianamen Square where hundreds, possibly thousands were deliberately massacred (the exact number will never be known since the Chinese government bans all discussions of the incident). Never mind that it was the National Guard directed by the state governor, which is not the same as the Federal Government . Unlike in China where it was a military action conducted by Beijing and the PLA.

So, no, the US has not had it's share.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[reallocate]

Yes.

Saddam, the Saudi's and Pakistan were seens as anti-Soviet tools. Now that the Soviets are gone, so is Saddam. The Pakistani's are needed against al-Qaeda and friends. The Saudi's are a medieval throwback regime, but they are a medieval throwback regime on our side. Better them than a fundamentalist terrorist-sponsoring regime with all that oil.

Remember, no one, and no nation, needs to meet your criteria for moral perfection before having a right to act in their own self-interest.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[Stargoat]

You're kidding, right? Because if you had spent time in China, you would know that they are still routinely slaughtering people. And if Time is reporting on it, then you can imagine the news they chose to suppress to keep the Chinese government happy and them in the country. It's like Iraq. The news agencies will not report the real news, in order to stay in the country, make a few bucks, and report the fake news.

Forced abortions, the relocation of Hans to Tibet to destroy that ethnic minority, the placing of nukes next to Taiwan, the egging on of North Korea, slavery and rape of women. These are China's improvements? What has changed since Mao? Nothing. The leaders still kill those who oppose them.

Deng Xiaoping was initially a revolutionary, and then a reactionary. But even that is hard to tell, since all he really wanted was more power. He was not "the greatest leader China since independence." The greatest Chinese leaders can be found on the isle of Taiwan.

But it's time we started calling them Taiwanese.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[reallocate]

>> ...the power of the individual is supreme. A lot of people don't share that view.

And a lot of people are wrong. I see no reason to be tolerant of people who believe people don't have the right to govern themselves. Belief in a theocracy makes no more sense that a belief in the divine right of kings, and is just as dangerous.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[be-fan]

*You* and I may think they are wrong, but who are we to argue? You seem to believe that we have found some sort of absolute truth in democracy. I would caution you that in believing this, you are no different from those who believe in the absolute power of the clergy or the absolute power of the king.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[reallocate]

>> ...I would caution you that in believing this...

Why? There's no virtue in sitting on the fence and giving equal moral wieght to opposing beliefs.

Why is it right for some people to enslave themselves under a theocracy or a monarchy, but it is wrong for me to say those kind of regimes are illegitimate? (Regardless of the feelings of their population. People don't have the right to vote away their freedoms, because that action enslaves their children and future generations.)

To argue that I am compelled to give equal weight to theocracy or monarchy is equivalent to arguing that I am compelled not to act on my belief in democracy.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[be-fan]

There's no virtue in sitting on the fence and giving equal moral wieght to opposing beliefs.
>>>>>>>>>
According to whose definition of virtue? You'd think by know that we would figure out that "virtue" is an intensely culture-specific idea, and not some sort of universal truth. We can't even be sure of truths in science (and stuff like Godel's work indicates that there may not even be such a Truth to search for) so what makes you arrogant enough to believe that you have such a truth for social behavior?

Regardless of the feelings of their population. People don't have the right to vote away their freedoms, because that action enslaves their children and future generations.
>>>>>>>>>>
If a time comes where future generations do not hold the same beliefs as their ancestors, then the antiquated forms of government will come down. Europe managed to get itself out from under the rule of absolute monarchy, and many places got out from under Calvinism, all without outside intervention. There is no reason to believe others won't.

To argue that I am compelled to give equal weight to theocracy or monarchy is equivalent to arguing that I am compelled not to act on my belief in democracy.
>>>>>>>>>>>
In *our* democracy, you're perfectly free to act on your beliefs about democracy. But what your not free to do under *our* system, is act in a way that deprives others of the right to act on *their* beliefs. This is why evangelical democracy is such an abomination. Its not because it violates some universal law, because it violates the laws that *we* have set down to govern ourselves.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Both incidents were great tragedies, but I think you're belittling Kent State. Four students were killed, one paralyzed, and eight more injured by the deliberate firing of national guard troops. From Tiananmen Square, according to Amnesty International, they have accounted for, "155 dead and 65 wounded", which is a far cry from the thousands you cite (although still an order of magnitude greater than Kent).

I don't think it's inappropriate to compare these incidents. On one hand, the victims of Kent State eventually did receive some small reparation while the Chinese government has yet to make amends to it's victims. However, both incidents were caused by social upheaval clashing with conservative policies.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[The Lynxpro]

"it's much better to take the OS from the folks who brought us four dead in Ohio for protesting the Vietnam War"

Four dead at Kent State holds no comparison value to the massacre at Tiananmen. Our government [the U.S.] did not jail the hippies for years and run medical experiments on them, or, even worse, trump up their charges and then slaughter them for organ harvesting to the highest bidder as what the PLA in China practice...

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[reallocate]

>> ..."virtue" is an intensely culture-specific idea, and not some sort of universal truth.

If that's your premise, you're beyond hope in my book.

To argue that virtue, ethics and morality -- our notions of justice and right and wrong -- are culture-based is to begin down the path of accepting any belief as valid and equivalent to any other, and, thereby, deny the validity of your own.

For example, there are cultures that believe that a father should kill his daughter if he thinks the daughter has dishonored the family. I don't care if that is culture-based or not, but I hold that it is repugnant, inhuman, and uncivilized behavior that should be eliminated. Are we to excuse such murderers simply by accepting that their behavior is based on a culturalbelief? Nonsense. If I do that, I am morally culpable in their crimes.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[reallocate]

Try again.

Saddam was already in the U.S. camp when he attacked Iran. U.S. aid during that war was designed to keep him there.

U.S. aid to Saddam in one decade in no way constrains the U.S. from acting against him when he became a threat in another decade. That said, it is interesting to note that Iraq, vice Iran, never held U.S. diplomats hostage for months or finances Hezbollah and other terrorists. Saddam was a bastard in uniform, but Iran is ruled by bastards in robes. Neither regime deserves to exist.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[dalutong]

Wow... you've got some some boiling blood there...

I also lived in Taiwan. On Yangmingshan, in Taibei.

And just so you know, the guomingdang were just as bad as the CCP. They are gone, thank goodness. But it took time, didn't it?

Oh.. and the Hans are being sent to Xinjiang to disrupt the Uigers. The Tibet situation is handled slightly differently.

I am familar with all of the accusations but the one of slavery and rape. I would like to know where that is happening, though I would not be surprised.

China has a lot of problems. I am the first to admit it. I wrote a 40000 word report on them. That doesn't mean that a revolution helps, though.

China is not the same China as it was under Mao. More importantly, it is not the China that was under the Guomingdang and their European partners. THAT was the aweful China.

China is moving in the right direction. Their problems are very complex. It is not a perfect system. I don't want to just allow the government to do whatever they want, but I don't want to suggest revolution. I think that, if the hand is played properly, progression can continue towards a freer China. If we want it to sustain itself, however, it has to be a gradual change.

And please don't think I"m not genuine. I have been very pained, and very angry, with what China has become, at times. There is a tremendous increase in prostitution stemming from the many rural female immigrants who can not find work in the city because of their poor education. That is something that needs to change. There are many unemployed. That needs to change. There is a lot of corruption. That needs to change. Many things need to change.

Feel free to email me. I would love to discuss this. I want what is best for China, and the world, and am willing to chat with anyone with the same intentions.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[be-fan]

To argue that virtue, ethics and morality -- our notions of justice and right and wrong -- are culture-based is to begin down the path of accepting any belief as valid and equivalent to any other, and, thereby, deny the validity of your own.
>>>>>>>>>>
Yep. That sounds about right. I don't believe my beliefs are innately more valid that someone else's. Now, if there is some other reasoning involved, that isn't based on a culture-specific idea of morality, then that's different, but hard-facts are few and far between in most arguments about this sort of thing.

I don't care if that is culture-based or not, but I hold that it is repugnant, inhuman, and uncivilized behavior that should be eliminated.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
I agree. But who are we to make this decision for others? Eventually, these cultures will come out of the stone-age. Enlightenment (and liberalism!) will take hold and they will ask the rest of us for help and we can help them then. Until then, we have no mandate to do anything about the situation. Not only would it be incredibly arrogant of us to meddle in the problems of others, when we have so many of our own to worry about, but it would be futile. This sort of thing does not occur, any longer, in urbanized areas, but in the backwater rural regions of the world. Even if the US went in and decreed that such behavior should stop, and sent its army in to enforce the decree, nothing would change. The only thing that can change culture is time.

Are we to excuse such murderers simply by accepting that their behavior is based on a cultural belief? Nonsense. If I do that, I am morally culpable in their crimes.
>>>>>>>>>
Your only morally culpable if you are under the impression that you are somehow morally responsible for the actions of others. I thought that this foolish idea had been exterminated with Puritanism.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[reallocate]

>> ,,,who are we to make this decision for others?
We are who we are. We're right, they're wrong. We have no reason to excuse them merely because we think their "culture" is different. Any such "culture" should be removed.

>> Your only morally culpable if you are under the impression that you are somehow morally responsible for the actions of others.

We're morally responsible for our own actions. If it is within our ability to end the immoral behavior of others and we still do nothing, then we our morally culpable for what they do.

the foolish idea is the one that posits that we have no responsibility for the behavior of others. or who sits by idly while others destroy what is good and important merely because he is afraid of trespassing on the sensitivities of another so-called culture.

People who want to do us harm merit punishment and elimination; only fools excuse their behavior under the illusion that they are "different" from us and, therefore, have a right to behave in that manner.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[Stargoat]

http://slashdot.org/~Stargoat/journal

I'm creating an article in there so we can have an extended conversation. Also, I want what is best for the Chinese, not necessarily for China.

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[Stargoat]

http://slashdot.org/~Stargoat/journal/47715

Re:Would You Trust a Chinese OS?

[Elbow Macaroni]

Hi Dr. Evil, what are you doing on here? Or is that you Mini-Me?

if Chinese government servers run Windows

[SHEENmaster]

Then the entire security model rests in NSA translators knowing the traditioonal chinese word for RCP and the servers having enough bandwidth to support VNC or Terminal Server.

The NSA won't bother with any backdoors beyond a possible inclusion of Systram translation software.

Re:if Chinese government servers run Windows

[yerricde]

I'm guessing it was supposed to be Systran, the company behind the translation engine used in AltaVista's Babel Fish translation service.

iptables --source winders_box -j DROP

[xenoweeno]

If you were concerned about intentional holes in Windows permitting sekrat U.S. government access, wouldn't a properly configured firewall make the point moot?

Re:iptables --source winders_box -j DROP

[Saib0t]

Firewalls are all great, but unless you want to shut your computer from the outside world, they won't work.

Outgoing connexions are as much of a problem than incoming. If the software calls home to transmit information, there's not much you can do.
It doesn't even have to be automatic, a properly crafter answer to a software update request could trigger the transmission of information, for instance.

And even if the code the chinese govt sees doesn't have any hole, quid of the patches they WILL have to apply to their systems?

Bottom line: The only solution to having a computer that can't spy on you is having full access to the code that's running on it, both at install time and after...

Re:iptables --source winders_box -j DROP

[GigsVT]

The only solution to having a computer that can't spy on you is having full access to the code that's running on it, both at install time and after...

You'd have to read and understand all the code, and then compile from that code. Something I am willing to bet very, very, few people do for every piece of software they run.

Even then, you'd be vulernable to compiler based attacks, although I don't know if anyone has successfully pulled that off.

Regarding firewalls, I hope you're aware that you can filter outgoing traffic as easily as incoming. Regarding the malicious service masquerading as a legitimate one, the only solution to that is cryptographic signing for authentication, and even then, you are still trusting the party to not do anything malicious, the signing just proves that the person is who you think it is.

Re:iptables --source winders_box -j DROP

[Saib0t]

You'd have to read and understand all the code, and then compile from that code. Something I am willing to bet very, very, few people do for every piece of software they run.

Then again, very few people need the kind of security we're talking about

Regarding firewalls, I hope you're aware that you can filter outgoing traffic as easily as incoming.

I am aware that it is indeed possible, but what good is it to be wholly protected when you can't access or be accessed by anything?

the only solution to that is cryptographic signing for authentication, and even then, you are still trusting the party to not do anything malicious, the signing just proves that the person is who you think it is.

This means that if you trust microsoft to update your software (i.e. patches), you're trusting them with your system. That's the problem.

That's the reason I won't trust anything that requires security and secrecy to a microsoft product...

Can China regerate a standard build ?

[Alain Williams]

It would be interesting to see if the Chinese can type 'make' (or whatever is the MS Windows equivalent) and end up with something that is bit wise identical to what MS ships as part of a standard distribution. If they cannot do this, one has to question why not ? and we will be left with the suspicion that there is something that MS doesn't want the Chinese to see (be that different MS or NSA code).

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[bazik]

It would be interesting to see if the Chinese can type 'make'[...]

Actually its

./configure --with-bugs --with-bsd-tcp --enable-features=bluescreen,solitaire,minesweeper && make && make kernel32.exe

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[Short Circuit]

I can't even begin to imagine how long it would take to load Windows as a Visual Studio.NET project.

*shudder*

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[Dot.Com.CEO]

Just out of interest, have you ever used VS.NET? Say what you will about their OSes, but VS is an amazingly well built IDE.

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[Short Circuit]

Yeah, I've used it. I like their C++ interface, but as someone who's used VB since 1.0 for DOS, VB.Net rearranges everything. And I haven't even begun to tackle C# yet.

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[Dot.Com.CEO]

C++ interface? What? When you program in VS.NET you don't get a different interface when programing in VB and when you are programing in C++. Also, what are you talking about "rearranges everything"? I've never seen another piece of software that is so easy to customise as VS.NET. It can be overwhelming, especially the first time you drag and drop a toolbar into a detached table and you try to put it back.

You are mixing up languages with the development interface. One has nothing to do with the other, in fact I love using Activestate's Python in Visual Studio. I'm sorry, but, to be honest, you don't really sound you've used VS to actually program anything.

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[frozenray]

> Say what you will about their OSes, but VS is an amazingly well built IDE.

If you have Linux, so is this, by the way. Not quite up to par, but getting there. Plus, it's free as in beer/speech.

(No personal connections, I'm just a happy user)

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[CommandNotFound]

Just out of interest, have you ever used VS.NET? Say what you will about their OSes, but VS is an amazingly well built IDE.

Yes, I use it all day, every day, and I just don't see what the big deal is. Those who have confined themselves to the VB ghetto the past ten years are wowed; ditto those who have been using textpad, but having used other IDEs in the past 5-10 years (Delphi, Eclipse, JBuilder), I just don't see the big deal. It's well-built, but it's a rehash of other products. I wouldn't call it "amazing". The web service tools are the only really impressive part I've found that differentiates it from other IDEs. And I hate that I am confined to one OS for every piece of software that I ever write with this thing. I certainly wouldn't use it if I wasn't getting paid to.

Take a look at Eclipse, and I will put money that VS 2005 (or whatever) will "innovate" many features of that IDE, like the very nice lightbulb feature. And those who only get their news from MSDN emails will praise Microsoft for being so fresh and innovative.

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[Overly Critical Guy]

I haven't seen a bluescreen in four years.

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[radish]

They nicked the lightbulb from Intellij, which (IMHO) rocks the Kasbar. Eclipse is nice too though :)

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[Overly Critical Guy]

I have yet to even find another IDE that touches VS's debugger.

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[nullard]

I miss THINK Pascal's debugger. I have yet to find anything similar. Not even CodeWarrior or Symantec's late C++ IDE come close.

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[_Splat]

Switched to Linux, I see?

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[Short Circuit]

Mono runs .NET apps just fine. :)

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[Mike McTernan]

Textpad rocks!

Re:Can China regerate a standard build ?

[Slime-dogg]

Ever tried to debug multiple threads running in the managed runtime? This alone will bring the debugger to it's knees, frequently causing a crash. If this is what you think is a good debugger, I invite you to try out debug.exe.

not going to help

[lingqi]

1) as this post has pointed out, just because you get to look at the source does not mean it's secure. (the post is from Jeremy Allison on the security of Samba servers)

2) Besides, being closed source and microsoft, are they going to be able to [practically] compile windows and compare it to the actual version? Why do I doubt it?

3) even if you get to look at the source, then you'd have to look at the source of every security patch that comes your way too, because otherwise you can just put a hole in one of your patches and pretend it fixes such and such. I mean, it's not like this hasn't been done before (Germain police, Java Anonymous Proxy).

But then again Microsoft is probably just doing this for show anyway - bribe a few key officials so that there are too few people with too tight a schedule to examine all-too-much of bloaty code, and there you have it - "oh the code was examined and was ok" even though it's just a formality.

I say stay away from Microsoft on principle when you need to be sure that you are secure.

Re:not going to help

[greppling]

As a point in favour of your reasoning: When there was the big debate in Germany about Linux use in the German parliament, there was also the question about Windows source code being made available to the German government.

But the source code would never have been allowed to go to the BSI (Federal agency of IT security), which would be the only department of the government with

• the resources
• the competence

for just a partial audit of the sources. So I agree all this shared-source is just a PR stunt.

Re:not going to help

[randombit]

And what do you base that on? When is the last time they have secretly snuck in anything to their software that did anything to track you, database you, categorize you, spy on you, download your personal records, view your documents, etc?

If it makes you feel better, just think about unintentional holes. I'm sure you can think of one or two security bugs that have shown up in Microsoft products in these last few years, can't you? NT service packs have been known to introduce bugs in the past, and it's unlikely to believe this won't continue with Windows Update, etc. Just because there are no intentional backdoors doesn't mean it's secure.

Re:not going to help

[wfberg]

And what do you base that on? When is the last time they have secretly snuck in anything to their software that did anything to track you, database you, categorize you, spy on you, download your personal records, view your documents, etc?

Well, the windows media player GUID comes to mind. And of course all the useless meta data in Word files which may not be entirely surrepticious, but it's inconvenient none the less. Windows update sent, then stopped, and now again sends way too much information back home (and is enabled by default), Internet Explorer hijacked miss-typed domain names years before verisign did, according to several EULA's (windows update again, hotmail) all your information are belong to Microsoft (would you know if they read your hotmail?). Then there's product activation and registration all collecting vast amounts of personal data for no good purpose, and of course the venerable Passport, which has had some "incidents" in the past. I'm sure I'm forgetting some things..

Re:not going to help

[jimmyharris]

What about when Microsoft said opening Windows source code could be damaging to US national security. Do the Chinese not count?

Re:not going to help

[Tony-A]

Being a monopoly has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion, this is about trustworthiness in the OS we run everyday.

Actually being a monopoly has a lot to do with trustworthiness, or more accurately, the lack thereof.

nametags with "Agents name - CIA AGENT"
I'm sure they exist, called personnel files or dossiers or some such. Preferably very well secured.

well known - by their press releases
in a context that mentions security????

While I don't know that Microsoft is up to something nefarious, waiting until it has been incontrovertably proven is waiting a wee bit too much.

Re:not going to help

[whereiswaldo]

...when curiousity or questioning turns to psychotic paranoia where every dot on the wall is a secretly installed camera...

Uh, I think you're taking this a wee bit too far. The comments you are referring to are completely valid *and* have proof or are at least very possible (not some spy vs. spy fiction).

Truth is, as I understand it, Microsoft DID plant an NSA key. Microsoft HAS provided patches that do more than what they say. Microsoft would LIKE to see DRM everywhere and therefore have complete control over what we can do with our files. Microsoft IS a convicted monopolist. Gates DID lie during the court case.

So what's your problem again?

Backdoors

[pubjames]

reports have said that the search for backdoors installed by national intelligence agencies is also among the aims of the agreement.

MS drone Bob: Did you remember to send those CDs of the source code to the Chinese?

MS drone Dave: Yes, I did it this morning. Posted it Express delivery!

MS drone Bob: You did remember to send the version with the backdoors taken out, didn't you?

MS drone Dave: D'oh! [Slaps forehead]

Re:Backdoors

[swb]

This is funny, but its likely the strategy I would take if I had been involved in negotiating this deal, especially if there were back doors.

1) You can look at the source we provide to you, on media we provide. You have NN months to complete your review at which time you must return media to us. No copies are permitted.

2) You may not use the source to build your own Windows OS, you must continue to buy the OS we make and package.

I know 1 is hardly enforceable, especially against the Chinese, but the Chinese have a lot at stake in the business world with regard to their respect of rule of law, agreements, IP. Bad publicity from something like this might hurt their ability to participate as more than contract labor in the world economy.

NATO and the United Kingdom

[fritz1968]

Microsoft has announced GSP agreements with Russia, NATO and the United Kingdom

hmmm. Last I checked, the UK was part of NATO. Unless, of course, they are talking about two separate organizations. IE, the NATO offices and the government offices of the UK.

Re:NATO and the United Kingdom

[The Lynxpro]

hmmm. Last I checked, the UK was part of NATO. Unless, of course, they are talking about two separate

The United States is also a part of NATO and it will be looking at the MS code too. NATO is an umbrella organization, and if it wants to check MS Source Code to make sure shared resources amongst the member nations are secured, that is independent from any actions those member nations decide to do on their own. On the other hand, I'm sure France will opt to allow the European Union to check the source code itself. And yes, I know the U.K. is also a member of the EU as well, albeit not a happy one.

same sourcecode?

[fuckfuck101]

Just because China is viewing the 'Windows sourcecode' who says it's the same sourcecode they receive on their CDs?

Re:same sourcecode?

[Technician]

Compile it and compare the binary? Same source and compiler should give very simular binary output. There may be some timestamp diffrences, but other than that, most should match.

Re:same sourcecode?

[mgessner]

Because with the same tools and commands they can verify that a HUGE percentage of the generated code (all of the text, some of the data might be different, like embedded strings) would be the same. That would be easy to verify if you had a couple thousand programmers forced at gunpoint to compare bytes.

Great...

[Ceadda]

Soon to be chinese linux advertisements with phrases like... "The System Operating your computer to run good make!"

Depends...

[Short Circuit]

Would I trust Chinese binaries? No. Chinese source code w/o an NDA? Maybe.

and if they steal it?

[Shivetya]

or use parts of it to make similar products who is going to stop them?

I don't have a problem with countries being allowed to inspect the code of software being used by their government agencies, I do have a problem when it is done by a government that has not proven it can be trusted with another's IP... or worse, one with nearly no respect for another's IP.

This is not very different from certain South American and African countries that demanded and received the formulae to certain drugs and then turned around and started making their own.

If the review is benign then great, but honestly, I wouldn't trust China with anything of value.

* of course letting them incorporate windows into their system might be some ultra-right wing conservative plot to topple them :)

Re:and if they steal it?

[radja]

>This is not very different from certain South American and African countries that demanded and received the formulae to certain drugs and then turned around and started making their own.

that was a GOOD thing, saving thousands of human lives who otherwise could not afford medicine. withholding a lifesaving medicine for your own profit is not a very nice thing to do.

Re:and if they steal it?

[Haeleth]

> This is not very different from certain South American and African countries that demanded and received the formulae to certain drugs and then turned around and started making their own.

OMG!!! They're trying to produce cheap medicines which the world's poorest people might have a hope of being able to afford! That hurts American profit margins! QUICK, INVADE!

Re:and if they steal it?

[twoslice]

or use parts of it to make similar products who is going to stop them?

Why, Darl McBride of course!

Re:and if they steal it?

[AstroDrabb]

I do have a problem when it is done by a government that has not proven it can be trusted with another's IP... or worse, one with nearly no respect for another's IP.

This crap was modded Informative? MS has been fined heavily many times for stealing "IP" of other companies, I guess it is OK because they are a US company?

This is not very different from certain South American and African countries that demanded and received the formulae to certain drugs and then turned around and started making their own.

Your kidding right? It is not like they did this to MAKE MONEY. They did it to SAVE thousands of lives you bone-head. These nasty drug companines were charging too much and did not care about the thousands of people. Though I guess the only things that matters in the world are corporate profit and what you are doing for your share holders.

Re:and if they steal it?

[gz718]

Well, if pharmaceutical companies don't get a return on the billions of dollars they invested in those drugs then they're not going to bother researching them. Would be nice to think otherwise but companies have bills to pay.

Re:and if they steal it?

[The Lynxpro]

"that was a GOOD thing, saving thousands of human lives who otherwise could not afford medicine. withholding a lifesaving medicine for your own profit is not a very nice thing to do."

That's definitely not the cynical viewpoint. The cynical viewpoint is now those drugs will prolong the lives of many people who would've died from say AIDS. Now, they will live longer and that might allow each of them to spread the disease to others. Or, more money will be spent on medicines for the dying when it could be spend on education in preventing future generations from suffering the same fate. Its kinda like how the British took over India, built railroads and a modern bureaucracy, and brought modern Western medicine to the country. The life expectancy increased, and the population boomed, and then there were famine issues because of such humanitarian deeds. As the saying goes, one good deed does not go unpunished.

Why would you think that?

[Nijika]

While I'm sure that the NSA is no slouch when it comes to computer infiltration, I've never been one to believe that they've got some magical super powers outside the realm of known technical limitations. Let's not forget that most of what any government says it can do is a large percentage smoke and mirrors to keep the public feeling safe (PATRIOT missles) or unsafe (PATRIOT act) as it may be. On top of that the Chinese have never been pushovers when it comes to technology. They're in the asia pacific region, which is undoubtably a world hotspot for technological advances. Hell, the PC you're using right now is probably 60% chinese and 90% asian in manufacture and design.

With all that in mind, I'd say any advantage the NSA can get, it would take. And with THAT in mind, I think it's perfectly reasonable for the Chinese government to fully inspect any operating system it may run.

Re:Why would you think that?

[perrinkog]

"I think it's perfectly reasonable for the Chinese government to fully inspect any operating system it may run." Perfectly reasonable for the Chinese, but not the US? how about corporations? customers? By that logic, wouldn't it be perfectly reasonable for us all to inspect our computers for NSA backdoors?

Re:Why would you think that?

[Nijika]

Sorry, I don't have numbers, just press releases...

Deliberate Software Holes ...

[jmt9581]

"Yeah, all of these security problems are there because the ... N ... S ... A? Yeah, the NSA asked us to put them in." -- Discussion about submitting a story to Slashdot at a Microsoft PR Board Meeting

What about changes made by Windows Update?

[a.koepke]

What about them running windows update with these machines. In 6 months time and after many security patches ;) the code is not going to be the same. So what is to stop MS coding something in a patch that restores any backdoors that they might have removed? Is the Chinese government going to examine the code for every critical update and service pack it installs?

Re:What about changes made by Windows Update?

[a.koepke]

But Linux patches are made to the source code and you can see what the patch is changing. MS will need to supply to code for every update made to windows for this code review to be of any use since the patches are normally downloaded in a compiled form.

Re:What about changes made by Windows Update?

[caluml]

I'm sure all admins running highly critical Windows machines (the fools) just hook their boxes up to the internet and hit windowsupdate.com (or whatever the URL is).

More likely they have a test network, run the patches on those machines for ages, make notes of all the md5sums of dlls, etc, and finally, when they are sure that they need to update, burn to a CD and run the patches manually.

Yes indeed.

[torpor]

Looks like the Chinese Government is going to have to do their own compile and compare binaries ...

*pffftt* ... heh heh. Yeah. Right.

Re:Yes indeed.

[rifter]

"Looks like the Chinese Government is going to have to do their own compile and compare binaries ..."

Yeah, we all know China doesn't have the money or the manpower to do that! Ha ha ha!

They will transmit the source to their prison slave labour force using tyco drums, then the prisoners will have to compile the lot manually using stolen british technology. :)

Hows this...

[MaestroSartori]

1) MS shows Windows source to China, then produces kick-ass version of Linux. Kick-assedness taken back into mainstream Linux, thanks to the GPL.

2) MS has a look at shiny new-kick-assedness Linux source (hey, its open!), spots something similar to the code they showed China (or similar enough to please a finned lawyer-shark), sues everyone who ever used Linux, everyone who ever met them, and some people who look like them.

3) Profit!!! (by destroying, or at least hurting, many Linux vendors, and setting back the 'political' progress Linux has made with big business.

Clearly a level of exaggeration in there, but I wouldn't put it past those wily scoundrels at MS to be hoping for something like this...

Re:Hows this...

[jcasey]

One small oversight...

There's the assumption that windows is somehow better... I dont think linux would benefit much from utilizing windows's code.

Re:Hows this...

[2Bits]

Well, I'm not sure about having MS protocols built in Linux. However, what could happens is that you might be able to buy a CD on the street, for 5 RMB (less than $1), containing the full source code of Windows.

All it takes is one person ignoring the security policy, sneaks out a copy and it would be all over the place.

But don't be too excited yet though, I'm sure MS would make sure that proper security policies are in place, and a good audit trail system to track any access.

Re:Hows this...

[dreamchaser]

(begin sarcasm) You're absolutely right, why would we want full DirectX compatability? We certainly wouldn't want transparant Win32 API's available so that Windows apps would run seamlessly with Linux. (end sarcasm)

Just because you don't like MS for 'religious' reasons doens't mean all of their code is worthless.

Re:Hows this...

[Zocalo]

But don't be too excited yet though, I'm sure MS would make sure that proper security policies are in place, and a good audit trail system to track any access.

Yes they probably would. But the Linux codeauditors will be aware of this too and will no doubt take extra care over code submissions from China, the UK and other countries that get access to the Windows code. Even if genuine, SCO's claims would be small beer compared to Windows code getting into Linux. I suppose if there is real doubt you could always ask Microsoft to give the code the all clear in writing. They would certainly be interested in the possible NDA breach, and if the code submitter wasn't snatched off street then you could probably assume the code is safe.

Re:Hows this...

[rmohr02]

Hey hey hey--this isn't the SCO story.

Re:Hows this...

[Overly Critical Guy]

Right, because China will be so forthcoming with its own source code. It will follow the GPL to the letter. And there will be a way to stop it if it doesn't.

Re:Hows this...

[manja mali]

On One CD ... All the legal Disclaimers would take a lot more than even when Zipped (or CAB'd) ... Bloatware thy name is not MICRO$...

Re:um, for what?

[Technician]

I think they are not looking into making a language change to Windows. I think they are looking at adding Windows API's into their home brew OSS. That way they can run all the popular apps without the MS tax, BSA, Viruses, Exploits, etc.

Think about it. Who wouldn't want a Linux that would run nice Win apps natively, but had all the exploits left out? I would love to run the software that came with my GPS, Digital Camera, TOPO maps etc on my Linux box. It would be even better if at the same time, it couldn't run VBS, Outlook, & IE exploits. I wish Windows had IP chains and other security. Windows 98 SE won't even let you use Dial up, then seamlesly transfer to a LAN and back. Configuring the LAN to use the router gateway breaks the dialer. I have to unconfigure the Gateway on the LAN to dial up my ISP. Why does the dialer use some of the LAN adaptor settings? Buggy... To repeat, would love to ditch Windows bugs, but keep some of the favorite applications.

That's why I have 2 machines side by side with a keyboard/monitor/mouse switch.

Funniest line in the article

[Mark_in_Brazil]

Haw haw... Sorry, but there's a throwaway line in the article that just made me laugh:

China--potentially a huge market for Microsoft, once the problem of software piracy is solved--

Riiiiiiiight. And when, exactly will "the problem of software piracy" be solved? And how?
I haven't seen anything reported on Slashdot or anywhere else that would "solve the problem of software piracy" and make China a huge market for Microsoft at the same time...

--Mark

Re:Funniest line in the article

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't y'all get it? The next cut of Windows will sell for $30 in China while selling for $300 here. Just take a look at what the drug manufacturers, clothes manufacturers, and book publishers are doing. It's very frustrating when your classmates show up with their Prentice-Hal textbooks that cost $6 in India while you paid over $60 in the USA and the only difference is theirs says "International Edition" and "Not for sale in the USA".
In fact, I'll bet the deal went more like this:

MSFT: Let us sell windows.
China: We want the money.
MSFT: You can get a cut, call it tax.
China: Our people don't have much money.
MSFT: We'll charge whatever the market will bear.

So, now Gates have to make a "Chinese" version that cannot be made to run with the English language to avoid people selling $30 chinese windows for use in the USA.

Would You Trust an American OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know about any backdoors in Red Flag Linux, but we all certainly have reason to distrust any OS sponsored by the American government. They may have adopted a friendlier demeanor, but the folks who gave us Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, the genocide of the First Nation, the CIA-sponsored overthrows of democratically elected governments in various South American states, the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the lovely freedom of Guantanamo Bay still run the place.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, Congress gave the President authorization to invade Iraq and Afghanistan.

Or do you mean 'illegal' in the sense that the real world never has and never will sympathize with hippy ideas of peace and love and flowers strewn everywhere?

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[kinnell]

Last time I checked, Congress gave the President authorization to invade Iraq and Afghanistan.

They are illegal in the sense that there are agreed international laws which the USA is a party to.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[fondue]

It's funny when Americans notice there are other countries for the first time.

Now go and read about how international diplomacy works, and stop making an ass of yourself.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where international statue did the US violate?

The one which says it's illegal to invade another country without a UN mandate?

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[kinnell]

And just what are these international laws that the USA has broken. What authority do these international laws answer to?

From the CIA world factbook entry on the USA:

International organization participation: AfDB, ANZUS, APEC, ARF (dialogue partner), AsDB, ASEAN (dialogue partner), Australia Group, BIS, CE (observer), CERN (observer), CP, EAPC, EBRD, ECE, ECLAC, ESCAP, FAO, G-5, G-7, G- 8, G-10, IADB, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICCt (signatory), ICFTU, ICRM, IDA, IEA, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, IHO, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, IOC, IOM, ISO, ITU, MINURSO, MIPONUH, NAM (guest), NATO, NEA, NSG, OAS, OECD, OPCW, OSCE, PCA, SPC, UN, UN Security Council, UNCTAD, UNHCR, UNIKOM, UNITAR, UNMEE, UNMIBH, UNMIK, UNMISET, UNMOVIC, UNOMIG, UNRWA, UNTSO, UNU, UPU, WCL, WCO, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTrO, ZC

From here you can do your own research into which international laws the US is bound by. Or am I being overly optimistic?

Nice to see the usual slashdot hate-america crowd in full force.

I was just answering the parents question.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[Felinoid]

the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan

Any time someone dose something someone else dosen't like you'll find someone quoting laws that do not exist.

IANAL but if there is any law forbidding war it can not possably be legal.

I'd also like to say that the folks who established many of the sighted problems are in fact not in power anymore.
Tell you what... Remove "illegal" and replace "the folks" with "the government" or better yet "the offical policy".
Oh yeah and that line about "friendlier demeanor" your kidding right?

However Microsoft Windows isn't sponsered by the United States government.
Not that this is any great distiction.
On the other hand we do have the source code. Ok well we may not have source code comming back from China but if we recreate RedFlag from source I doupt there'd be any back doors.

Turst the american government? Only so much as the freedom of information act is honnored.
Turst the Chines government? Only so much as I can review the source code?
Trust the Cannadian government? Only so much as they havn't invaded... yet.... give em time they'll get pissed off enough some day.

Trust but verify....
Show me the source.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[kalidasa]

Actually, no, the folks who gave us Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, CIA sponsored overthrows of South American governments, and the genocide of the Amerinds are all dead or retired; while one of the fellows who came up with the idea of the Tiananmen Square massacre is himself head honcho in China. Read the Tiananmen Papers, for god's sake.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[Pave Low]

You've provided nothing that shows the US war was illegal.

The UN Charter is not law or canon, and nobody will be taking the US to court anytime soon.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[HungWeiLo]

Dead or retired? You mean like Oliver North, Henry Kissinger, and Donald Rumsfeld? Last I heard they're still pretty active in American politics.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[Mr. Show]

From the CIA world factbook entry on the USA:

International organization participation: AfDB, ANZUS, APEC, ARF (dialogue partner), AsDB, ASEAN (dialogue partner), Australia Group, BIS, CE (observer), CERN (observer), CP, EAPC, EBRD, ECE, ECLAC, ESCAP, FAO, G-5, G-7, G- 8, G-10, IADB, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICCt (signatory), ICFTU, ICRM, IDA, IEA, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, IHO, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, IOC, IOM, ISO, ITU, MINURSO, MIPONUH, NAM (guest), NATO, NEA, NSG, OAS, OECD, OPCW, OSCE, PCA, SPC, UN, UN Security Council, UNCTAD, UNHCR, UNIKOM, UNITAR, UNMEE, UNMIBH, UNMIK, UNMISET, UNMOVIC, UNOMIG, UNRWA, UNTSO, UNU, UPU, WCL, WCO, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTrO, ZC

From here you can do your own research into which international laws the US is bound by. Or am I being overly optimistic?

Yeah, but what does this dump of acronyms prove exactly? Did the World Health Organization, just to pick one, pass some kind of resolution that said the US could not invade Iraq? You have to understand the specific international laws relevant to Iraq, and have at least a loose understanding of how law works generally. Simply citing that the US is a member of ASEAN does not make your case. For example, the US argued with some merit (regardless of whether you agree with it) that Iraq stood in violation of some 12 or 13 UN resolutions requiring it to "disarm," including the most recent resolution 1441 passed unanimously by the Security Council last February (if memory serves). That resolution warned of "serious consequences" if Iraq did not disarm, and at the time of the invasion, the US government was making the case that Iraq had not disarmed and therefore "serious consequences" would ensue.

It does not matter whether or not you agree with this interpretation. What matters is that the language was sufficiently vague to allow for this interpretation. The language was also sufficiently vague for countries that opposed the war to plausibly argue that the US needed more explicit authorization from the Security Council before resorting to force. But given the "serious consequences" mentioned in 1441, and given the previous 12 years of UN resolutions demanding certain action by Iraq (which no one in a position of authority in any country seriously believes they ever obeyed), the US would probably be acquitted if brought before an international court, assuming standards of proof similar to those in US courts (beyond a reasonable doubt). But you have to understand that in February, when 1441 was passed, the US knew it was going to invade Iraq almost regardless of what they did to disarm. Therefore why would the US write a resolution (and it wrote 1441 itself) that it knew it was going to probably break in a few months? No, instead it gave itself enough flexibility in the language to do what it wanted to do "within the law." Such is the nature of international relations, and such is the way it will probably always be.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[Pave Low]

What government positions do Oliver North and Henry Kissinger hold? Where was Rumsfeld all these years before he was Sec. of Defense? Hmm?

Last I heard, being active in American politics was actually a good thing to be doing, whether in a private capacity or public. When you vote or contribute money, your active in American politics.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[dinivin]

Saddam didn't attack his neighbors,

So I imagined that whole invasion of Kuwait when I was in High School? I knew I had an activate imagination then but I didn't know it was that active.

Dinivin

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[Mr. Show]

the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan

Listen, I'm no apologist for the Bush administration, but are you serious? Leave Iraq aside for a minute. What was illegal about the invasion of Afghanistan? Since Osama bin Laden settled in Afghanistan and the Taliban controlled most of the country, how many attacks were there on US interests around the world? Embassy bombings, the USS Cole, etc. Finally, after 3,000 people were slaughtered on US soil, action against Afghanistan was authorized by NATO, the UN Security Council, and the US Congress. What law was broken, international or otherwise? Sorry if you didn't like it, but that doesn't make it illegal.

Keep your eyes on the ball, people. I understand you hate Bush, but at least try and think through these things.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[ifwm]

So, I began reading your post, and I was afraid it was another bash America post. I was happily mistaken. This is a very well stated position, which I agree with well done. To add my own two cents, the opinion that the US is bound by any international treaty before it's own security is nonsense. Ultimately the US government is responsible to the US people first, with the UN a far distant second. My position is and always has been that Iraq did have WMD's (see the Kurds) regardless of whether we found them or not. More importantly, Saddam was a wealthy government leader in a region where terrorist organizations run rampant (see Syria.) So we have a wealthy despot, in a region rife with terrorists, who has been known to have, at the very least, poison gas. Oh, and he hates the US. I think in this case 2+2 does equal 4.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[ndunn]

You talk about violation of international law, of which the US sits on the security council of (and by whom it was voted their war was not allowed), and then you imply that this international law isn't binding.

Please tell me, exactly how does one violate international law, if the laws of the international community one belongs to aren't binding?

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[I8TheWorm]

Um.... France gave us VietNam. We just tried to pick up where they left off.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[MrAngryForNoReason]

The reason invading Kuwait didn't break any sanctions is that the sanctions were imposed as a result of the invasion of Kuwait, after the first Gulf War. You can't break something before it has been put in place.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[reallocate]

>> Or perhaps we just wanted them to surrender before the Russians got in.

That's revisionist history that I disagree with, but, even if true, so what? It's a legitimate motive. The fewer people brought under Stalin's yoke, the better.

What possible reason was there for Nagasaki anyway?

Because the Japanese didn't surrender after Hiroshima. The deaths at Nagasaki were fewer in number than the projected deaths during an invasion of Japan. The fact that they were caused by a nuclear weapon has no impact on the ethics of the situation. 100,000 people killed by infrantrymen and carpet bombing are just as dead as 100,000 people killed by a 20-kiloton weapon. The Japanese fascists, not the U.S., bear responsiility for what happened to their country.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[Fastfwd]

"the genocide of the First Nation"

By the same standard you whould probably be held responsible for the crimes of your ancestors. Right?

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[dinivin]

No one said that by invading Kuwait, Saddam broke sanctions. They simply said that "Saddam didn't attack his neighbors" which is an outright lie.

Dinivin

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[Darby]

My position is and always has been that Iraq did have WMD's (see the Kurds)

Certainly, at one point, they did have them.
Where did they get them?
I'm sure you know, but will try to dodge the question. The well documented fact is that the US gave them these weapons and then sat back and watched when they were used against the Kurds.

The idea that they still had any is wholly without evidence. The fact that Bush had to use blatant lies to try and convince the American people that such evidence existed demonstrates that he is the enemy of America. By your ignorant support of such lies, you are the one bashing America. Disagreeing with the actions of Bush is not an anti American attitude in any way. It is, in fact, the only choice open to a patriot. Please stop your treasonous America bashing. You and your type are an embarrasment to this great country.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[G Samsonoff]

Why is it that other countries somehow feel this smug superiority to the US when it comes to "international diplomacy". Is this based on a demonstrated record of success, or is it some cultural bias thing?

Sort of reminds me of all the talk in the International Press about how we would never prevail in Afghanistan, did not understand what we were up against, etc, etc. Yeah, right...

I beleive we know a good deal about how well international deplomacy works, and how sometimes it doesn't. Thats why we're the ones that took the risk in Iraq (along with the UK, Spain, and others), while the UN sat on the sidelines wringing their hands and figuring out new ways to appease Saddam and the Bathists...

I think its time that the international community accepted the fact that some people only understand force, diplomacy does not always work. Since we and our coalition partners had the means to remove Saddam, we had a moral duty to do so while the conditions were right...

History will be the best judge of who was right.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[red flavor]

According to historical records, Hiroshima was bombed on Aug 6 1945, and Nagasaki on Aug 9. That's 3 days. Not much time for a formal surrender.

They surrendered Sep 2 1945, 24 days after the Nagasaki bomb.

According to your reasoning, a 3 day span between a bomb and a surrender is unacceptable (hence the Nagasaki bomb), and therefore there should have been 8 more nuclear bombs dropped on Japan before they surrendered.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[Slime-dogg]

International Law will be a joke as long as it includes only a subset of all the nations of the world. If you have just one nation that does not participate, then whatever body that governs has no authority, other than the pure option of participating.

International law, treaties, alliances, and all that have been finite throughout history. As soon as power has shifted in one of the member countries, the hold of treaties and alliances should be considered tenuous at best.

In order for international law to be binding, the requirement of all nations participating is standing, as well as the need for a very large body of enforcement. I don't see either of these in existance. International Law is a joke.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[sexylicious]

There would have been had we had more. At the time, they were being made as fast as possible. But due to the fact that the technology was brand spakin new, there was no way they could have made them faster. With those two bombs, the US depleted their usable uranium and actually had to wait a few weeks for more enriched uranium to be manufactured at Hanford.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[red flavor]

Typical knee-jerk blather. Motivations counts. The Chinese regime is interested in suppressing its people and making money. They're still an anti-democratic totalitarian regime and, asu such, threaten free people everywhere.

Naturally, the American gov't isn't interested in the same. Observe the PATRIOT act ("patriot", ha! nice PR move on the name there, boys), the behaviour towards MS during the remedies phase of their anti-trust trial. Enron. Worldcom. etc.

As for anti-democractic, it's been pointed out numerous times in other posts that the Americans have a habit of deposing democratically elected leaders in other countries, when those leaders don't toe the American line.

The Shah of Iran was installed by the Americans, after they toppled the democratically elected president. The Shah was hated by the people, who formed a popular uprising against him. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the militant Islamics managed to wedge their way into the leadership role, even though they had little to do with the uprising itself.

In numerous South American countries, the US has done the same thing - eliminated the popular local leader, and installed their own "US-Approved" leader, only to cause enormous problems for the locals and the Americans, too. Whenever the US screws around with foreign countries, they seem to complete mess it up.
Can you name ONE country that the US has gone into, toppled the leadership, installed their approved leader, and had the country move onto peace and prosperity? I can't.

The U.S. actions you cite, even if you disagree with them, were actins intended to defeat fascist and totalitarian powers bent on destroying democracy and freedom. Rather than rant about the U.S., people like you should be asking why the rest of the world consistently spawns these evil regimes and consistently fails to eliminate them. If the rest of the world would eliminate the thuggish garbage that passes for government in many places, the U.S. and a few other rational countries wouldn't have to do it themselves.

Consider for a moment these 'evil regimes' - how many of them have invaded other countries? As far as I know, China hasn't toppled any other country's government. Neither has Iraq. US has, though. So who's more evil? It's true that the US doesn't inflict quite as many abuses on its own citizens, however with PATRIOT 1&2, with the illegal arrest & detainment without charge of persons of middle-eastern birth (etc etc), it looks like they're slipping down that slippery slope. Let's not forget Jon Johansen - the MPAA had interpol in invade his home in Norway , confiscate his computers and had him (a 16 year old kid!) and his father arrested, because of some perceived potential violation of an AMERICAN law. How is that supporting freedom? That certainly is money-grubbing, though. (Check up on the DeCSS case if you don't know what I mean).

US apologists love to talk about these "Evil Regimes" who are "bent on destroying democracy & freedom". That's exactly what the US does! So is this a case of "You aren't allowed to destroy democracy and freedom! That's the job of the US!"

I think your "president", who lost the election but won the seat (partially with the help of his brother causing 50,000 floridians to be considered 'criminals' and ineligable for the vote) sounds more like these third-world dictators who fudge the elections to get into power. It's the same thing. Just as despicable.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[reallocate]

>> According to your reasoning, a 3 day span between a bomb and a surrender is unacceptable (hence the Nagasaki bomb), and therefore there should have been 8 more nuclear bombs dropped on Japan before they surrendered.


You must be an engineer, or a wanna-be engineer, who thinks human behavior can be reduced to equations and formulas.

First, it isn't my "reasoning" that leads to your assertion. The Japanese had ample time to surrender between Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All it took was for the emperor to make the announcement. (which he did on 15 August, not 2 Spetember.)

The decision to bomb Nagasaki was based on human judgment, not the kind of sophistry you assert.

The U.S. had these choices:

1) Not use the bomb, but instead invade Japan. Contemporary eestimated, based on Japanese behavior elsewhere in the Pacific, projected at least one more year of war and fatalities measuring in seven figures.

2) Use the bomb, producing fatalities in the 50,000-100,000 range, and potentially compelling a quick Japanese surrender.

Death is death, regardless of its cause. In my book, the U.S. made the right decision -- a decision that saved Japanese and American lives. (And likely also prevented part of Japan and certainly all of Korea from being absorbed by Stalin.)

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[Richard_at_work]

No, instead it gave itself enough flexibility in the language to do what it wanted to do "within the law."

The problem with that view tho, especially as it seems that it is the one that the US and the UK followed anyway, is that it was a UN resolution, bought by UN members. This in no means gives a member nation permission to go running off and do what they want to uphold it. No, it requires the UN to act for any actions laid out in the resolutions to be deemed legal and within international law.

What the UN did was akin to a judge making a judgement, and what the UK and US did was akin to a lynch mob carrying out the actions of that judgement, instead of the police or the authorities.

Yes, the UN was not acting at the time, but what evidence was there to say that the UN wouldnt have acted somehow in the near future, similarly or not? Did it require an illegitimate action by third parties? No. The fact that the UK and US did this, whether or not in good faith, worries me that a precident has been set.

Does this potential precident give China authority to liberate the prisoners of Guatanamo Bay? Does it? Maybe, maybe not.

In this "civilized" world, nations do NOT attack other nations unless in self defence. And there is no way that this can be called self defense. More people die in your "War on Drugs" and homelessness everyday than in threats propagated by these nations, look closer to home please.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[ErikZ]

Nah, I think he means that the US didn't get permission from that one world government.

You know, the only way to make an action of a nation "Illegal" would be a one world government and an international police force to enforce the laws.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[kalidasa]

Someone want to explain to me what makes parent a troll? Grandparent was trolling, I was making a statement of fact.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[kalidasa]

Kissinger is quite retired. North and Rumsfeld as far as I know had nothing to do with deciding upon the course of the events I specified (Vietnam, nuclear attacks, etc.), even if they might have participated in them at a lower level. Reread the post I responded to, and my own post.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[The Lynxpro]

US apologists love to talk about these "Evil Regimes" who are "bent on destroying democracy & freedom". That's exactly what the US does! So is this a case of "You aren't allowed to destroy democracy and freedom! That's the job of the US!"

Yeah, whooptie. We [the US] overthrew left-leaning democratically elected governments that would've tilted toward the Warsaw Pact axis counter to our own government here in our hemisphere. While the Monroe Doctrine won't hold up under international law, it does under American law and the CIA pre-emptively cancelled out potentially hostile regimes which led us [the U.S.] to win the Cold War, thereby enabling your right to post on this website and complain freely. Look what Pakistan did just a few years ago when their military overthrew their government. Had the Pakistani military not done that, the Pakistani regime would directly be aiding bin Laden against us. The same goes for when the Turkish military stood up to their parliament after the public democratically elected non-secular Muslim activitist politicians. Seems if memory calls correctly, Germany democratically elected the Nazis into power too; perhaps one of the European powers should've pre-emptively overthrew them before they went on to start WWII. Would you complain about that?

"I think your "president", who lost the election but won the seat (partially with the help of his brother causing 50,000 floridians to be considered 'criminals' and ineligable for the vote) sounds more like these third-world dictators who fudge the elections to get into power. It's the same thing. Just as despicable."

Give that tired argument a rest. You obviously do not understand how presidents are elected in the U.S. Its just like the Dems complaining about how Bush lost the popular vote but won the Presidency. That party was in power for 50 solid years in Congress, yet they did not have the foresight to pass a Constitutional Amendment abolishing the Electoral College which would've prevented a Bush victory. Gore's people went through the courts and lost (rightfully so since there was no standard of judging what constituted a vote from that flawed voting system that a Dem appointee created in Florida in the first place). When you go back to the 1960 election, Nixon actually beat Kennedy in the Popular Vote, but there were ballot machines printing up votes from dead people and gave the win to Kennedy. But Nixon, fearing what would happen to the country if he challenged the election, stood aside. He also could not have won by a vote of the House of Representatives since the Dems controlled it, and he knew that if he were to challenge it. Gore never pushed the same issue to the House in 2000 because the Reps controlled it and he would've lost too. And please do not complain about disenfranchised voters in Florida. What, the Dems weren't able to bus enough homeless people to the polls via luring them with free cigarettes like in other parts of the country in 2000? Boo hoo. The pot is calling the kettle black!

I don't go out of my way to be partisan, but enough's enough.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[The Lynxpro]

*Um.... France gave us VietNam. We just tried to pick up where they left off.*

Yep. We helped France try to recolonize Vietnam (after aiding Ho Chi Minh during WWII against the Japanese) in order for them to go along with NATO. Then they lost. Then they backstabbed us in NATO. And then we lost 50,000+ people fighting a losing war nobody wanted to fight. Thank you, France, for everything. Feel free to take back the Statue of Liberty too after the next upcoming double-cross at the Security Council... Oh, thanks for the XYZ Affair too...

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[benjamindees]

Yet another reason US history education sucks. Did you know that Kuwait was actually a part of Iraq before oil was discovered there? It is basically a British colony that exists to supply oil to the west. Why do you think the US and the UK are the only ones who participate in these absurd desert wars? Hitler wasn't exactly lying when he said he was 'reuniting Germany' by invading western Poland. Saddam was doing the same: 'liberating' Kuwait from the 'imperialists' and reuniting his nation.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[nyseal]

And when has the UN EVER 'mandated' an invasion? They've been an organization of peace and diplomacy; however they have failed miserably at protecting nations under their union. They tend to fare towards setting up a committee that requires years of investigation rather than deal with the immediate military threat to a nation's sovereignty. Even then, the committee itself is usually a farce because the members are not exactly 'neutral' in nature. They bind themselves to rules of conduct which dictators like Saddam Hussein don't live by then curse the US for acting; meanwhile tens of thousands Iraqis die while Blixie takes 9 months to write an unsubstantiated report that they 'may have' WMD; wait, maybe not....we're still not sure. Either way, the US is condemned for their actions or lack thereof. It's lose, lose. The US has always been held to a higher standard on the international level with very little accountability for other UN members. They usually sit on the sidelines and either cheer or hiss, but most are protected when they ask for help by the US. Personally, I'd rather see the US just back out of not only the UN, but the international scene altogether. I know it's not feasible, but it would be interesting to see how most of these member nations would fare without US strength in the UN and the military / financial might we can bring to the table. Maybe the next time a dictator like Saddam rolls around we should sit it out and let the other 50+ nations that disagreed with us on Iraq sort it out. That, too, will be unlikely because a member nation will come to the Whitehouse crying about being invaded and our prez will cave in. Too bad we probably will not collect on the war debt, either; we seldom do. So, you can cry illegal all you want. You can protest all you want. You can boycott all you want. Just remember your words and actions the next time the US needs to help a country that truly needs it; and what would happen if that help was not available.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[nyseal]

I never thought of it that way.....but I agree. Well put.

Re:Would You Trust an American OS?

[ifwm]

You give me to little credit. I know where they got them. That wasn't the point. The point is an anti american despot had the ability and the will to further the terrorist cause against the US. He would do it, and most likely did do it in some form or another. I bever called anyone anti-american, nor did I even imply it. I don't know where this came from. To paraphrase, I may not like what you have to say, but I will ALWAYS defend your right to say it.

Also, I am many things, but ignorant is not one of them. Don't demean yourself by resorting to insults. I will gladly debate this point on it's merits, but you'll never see me call you names, because it doesn't serve any purpose but to inflame. That is clearly what you attempted to do, but I for one am more interested in honest discourse. How about you?

Couple of questions

[tsetem]

Considering China's respect of Intellectual Property, and their desire to create a custom version of Linux to break the Microsoft monopoly, What is to prevent China from looking at the Windows Source, and then taking the good parts out and inserting them into Linux (or derivative utilities). What if they saw how the whole Active Directory authentication stuff worked, and enhanced Samba?

I mean that could really be interesting. Genuine MS protocols in the Linux kernel. Microsoft would be pissed because of IP theft (ala SCO). But what could Microsoft do? Sue China?

Re:Couple of questions

[The_DOD_player]

It would be extremely bad, if China were to do such a thing. Microsoft would have all the best ammo imaginable against the OS movement (communism, destuction of intellectual property etc..)

Microsoft migth not be able to do very much against China, but rest assured that they WOULD do a lot of damage to anyone else using the code ripped of by China.

This would effectively fork Linux, and possibly a lot of other OSS projects in a China version and a "rest of the world" version.

Bad bad bad!!!

Re:Couple of questions

[robinjo]

Sorry to say but Samba is a better implementation than Windows. These guys even report bugs to Microsoft engineers.

Re:Couple of questions

[fermion]

I don't think it matters. MS is looking at a situation where it's products are being rejected by large portions of the world. The only reason that MS can use close standards and be so firm on copyrights is because they own most of the OS on all of the computers that matter. If the world standardizes on another OS, then MS will have to open up it's software just so the west can do business with the east.

So this probably poses no net loss to them. If the source ploy works then they win because the government will use windows and therefore the citizens will be more comfortable using widows as well.

If the chinese government looks at the source and copies the protocols into their linux, MS still wins. MS will be able to keep the standards closed in the west, where they make most of the money, while still be able to advertise that the systems will communicate with those in the east.

If the chinese government releases the linux source with the borrowed MS protocols, the MS wins doubly. There is no way that those enhancements will be included in a western Linux, and it would be very difficult to independently engineer the enhancements in such a way that there would not be significant copyright issues.

In any case, MS can change the protocol at any time, as it did with it's IM service, or even purposefully create messages that will break the competing service, as it did to Navigator.

Re:Couple of questions

[Anonymous Coward]

"But what could Microsoft do? Sue China?"

I bet that doesn't seem as ludicrous to Bill Gates.

Re:Couple of questions

[monkey_jam]

What is to prevent China from looking at the Windows Source, and then taking the good parts out and inserting them into Linux

the lack of good parts?

Re:Couple of questions

[Jeff DeMaagd]

But what could Microsoft do? Sue China?

That might be the day that people would refer to a certain patch of land as "the former Redmond, WA" because there might be a crater where it once stood.

OK, maybe not. The US Government would need service packs to keep their networks up.

Re:Couple of questions

[Eil]

Okay, so China might have Active Directory on their Samba servers, but it wouldn't benefit the rest of us in the least. Why? Well, we still have copyright laws over here. Even though Samba development is spread across the globe, most of the countries that have active developers also have copyright laws that would make the use of unlicensed MS code illegal. It doesn't matter who copied the code, when, or where.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. Besides, I'm not so sure I want Microsoft code making Samba any more unpredictable than it is.

My bet:

[SharpFang]

Microsoft presents "sources of windows" to China.
Source gets examined. No backdoors are found. Code is accepted.
Microsoft sells binaries to China.
Difference between what appears after compilation of presented sources and what is in the binaries gets blamed on compilers... Backdoors are present on all copies that were sold as binary and not compiled from the "cleared source" by the chineese themselves.

Non-programmers view

[bruthasj]

You can tell much of the FUD about looking at Windows source and integrating it into Linux comes from a Flock of Psycho Chickens and their non-programming brothers. How in the name of all that is holy will the Chinese look at the source code and create their own Linux? Can anyone, from a programmer point of view, enlighten me on the subject?

Re:Non-programmers view

[Zarf]

In theory, you'd get a sense of "how it's done" from the code. Then you'd go write a better Wine or Samba... meaning better "GNU/Linux" not better Linux as in the Kernel ... I guess ... This technique of coding is called a "rip off" I believe. It can't be "Reverse Engineering" because you have the source, it's not a "Virgin" creation because you've already seen the source.

So you can't look at the code for something then code another thing just like it and not call it a "rip off" I'm afraid... now, a code-fork is another thing entirely.

Re:Non-programmers view

[bruthasj]

Then software such as Windows NT are "rip offs" because the dude that helped implement the kernel for NT and other subsystems used to work on the VMS operating system. So, if MS uses the logic of "looking" at code and then implementing something better because of it, then they themselves are guilty of a sin they created.

If memory serves ...

[rizzn]

Did not Germany do this about two years ago?

I spent all of about 5 minutes searching fruitlessly for a link, but I vaguely remember doing a bit for WABCRadio a couple years ago about German Parlaiment demanding to see the source to M$'s XP code. Of course for them it is a moot point now, but my contention now is the same is then: what government official in America do you know with a good understanding of what source code even looks like, much less what a security hole looks like?

I can't even begin to imagine what a congressional subcommittee would do with pages upon pages of XP Source code, much less a German parlaimentary committee, or whatever the equivalent is in China.

India doesn't want it?

[krishy]

Interestingly, rediff is reporting that the India govt. has not shown any interest in the offer made to it

Atleast so far:)...

Re:Just a tought

[NeoGeo64]

No, Microsoft would sue all of the users who used this new version of Linux with stolen IP. And round and round it'd go.

Users would claim no source was stolen, Microsoft wouldn't say what was stolen, and you'd be hearing about it for months.

Windows source for creating Linux?

[Orlando]

They are looking both to incease security as well as perhaps create a Chinese version of Linux.

If they want to create a Chinese version of Linux, looking at Windows source code is the last thing they want to be doing surely?

Nope... it's something ELSE

[mgessner]

I'm going to beat on the conspiracy drum just a little bit... I think so far all the comments I've read missed this little tidbit:

Given the source, and given their manpower, and given all the recent news in security forums about how full of holes Windows is... if *you* got access to the source of the OS that the U.S. Federal Government is using, wouldn't YOU be spending every waking moment of all YOUR software hackers trying to find ways to exploit vulnerabilities in Windows? It would not take more than a few infected computers and poof! there go parts of the U.S. Government... and the British and any other country fool enough to trust Microsoft "security."

Admittedly, they have a tough job ahead of them, since nothing like the security they need has ever been seen on such a scale before in all of human histor... oh wait a minute, I forgot about the BSDs... whoops! Sorry about that! (Yes, I know they've got their holes, too, but those holes are much fewer and far between!)

Given the sheer numbers of the computers that have Windows on them that the government uses, the probability that *all* of them are secure and protected from attack via an email or a web viewing with IE is absolutely zero.

I know this *sounds* a bit kooky... but it's also realistic enough to be believable.

I read the article and noted that other governments are also talking with Microsoft... but China appears that it's going to be the first, and this concerns me.

Re:Nope... it's something ELSE

[Daniel Dvorkin]

That doesn't concern me at all. If US and UK gov't computers get 0wNz0R3d 8Y c41N33z h4X0rZ, then maybe that will be the call they need to wake the fuck up and realize how insecure Microsoft software is, and switch to a better alternative. And as for whatever potential damage will be done, honestly, it's not likely to be any worse than what the George & Tony Show is already doing.

Re:Nope... it's something ELSE

[__past__]

Huge parts of the windows source have been available for interested parties for quite some time, as usual with commercial software. Simply sign some NDAs and pay loads of money. If the chinese government or anybody else would want to find some interesting holes, they could as well pay someone to break their NDA. Never mind the rumors of intruders having access to the internal MS network, including source code. If I would plan to exploit a certain piece of software, I would not issue a press release about my plans to review it before.

When people say that security through obscurity doesn't work so well, they really mean it. You always have to assume that a potential attacker knows exactly how your software works, the trick is making it secure nevertheless.

I don't understand why the Chinese are even

[madsman]

thinking about using Windows considering this incident.

MSWindows-Chinese Source Code.rar

[cualexander]

What I want to know is how long until this show up on the Warez sites? China is notorious for piracy. Just imagine, no one would need Wine anymore. You could just compile Windows support right into linux. You could call it Chinlindows.

Re:MSWindows-Chinese Source Code.rar

[spacerabbits]

Chindows sounds better :-)

Maybe China won't publicize the holes it finds...

[djmurdoch]

...it will just put them into its back pocket, and save them for the next time it wants to shut down the State Department.

Can't wait for Italy to look at the code

[twoslice]

Sure the Chinese invented noodles, but only Italians can truly appreciate spagetti code at its finest.

Re:Can't wait for Italy to look at the code

[TeknoHog]

But it's the Chinese who are more used to reading and writing such incomprehensible mess.

Yummy...

[DaneelGiskard]

Microsoft has announced GSP agreements with Russia, NATO and the United Kingdom.

I predict the appearance of the windows source code on some .da.ru site very soon ... or at least in some of the more popular p2p networks :)

Timing

[Nishi-no-wan]

Did anyone else notice that it was soon after Balmer testified in the anti-trust sit-com about how revealing Microsoft's source code would be a national security threat, that China and several eastern European countries bought into Microsoft's Shared Source inititive?

Re:Timing

[A_Non_Moose]

Did anyone else notice that it was soon after Balmer testified in the anti-trust sit-com about how revealing Microsoft's source code would be a national security threat, that China and several eastern European countries bought into Microsoft's Shared Source inititive?

You betcha I did. Make matters worse is the infultration into the Homeland Security Dept.

Stupid, IMO. Ah, well, it is the gov't and two quotes spring to mind:

Never ascribe to malice, what can easily be explaind by incompetence. --Napoleon (IIRC)

Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake. --Napoleon, (again, IIRC)

The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker is in discussions with more than 30 countries, territories and organizations regarding their interest in the program.

I read that as terrorist org's...serves me right for R'ing TFA.

Re:Timing

[Phroggy]

May 2002: 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.

But giving it to China is all fine and dandy.

trustworthiness of chinese government

[capoccia]

i think most of the posts here are missing something. if the chinese government is not trustworthy enough to follow the microsoft nda's, then why should we expect they would follow the gpl? if they do decide to make a home-grown linux-based os, what would require them to publish their sources? which court would you sue them in? the hague?

Is the US Government to Inspect the code too?

[Zarf]

I thought that the US Government didn't get to inspect the code. Why does MicroSoft allow China to inspect that which the US can't? Isn't this essentially giving the Chinese goverment insight into Windows that even the NSA doesn't have? Doesn't that essentially give them an advantage for dealing with windows? Has Apple computer signed a simmilar agreement? Why doesn't China just switch to OSX?

Re:Is the US Government to Inspect the code too?

[zenpiglet]

Actually, almost any large Microsoft customer can gain access to the Windows source code. This is part of Micorosft's Software Assurance program.

I know of several companies with this access, it's no big deal really.

I assume the US government could easilly get this access if they don't have it already.

Re:Is the US Government to Inspect the code too?

[burns210]

1. Microsoft, generealy speaking, has already won the battle for the US gov, they are firmly entrenched. China, however, with their billion person population and iffy copy-right laws gives MS the willies... what if they made a Chinese linux, and put 1 billion people behind it in terms of userbase, along with coding, beta testing(to a lesser extent)? that would give linux A HUGE, uncalculable hand up in this Windows vs Linux race.

2. Why not china move to Mac? because they are also(less so, but still) proprietary and American... ideally, China wants an OS made in house(or that they have FULL control of) that is of high quality to use en mas within their country. Apple and MS are both US companies and proprietary... Linux is not a company, and is open, thus making it very attractive to china.

Rumors said that...

[2Bits]

A couple of posts already mentioned that MS is not gonna give China compilable code, etc. Here's what I heard.

[Disclaimer: I'm not involved in any negotiation or anything, just heard this from someone whose boss is an insider. So take this with a big grain of salt!]

Actually, it's not exactly true. Here are a few of the conditions that have been brought up by China, the main reasons being that China must be able to verify what MS claims.

• MS must provide the compilable source code
  
• China must send a team to MS (to the Redmond campus actually, not sure if they would be allowed to get into the building of Windows engineering team) to learn how to build it, and have some training about the Windows internals
  
• MS must show how to do the build and a way to compare the final binary with the binary distributed by MS
  

I've not asked about the issues about the patches, as I consider it to be a waste of time, and China should be concentrating money and energy on improving Linux, or heck, if we don't want to release the code changes, we can take one of the BSDs too.

Re:Rumors said that...

[rmohr02]

China should be concentrating money and energy on improving Linux, or heck, if we don't want to release the code changes, we can take one of the BSDs too.

You don't have to release changes you make to a GPL'd program. The GPL only affects the terms you can release changes under.

Re:Rumors said that...

[MarvinMouse]

Something few people have considered though with the compilation.

To verify that the code provided is the same as that used in the OS, Microsoft will have to compile with the same compilers that they use. Which afaik are their proprietary compilers.

Now, all MS has to do is make the compiler "add" a file or two to the compilation, and then they don't have to show China or whoever all of the code, they can convieniently remove some files, and just say, "you have to use our compiler to get matching results."

Isn't that cute, eh? So then, if they desire, they can still hide all they want, and only show you what they want to show you, and no one is the wiser. Well, that is unless you also get the source for the compiler. :-)

Re:Rumors said that...

[Joey Vegetables]

"you have to use our compiler to get matching results."

That's not just a possibility, but a near certainty. No two C++ compilers will generate the exact same object code, because, among many other reasons, of name mangling.

Re:Rumors said that...

[bockman]

You don't have to release changes you make to a GPL'd program. The GPL only affects the terms you can release changes under.

But it is always been doubtful if an 'internal distribution' (e.g. to the employees of a company) is to be considered 'use' or 'distribution'. Theoretically any employee that receives a copy of a modified GPL program to use could legitimately ask for the source code and freely distribute copies of it (ok, he could be fired just after that, but still ... ).

Speaking of China (~1MPeople IIRC), it is a bit difficult pretend that they are not distributing, even though they only use the modified GPL code in government offices ...

Re:Rumors said that...

[cpeterso]

Distributing a Chinese-modified Linux to billions of Chinese citizens would probably count as distribution under the GPL. China should just use BSD.

Re:Rumors said that...

[damiam]

Getting the source for the compiler wouldn't help, because you'd still have to compile it with a proprietary compiler, which could add a backdoor. The best thing would be to make sure the code could be compiled with the standard commercial version of VC++ 6, which Microsoft probably didn't have the foresight to insert any backdoors into.

Re:Rumors said that...

[rmohr02]

But if only distributed to government offices it would most likely not count.

Re:Rumors said that...

[Aeonsfx]

Agreed. Both OSes are relatively equal with strengths in given areas. (Although as a biased BSD user I would have to say that I like *BSD far more, even beyond its versatile license)

Of course, I would have to say that the GPL is better harmony with communism, given its "share!! share!!!" approach. --Tim

Billy boy lied....so what else is new.

[Stumbles]

I remember during that circus the Feds put on called a monoploy trial. That either Billy boy or one of his minions said realasing their source code would be a national security risk. what a bunch of lying bashturds.

national security risk

[codepunk]

I cannot even begin to think how large a US national security risk this is. Our military is highly dependant on MS systems. To have foreign nationals peering at the code that runs your military systems is just simply unnaceptable. Having source to the system does not necessarily cause a breach but it sure does help. Proprietary operating systems are a national security risk and should be treated as such.

Re:national security risk

[mrscorpio]

Do you really think Windows proper is the OS on the ICBM launch computers? Come on now.

Chris

Re:national security risk

[Sajarak]

Assuming that software is made more secure because access to the source code is restricted is a bad policy as it is just another form of security by obscurity. Even if the Chinese government didn't have the source code to Windows there would be nothing to stop them from reverse-engineering it. It would take them longer, but if they wanted to find holes then I'm sure they could.

In fact, you could even argue that closed-source favours the "bad guys" because only someone who stands to gain personally would want to invest their time in reverse-engineering and decompiling proprietary code. A better option is to design your software well and make the source code available to everyone, that way you're making it easier for people to find bugs and are more likely to get told about them when they do.

Proprietary operating systems are a national security risk and should be treated as such.

Indeed...

Re:national security risk

[Stargoat]

US Cruiser Dead At Sea Because of Blue Screen of Death

Re:national security risk

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"To have foreign nationals peering at the code that runs your military systems is just simply unnaceptable."

Oh, so you mean that the US Military shouldn't use Linux (or any other OSS OS)?

That leaves... proprietary software. But

"Proprietary operating systems are a national security risk and should be treated as such."

I see. So, basically, you don't want them to run non-proprietary software, yet it is a security risk. Interesting.

Re:national security risk

[Overly Critical Guy]

So you'd rather the government be dependent on Linux systems where all the source code to everything is ALWAYS available to foreign nationals?

You'll bitch if it's Windows but you'll praise if it's Linux.

Re:national security risk

[mrscorpio]

Ok, NT on the ship, right. That doesn't mean it's running the actual computer used to launch ICBM's (if that ship is even capable of doing that, which is not indicated in the article and I am not personally aware of the function of that type of ship), i.e. the ship had a blue screen but that doesn't mean they can "hack" the ship and fire the missle, they can just shut it down.

Chris

Re:national security risk

[Stargoat]

Ticos can launch cruiser missiles with tac nuke warheads.

Re:national security risk

[symbolic]

This might be a way for Microsoft to guarantee it a very long life. The U.S. military (afaik) regularly sells outdated military hardware to foreign governments. But the funny part is that it then uses this to justify having to spend more money on military research- to stay ahead of those with the newest outdated U.S. weapons. It creates a vicious treadmill, very similar to the manner in which endless upgrades are created to further the life (and revenue) associated with a given software product. So, MS lets China have the source, and now China has very intimate knowledge of the one piece of software that runs on the vast majority of PCs in this country (including those in very sensitive areas). What better reason could exist for spending HUGE amounts of money 'upgrading' everything to stay ahead of what foreign powers know about this operating system?

That having been said, I find it particularly ironic that the U.S. government was practically wetting its pants over the export of encryption technology (as if no one else in the world had even heard the term, much less knew about the technology), but is apparently letting this go without incident.

Mental excersize: conspiracy theory

[gad_zuki!]

Can all this fuss surrounding Red Flag linux just be a ploy to get MS to give China full and compilable source code that checks against the stuff in the stores? Many companies have been playing the "well we're thinking of linux for our servers" game to get discounts from MS.

How real is red flag linux and how serious are the Chinese about making it their national OS?

Easier?

[Rutje]

What will be easier to read for us?
Windows source code or Chinese?

My guess is Chinese...

Where's the comparison to Hitler?

[rruvin]

but we all certainly have reason to distrust any OS sponsored by the American government.

And what currently existing OS would that be?

but the folks who gave us Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, the genocide of the First Nation, the CIA-sponsored overthrows of democratically elected governments in various South American states

Yeah, see, here's the thing about democracies. The governments who "gave" you those things are gone, not "still there."

It's amazing how Slashtrolls insist on denying and trivializing the brutality of the Chinese dictatorship by making bizarre analogies to the US. On Slashdot, every enemy of the US is my friend.

Re:Where's the comparison to Hitler?

[Gyan]

Yeah, see, here's the thing about democracies. The governments who "gave" you those things are gone, not "still there."

Looking at the current US admin, one thinks NOT!

Re:Where's the comparison to Hitler?

[Goody]

It's amazing how Slashtrolls insist on denying and trivializing the brutality of the Chinese dictatorship by making bizarre analogies to the US. On Slashdot, every enemy of the US is my friend.

What's great is that we're (US) going to build a $19M wireless Internet system for Iraq. So now the Iraqis can join the Euroslashtrolls in busting on the US.

Once again, US tax dollars at work, undermining the US.

Re:Where's the comparison to Hitler?

[ImpTech]

Obviously he was exaggerating to make a point, but the argument could be made (and has been in many other posts under other stories), that the US government does in a way 'sponsor' Windows. They certainly use a lot of it, they let them off the hook on that whole Sherman act thing, etc... no, they didn't write it, but they have the effect of promoting it.

For your second comment, I note that you left out the part about illegal invasions (illegal by international law for those who are confused). Seems to me that part alone is plenty to be comparable to Tianaman square.

It may be true that people trivialize the brutality of the Chinese, but I'd argue that even more people trivialize the brutality the US has shown. I'm not making a comparison between the two, because really how can you? Both are horrible in their own separate ways. And as an American, I'm personally MUCH more concerned with the actions of my own government than those of a foreign power. Really, who are we to complain to the Chinese, or anyone else for that matter, if we can't keep ourselves in check?

Ful source? I doubt it

[AstroDrabb]

Does any country REALLY think they are getting the full source code? Hmm, lets look at some of the steps of the MS OS govt. release procedures

1. Remove nsa.c
2. Remove sendMSInfo.c
3. Remove ...

MS said that "some" code is removed for "security" reason. So any govt. that looks at the code and gives it the OK, does not really know what that missing code is doing when they use the commercial OS. Now if the govt. was allowed to build their own version of MS Windows based on the code the were given, then I think more govts would be a little more at ease over the deal. I personally think China will look at the code to try to make their Red Flag Linux more compatible with proprietary MS protocols.

Re:Ful source? I doubt it

[HungWeiLo]

No, no, no (shakes finger)...it's more like:

1. Remove nsa.vb
2. Remove sendMSInfo.vb
3. Remove remoteAdminGUI.frm

Re:Ful source? I doubt it

[AstroDrabb]

Ah yes, what was I thinking : )

Please allow me to correct myself in XML
<slap target="self" />

In VB
Dim obj as Object
Set obj = New Self.Face
obj.SlapFace

In C
slap_face_with_right_hand_using_pointer_and_middle _fingers();

In Java
Slapper slp = new Slapper( new Hand( new Face( new Eyes(Eyes.TWO_FINGERS) ) ) )

And finally in Perl
$lkajdsfoisajfalidsfn <=> asdf@#$rFASd#${r52rd}gfasdfdsf43rt234r2rf@#$@4r#C# @4r23

Chinese Linux Already Exists

[LanceTaylor]

It is called Red Flag Linux and has been around for a couple of years.

Re:Chinese Linux Already Exists

[LanceTaylor]

I also just found an review in English of this distro.

NSA backdoors?

[Erwos]

I've never understood the kind of schiznophrenia that /.'ers approach NSA with.

On one hand, they wrote SELinux, which _no one_ has been able to find any deliberate backdoors in. It is exactly what they said it was: a security-enhanced, hardened Linux.

Yet, on the other hand, we accuse NSA of rigging Windows with backholes for them. Can we at least make up our minds on whether NSA believes in deliberate backdoors or not? It strikes me that the only "evidence" of an NSA backdoor in Windows was the infamous NSAkey brouhaha, but this is _hardly_ hard proof of anything.

If NSA can use a backdoor, then so, theoretically, can enemy governments. That's hardly good security, and if there's one thing that NSA knows, it's good security.

-Erwos

Re:NSA backdoors?

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Can we at least make up our minds on whether NSA believes in deliberate backdoors or not?"

If you don't believe they do then you either have no idea what the initials NSA stand for, have never heard of the clipper chip, or have an IQ in the double digit range. There is absolutely no question that the NSA believes in back doors in the mind of any reasonably informed intelligent person. I am assuming you are reasonably intelligent, so you are clearly not very well informed.

Re:I appreciate your opinion

[stewby18]

And I guess all those virgins are just SOL if the drugs are too expensive. Oh well, after all, it's their own fault becaue "they should have said no"/"the way they were dressed they were asking for it"/some other equal stupid expression that misses the realities of the situation, right? Are you saying that all those innocent people deserve to die a "long, horrible death" just to teach a few people a lesson?

In the long term, education is the only solution. In the short term, it's not much comfort to those who have had a death sentence forced upon them.

If India were to do this...

[Anonymous Coward]

If India were to engage in such an exercise, the righteously indignant slashdotters
1. would wonder at the reasons for doing so even though all jobs were going to India,

2. would claim that even though they were not generalizing, Indians in general aren't creative and why all jobs were going to India,

3. would write a horror story or two on how their jobs were taken over by the Indians and they had had to train them before being laid-off and why all jobs were going to India,

4. would narrate their experiences of living in India and wonder why all jobs were going to India.

Thanks God it's China that's doing it and no, no jobs were transferred to India by the Chinese.

Re:If India were to do this...

[manja mali]

and they never told me what a job it is to give India !!!

Get ready for the Chinese UberHackers

[TrebleJunkie]

Oh, the Chinese government are looking into Windows code for exploitable holes, and I've no doubt that they're looking to increase security for their own version, but don't count out the possibility that they're looking for those exploitable holes to launch electronic attacks at the US and other democratic, capitalist nations. China has a long history of using American technology to prevent the spread of ideas and democratic ideals -- for instance their custom-built -- by Cisco of all companies -- filter/firewall devices.

This should have been a red flag -- no pun intended -- to everyone the minute they bought the code.

(How exactly does one punish the largest software company in the world for treason?)

Q: What's the use? A: An NDA to block F/OSS dev.

[SgtChaireBourne]

Microsoft doesn't give you a compilable version of their code. That's the point.

In otherwords, in regards to the code itself, the developers are either wasting their time completely or else doing unpaid debugging for Microsoft. Since it is not possible to compile the code, so there's no way ensure that the source code is even related to the binaries actually in use. There could be any number of backdoors or secret backdoors (funny how the not pro-MS links seem to go away quickly, some last only days).

I would suspect two other goals would be generating PR and taking developers off of more useful projects.

The main purpose, however, looks like it is to get development teams out of circulation via NDAs that taint them in regards to future F/OSS development. F/OSS is where China, and Asia in general, is currently heading.

Copious Notes

[Zebra_X]

As with the AMD Elan - China I'm sure, will be taking copious notes on the design of the windows operating system. China has in the past attempted to create their own windows 98. Lacking 10 years of development time to bring China 98 to market - they will do the next best thing... or maybe they just want to see if it really IS spagetti code.

Two months later...

[TekkaDon]

... China laughs.

Bill Gates would be like, "it wasn't supposed to be funny!"

But it is.

j.

Analysis vs. Implementation

[shatfield]

Until China can take the source code, compile into binaries and distribute, they should NOT trust the creators of the programs to deliver them the "real" and "true" source code for what they may be running.

Would YOU trust someone who says "here's the program" and then "here's the source code, but you can't do anything with it other than just look at it"?!

Re:fuck..

[whereiswaldo]

MODERATORS: Before moderating parent down for being redundant, check the timestamp. It comes before any other post on a related subject. Just because Slashcode sorts the posts in a different order later, doesn't change WHEN it was posted.

What version will they see?

[rnturn]

Are the Chinese sure they'll be looking at the version of the source code that compiles to the shipped software? Or might they get a peek at the cleaned up code without the security holes.

OK, conspiracy theorists! Start your engines!

Treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

We should try not to forget that during the MS antitrust trial, MS VP for Windows Jim Allchin testified that it would be a threat to US national security for the code to Windows to be revealed:


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.

Now, they are showing this same code to the Chinese government? Has anyone asked them why this should be OK? Are they trying to endanger US interests with a fierce competitor? Or were they blatantly lying at the trial? And in either case, is anybody going to do anything about it?

Comments?

[4of12]

I have to wonder if the Windows source has been made squeaky clean in the way of comments. IIRC, the Linux codebase had some interesting comments that gave you some insight into the mood of the developer when they were writing some chunk of code.

I can just see the puzzled expressions when they find things in the Windows source:

/* I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto!
Yes, I know the stupid conditional should always be false, but shit happens. */

Re:Help! A student has a crush on me!

[HarryCallahan]

Do what any good professor would do to an attractive maths student,

subtract her clothes,
divide her legs,
and give her the square root!

Re:Q: What's the use? A: An NDA to block F/OSS de

[sam_handelman]

Like the chinese care about what NDAs are signed in their government laboratories!

It is true, if some of the code written in those laboratories comes BACK to the US, MS might be able to throw some harassment lawsuits at people who try to use it, but how far will they get?

Besides, MS needs attack dogs (like SCO,) to make legal threats for them, doing it directly is too much trouble.

brace yourself!

[pair-a-noyd]

Prepare for a FLOOD of new M$ attacks from China and Korea.

Personally, I blackhole all Asian IP's at my firewall. Not that it matters because I don't use M$ but the attacks do task your resources none-the-less..

Heavens, no!

[Overly Critical Guy]

We're too busy playing "enlightened liberal" and trying to feel superior because we're against the grain by being overly critical of American actions and ignoring the atrocities of foreign countries! Stopping WWII after being attacked out of the blue (so much for isolationist America) is now an aggressive evil.

It's okay for Saddam to have stayed in power and continued torturing and stealing from his own people, because then we wouldn't have gone in "illegally" to overthrow their government.

Re:Heavens, no!

[Overly Critical Guy]

So you're pissed that Hitler almost took over Europe, yet you're pissed that we took Hussein out of the Middle East.

Make up your mind regarding insane dictators.

Re:Heavens, no!

[tka]

America went without the acceptation from UN to Iraq. I think that is the thing that most people hate. USA didn't sat around the table and worked it out there.

Now it's requesting help to Iraq from other nations, ofcourse only if they agree to be under the command of american troops.

Re:Heavens, no!

[The Lynxpro]

There are many things wrong in the world, but nobody expects the US to solve them. What is so special about Iraque, that is lacking in korea and so many other country's?

Iraq didn't have nuclear weapons. North Korea DOES. Its very difficult to invade a country that has nuclear weapons. That's why we could invade Iraq. Had we sat around a few more years and allowed France to sell more techology to them, Saddam probably would've acquired nukes and then he could do as he pleased. Personally, I think we should take out North Korea. Of course, South Korea wouldn't like nuclear fall-out from the deal. And I'd also support the U.S. and the U.K. removing Robert Mugabe's regime too, in all fairness. If we are spending money on the military, they should be working 24/7 in my book.

Re:Heavens, no!

[The Lynxpro]

If we didn't hold such a high opinion of the US and its history, we'd just not fucking bother and move somewhere else...

Please feel free to take Barbara Streissand (sic) and Alec Baldwin with you. They've lived in the US for three long years since promising they'd leave if Bush won the election...Its important to stay true to one's word...

Leaks?

[Andrewkov]

Given China's track record of human rights abuses and not respecting copyright law ... How long till I can download the Windows sources from Kazaa? :-)

Re:Leaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

How long? You didn't get the Windows 2000 source when it was floating around?

Do some homework...

[$ASANY]

There already is a Chinese Linux. Check out Red Flag at www.redflag-linux.com/eindex.html. It offers some interesting features such as "Read/write support of naked equipment" in it's "High-performance operating systems of mass memory". Seems like a winner to me.

With this fine alternative, there's no need to steal MS code, unless you're using it to improve the comments in the code. Engrish comments are probably detrimental to maintenance efforts...

Next stop: another OS

[MickyJ]

Having worked closely with Chinese developers (and companies) in China, Hong Kong, and Singapore over the last ten years I can tell you right now what the outcome of this inspection will be: "We can do it better!"

They have absolutely no intention whatsoever to buy or use Windows. They will develop their own OS (probably based on Linux) and copy anything and everything they can from Windows while proudly proclaiming that they did it all themselves, and that it's much better than that "imperialist crap" from the West.

Re:fuck..

[hpavc]

from what deal outlined in the sources of the posts before before, the clients will have a special browser that views the source code. it wasnt apparent that there would be any source like we would see it. just viewing like a cvsweb view.

uhm

[waspleg]

and it's impossible to only put backdoors in the chinese version? can i get an 8th of what you have?

Re:What comments?

[hughk]

I know someone who saw part of the Wince codebase and whilst the code wasn't obfuscated, there were practically no comments at all.

Actually many commercial companies that grant access to source, strip comments out, especially the funny ones.

Oh precisely...

[Nijika]

Of course! :) We've just come full circle back to the core of a Linux Vs. Windows debate. The real question now is why don't any US corporations really seriously ask that question? Customers? I guess privacy and security is more inconvenient than is worth it.

Just like everything else on this continent, people will trade security and safety for minor convenience. Apparently the Chinese are thinking ahead a bit.

You really shouldn't lose sleep over it

[Pac]

Unless, perhaps, if you are responsible for the information infra-structure of the most populous country in the world.

ChinoSoft, anyone?

[Futurepower(R)]

When Chinese worked on U.S. government atomic warheads, China soon had a design very much like it. Now that Microsoft is showing its source code, does that mean that there will soon be a Chinese version of Microsoft Windows, not owned by Microsoft?

Will Bill Li soon be the richest man in the world and complain about governments stifling innovation? Will Bill Gates then say that it doesn't really matter?

umm

[sewagemaster]

right, get people to clean up your mess and debug your entire flawed buggy poor security OS for free

Same shit as in USSR

[melted]

Only they copied the hardware, too. I guess the intelligence was much better. Hint - in most cases they didn't even have to reverse engineer.

Actually it's just

[melted]

build

As far as I know. They build (and test) it several times a day. Probably every check-in causes at least a partial rebuild and test verification.

Huh?

[theolein]

Please tell me what is insightful about the parent post? I can understand American fear of China as a "vaguely understood communist threat", but eastern Europe???? Has it not yet sickered through to mainstream USA that the cold war is over? J. fucking Christ, the fucking stupidity here amazes me at times.

Re:Huh?

[The Lynxpro]

I can understand American fear of China as a "vaguely understood communist threat", but eastern Europe???? Has it not yet sickered through to mainstream USA that the cold war is over?

Never count on any nation being your friend for long. Witness what France and Germany did to us at the UN Security Council. Perhaps the US should guard against so-called European friends, lest we allow the European Union to become a strong less-than-friendly regime to US interests outside of economics. Although I will go out of my way to say that the U.K. will always be an ally of the U.S., our one and only true-friend and motherland.

A Ruse? A Guise? For.....

[ciphertext]

Viewing the source code is an excellent way to understand how the program works. It removes the need to guess on how the code operates and more importantly, how to design better exploits for said code. If you "know" how an operating sytem works first-hand then you can design a better manipulation of the operating system (i.e. backdoor, virus, etc...). Perhaps this provides the Chinese Government with an opportunity to create a more effective strategy involving electronic surveilance and electronic information gathering.

The Chinese Government would need to be stupid to not take advantage of this opportunity. The Chinese Government, to my knowlede, is not stupid.

Will They Publish?

[LuYu]

Would it not be nice if the Chinese government arbitrarily said: Screw your NDA. It is invalid here. We will break your monopoly. ... and then proceeded to publish MS's source code on the web or somewhere similarly convenient? Just imagine the end of embrace and extend. Compatibility would be a reality again.

This would be a much better solution to the antitrust violations than the US government is willing to implement.

China has screwed over corporations this way before. One can always dream that they would do so in such a way that would be beneficial to everyone (well, with the exception of MS employees and stock holders, of course).

Realistic politics and business politics

[theolein]

All those who go on the patriotic road of claiming China is evil or the USA is evil and therefore one should support A or B is perhaps ignoring what probably is going on.

Firstly Microsoft is a huge business with a vested interest in selling Windows wherever it can. That means that it is in Microsoft's interest to satisfy government customers, whereever they may be, be it the US government asking MS to allow NSA backdoors in foreign (or all) versions of Windows. It also means that Microsoft will, at least on the surface, attempt to satisfy large foreign government customers in showing them Windows source code, although how they will get around the backdoors, if they are there, is a mystery to me.

Secondly, China has good grounds not to trust US companies in matters of security. There is a well known story of Boeing supplying a new jet (777 or 767) for the Chinese government that sat on the runway in China for months after the Chinese discovered more than 50 spying devices on board. On top of this China (and most of the rest of the world for that matter) has good economic reasons to want to develop an indigenous software and hardware industry. Buying Microsoft software only sends revenues to the USA, which is not in most countries economic interests.

I suspect China will carry on down its (ostensibly with proprietry added features) Linux road as it means greater freedom and power for them.

Re:China is a beautiful country

[Mod Me God]

Such things (group trips to this hotel and others) are not unusual for perverted Japanese men who want a break from the normal Japanese whores, apparantly... ...but in all seriousness would a 'high-class' prostitute take part in such an orgy... no, the STD ridden ones (not to say the 'high-class' ones aren't STD ridden, just the low class ones for-sure are) would though, then these men take their new infections back to their wives, girlfriends, yet-to-be-conceived children.

Now they write a better virus

[cylcyl]

Not to be paranoid or anything. But, now that they have the source, they can find the weakpoints that a virus can exploit and proceed to create them.

I mean it's handy to have the virus on hand in case US/ China ever get into a serious conflict and they wanted to cause some damage? Or maybe it could even be just one overzealous employee writing one to promote Chinese "self soverignty" ...

So US might be the only gov to not have the source :(

Expect more virii/worms soon!

[El]

Will they be passing everything they learn on to the hackers attacking the Taiwanese web sites?

MOD PARENT UP

[ndogg]

I was just about to say something similar. It's about time governments realize that security through obscurity in software isn't the way to go.

Re:what a stupid question

[bockman]

Copyrighted windows code infiltrating Linux (or other OSS)codebase would be a legal disaster, giving MS reasons to do, with winning arguments, what SCO is trying to do without (apparently) any success.

I hope that mantainers of open-source code will be extra-careful with any contribution coming from people that could have been tainted by looking at windows code.

Yeah, like they havn't seen the code before

[Le Marteau]

Is anyone really buying this? Do you think a goverment with the resources of China does not have the capability to get Windows source? I mean, that code's floating around every second rate university this side of Krakow.

This story is obviously disinformation. Think for yourself, people.

the NSA does not need Microsoft to create holes...

[The Lynxpro]

Why would the NSA rely on Microsoft to create security holes in Windows? If Microsoft cannot be trusted to patch holes they mistakenly placed in the OS, how can the NSA trust them to actually produce reliable security holes for breaching? I'm sure the NSA has viewed Microsoft code long before. All it would take would be to use Echelon's combined computing power for probably a couple of minutes and they could find all the hidden BSD code buried deep within...

after 5 years

[sad_]

bill gates will drag some linux company to court because there is stolen NT code in the linux source. It was probably snugged in by some chinees programmer that worked on the NT source code review, the plans are already layed out! by that time the SCO battle will just be finished, and MS will launch the second attack wave.

Think SCO suit's bad? Imagine Microsoft vs Linux

[Ungrounded Lightning]

> Why on earth would looking at Windows source code help with a Chinese version of Linux?

Maybe they can finally write an ntfs driver that can write reliably. (v)fat is dying

They'd BETTER not port Microsoft internals into Linux - or the rest of us better not accept their additions.

If you think the SCO suit is bad, imagine Microsoft suing - when they were RIGHT about having their IP lifted and would likely WIN.

And if they do find holes....

[Eric Damron]

they will, of course, let Microsoft know about them rather than use them.

Microsoft's shared source program makes users more vulnerable than ever before. At least with Open Source there are a lot of eyes looking at the code who will sound an alarm if anything is found. With governments that's not necessarily the case; each one wanting to spy on the other.

Chinese builds could be done in China

[kylef]

Microsoft doesn't give you a compilable version of their code. That's the point.

Oh, really? So you have read and signed one of these "shared source" agreements with Microsoft in the past, then?

Microsoft already has a wing of MS Research in Beijing, if I recall correctly. Why would it be such a stretch of the imagination to have a "build group" over there that produces Chinese-only builds from the same source tree that is open for government inspection? How do you know this isn't what is being done?

Re:Chinese builds could be done in China

[spektr]

Oh, really? So you have read and signed one of these "shared source" agreements with Microsoft in the past, then?

I doubt the license agreement says anything about whether you will be able to compile the source or not. But it will definitely prevent you from running your business on a system you built yourself. The following quote is from the license agreement of the shared source version of Windows CE .NET

You can use this Software for any non-commercial purpose, including distributing derivatives. Running your business operations would not be considered non-commercial. For commercial purposes, you can reference this Software solely to assist in developing, debugging, and testing your own software and hardware for the Windows CE .NET platform.

Even if you can compile and debug the sources you get from Microsoft, you still have to install their binaries on your production system. Which can be compiled from a different source.

Microsoft already has a wing of MS Research in Beijing, if I recall correctly. Why would it be such a stretch of the imagination to have a "build group" over there that produces Chinese-only builds from the same source tree that is open for government inspection? How do you know this isn't what is being done?

This "build group" would still work for Microsoft, not for the government or local companies? I guess they can't be independent from Microsoft, because the license agreement (see above) would prevent them from distributing useful binaries.

Re:Chinese builds could be done in China

[kylef]

This "build group" would still work for Microsoft, not for the government or local companies?

Exactly. It would be a Microsoft group that is overseen by the security audit team from the Chinese government. The Chinese officials would be there to verify that the builds are indeed coming from the same codebase their "security experts" had inspected.

Ensuring that the code being built has already been inspected can be accomplished in any number of ways, but signing the code using some sort of cryptographic hash during transportation from one machine to another is an obvious solution. With suitable oversight, such a build process can be made very secure.

My point is just that there are many ways this agreement could be accomplished, and no one here can say what the details are for sure. Assuming that the Chinese government doesn't know about these potential security loopholes is underestimating their intelligence a bit, no?

Bah

[evil9000]

M$ gave them a copy of the TCP/IP stack that they have given all the schools over the world. big deal. M$ didnt even write it, it came from FreeBSD in the first place. Where is the progress in this world? ;)

Re:fuck..

[whereiswaldo]

No really, what a total joke. Would you trust someone who showed you what they *claim* is the source code, and then provided you with *their* binaries? If you don't compile it yourself, how do you really know? And even then, that's not an absolute guarantee that what you see is what you get (eg. if someone tampered with the compiler).

Hmmm

[placeclicker]

Or maybe CHINA wants to find and use exploits against American computers?
Maybe the NSA isn't the evil one in this story.

Why look for backdoors when the code is broken?

[no_mayl]

It seems like a waste of time.
Every month somebody finds on overflow exploit (slight exageration based on the double RPC patch).
Even if the source code was checked for backdoors, and then compiled in China, there would still be new exploits every month.
A hostile party would only have to study the binary and keep eploits secret until needed.

--
jpa

Re:Help! A student has a crush on me!

[Lours]

Hey,

luckily we are in the 21st century and some things have changed in our societies even if GWB is still not able to accept it, so I'd say that there are only three things that matters here :

- is she an interesting person ?
- know her real intention : is she serious or playing the seduction game ?
- make sure that if anything starts, you won't be influenced by your relationship with her as far as notation is concerned (if she's serious then she may wait a bit before anything really starts, so you might be able to jauge her a bit)

apart from that, well, that's life... it's short, live it with an open mind and just make sure you don't harm her or others.
IMHO, there's not much more to say there.

Oh, and good luck :)

Re:Help! A student has a crush on me!

[Lours]

Oh, shit.

I'm responding to an entirely offtopic post, dumbass me.
Well, it shows it's probably time for a new slashdot "geek social problems" section I guess :)

Now mod me down please, and while you're at it, give me brain cells too, I need them to read the whole page before replying next time :)

Sometimes, getting the source code is "enough"

[Gadi Evron]

I have read the above thread, and I must say, as interesting as every comment was, we over-looked one significant issue: the resources.

The amount of resources required for undertaking a code evaluation of any kind, of MS Windows, is staggering.

Even if China is about to undertake such an immense project, and compile their very own MS Windows, supposedly hole-less (which would be a big step forward in security considerations) it would still not change the fact that:

A company willing to share the source code of a product they sell, already boost your confidence in the product. Now, would you be willing to spend money and resources on actually reviewing it? Not everyone is China. It might actually make more sense to make your own OS, like Germany did.

Even though the company that creates their OS has ~half a million employees, it is still a big step forward security-wise.

Like in every other security consideration, it's cost vs. benefit.

It would make China's life, and any hacker's life a lot easier to locate security holes in the OS once they have the source code, but compiling your own OS makes you feel more secure as well, no? Especially when you don't have to develop every driver on your own.