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Can Open Source Give Comfort To the Enemy?

zlite writes "We make open source Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones), mostly for geomapping and other amateur uses. One of our problems is that most people think of UAVs as Scary Things, and despite our efforts to prove otherwise there's always the risk of regulatory crackdowns. We have amateur UAV participants from around the world, but now they've been joined by an Iranian in Tehran, who has made a UAV in the colors of the Iranian flag. My instinct is that we should welcome everyone, everywhere, but I'm sure some in Washington worry that this looks like helping an 'Axis of Evil' country make advanced weapons. They could shut us down with the stroke of a pen. My question: is there ever a case for letting national security issues dictate the limits of an open source project?"

6 of 532 comments (clear)

  1. Teach a man to kill.... by headkase · · Score: 0, Troll

    It's as simple as this: "they" do not think like "us". Our goals and interpretations of the world in general may not be compatible with each other. So pragmatically, don't give someone you don't fully trust the means to hurt you.
    Oooooh, here come the liberals :)

    --
    Shh.
  2. Re:If Iran can build a nuclear reactor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Most of them are inbred tribal goat fuckers. They are as primitive as the most backwoods Amazon monkey people. And a whole lot meaner and stupider. Generation after generation of Muslim breeding with siblings and first cousins doesn't bode well for the gene pool. They worship rocks and the moon.

    Give me a friggin' break! They could no more build a 747, or a dialysis machine, or a microchip than some South Pacific cargo cult. Actually, most of the muslim world is sort of a cargo cult which buys technological trinkets and googaws with oil dollars. When the oil dries up, they will go back to making camel dung patty cakes.

  3. Men like you by michaelmalak · · Score: 0, Troll

    How are you supposed to know? Fucking men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you thought it up. You think you're so creative. You don't know what it's like to really create something; to create a life; to feel it growing inside you. All you know how to create is death and destruction.

  4. Re:Anyone Still Listening? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Sure, Iraqis are killing US soldiers _now_, but, well, can you blame them, after said soldiers plunged their country into an anarchy where it's news if there is a day _without_ bombings?

    Oh no, they can't be blamed at all. They're "freedom fighters" so it's OK if they defend their country by killing hundreds to thousands of civilians a month.

  5. Insightful? by commodoresloat · · Score: 0, Troll

    Let me get this straight ... your point is, whitey is gonna lose to the terrorists no matter what, so his best bet is to jump on a fucking space ship and colonize some distant galaxy?

  6. Re:Give the by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yeah. If I kept drinking the Jizz that spurts from the end of Cheney's Dick, my brain would have rotted to the point of believing all that propaganda, too.

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."