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Cnet Apologizes For Nmap Adware Mess
Trailrunner7 writes "Officials at Cnet's Download.com site have issued a statement apologizing for bundling the popular open source Nmap security audit application with adware that installed a toolbar and changed users' search engine to Microsoft properties. Fyodor, the author of Nmap, raised the issue earlier this week, saying that his app was being wrapped in malware on Download.com. It's not unusual for download sites to bundle free applications with some kind of adware or toolbar, but the creators of open-source applications take a dim view of this practice, given the nature and ethic of open source projects. Nmap is a venerable and widely used tool for mapping networks and performing security audits and Fyodor wrote in a message to an Nmap mailing list earlier this week that Download.com, which is part of Cnet, a subsidiary of CBS Interactive, was bundling the application with its installer, which, if a user agreed, would install a search toolbar and change the user's search engine to Bing."
It is entirely within the license terms of any OSI-approved Open Source license to aggregate any software, regardless of its nature, on the same medium as Open Source software and to install it with the same installer that installs the Open Source. Even software that is harmful. Only if the software is a derivative work of the Open Source will the license apply to it.
Sure, CNet shouldn't do this, and if they keep doing it we'll eventually start using new licenses that make them copyright infringers. But right now it's legal.
Bruce Perens.
Aptly put.
I never argued that there should be more liability and less protections for executives in corporations. Quit the contrary actually. The landlord analogy is insane because you are holding them strictly liable for all actions of the tenant. For a landlord to be truly negligent they would need to know. Murder is ridiculous, but crack house or meth lab.... might not be so much. Bimonthly inspections that just involve a cursory look through the property would not be unreasonable and are permissible in every rental/lease contract I have seen.
As for the executives and board members I absolutely agree that corporate person hood should not shield executives that meet your standards for negligence, gross negligence, knowledge required, and intentional. Treat them like everybody else. They still performed the act, only used the corporation as a vehicle for their actions. Ironically enough, we have laws for vehicular homicide and negligence for literal vehicles too.
My objection is providing strict liability to the investors. That is unreasonable period. Intentional and knowledge required indicates a conspiracy or aiding & abetting. No excuse for that. Gross negligence does not sound possible in an investor/stock holder context.
Negligence and Knowledge required are where it gets unreasonable to the investors because then it requires investors, even accredited investors, to perform ongoing audits that would be too resource intensive and impractical. It might not even be possible if the executives are actively attempting to hide their activities and falsifying records.
Especially so for somebody that owns a minuscule amount of stock in Exxon. Somebody needs to explain to me how Ma & Pa Johnson on a farm in Kansas could really know that the Valdez incident was about to happen or could have prevented it. Billing them for cleanup and reparations does not sound like a logical and reasoned position to take.