Why American Corporate Software Can No Longer Be Trusted

jrepin writes "There is a problem with proprietary, closed software, which makes Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the first Pirate Party, a bit uneasy: 'We get a serious democratic deficit when the citizens are not able to inspect if the computers running the country's administrations are actually doing what they claim to be doing, doing all that and something else invisibly on top, doing the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong time, or doing nothing at all. ... In the debate around the American Stop Online Piracy Act, American legislators have demonstrated a clear capability and willingness to interfere with the technical operations of American products, when doing so furthers American political interests regardless of the policy situation in the customer’s country."

Comments

The Era of Linux is at hand

[DadLeopard]

Well if you deal out Microsoft, Apple And Google, you are left with not much but Linux as an alternative! I for one would love to see this happen as resources and money would have to be poured in to make Linux distributions and applications that were world class!

Re:The Era of Linux is at hand

[Presto Vivace]

I am increasingly of the view that Richard Stallman is correct, living in freedom means using free software.

Re:The Era of Linux is at hand

[Pharmboy]

you are left with not much but Linux as an alternative!

FreeBSD, (and other BSDs), FreeDOS, Darwin, Haiku, Plan 9, Solaris just to name a few. FreeBSD in particular is quite competitive with Linux, since many of the same GUI elements and applications will run on both.

Re:The Era of Linux is at hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I'm sure Haiku will come up first on their list of OSes that people actually give a shit about. They'll probably implement the backend in Haiku, the frontend on Plan 9, and the supporting software on Solaris so that every one of you chucklefucks can jack off about the fact that someone actually uses your OS.

Re:The Era of Linux is at hand

[pla]

That was FUD. Oracle is moving Java from the Java6 sdk to the openjdk, and this Ubuntu upgrade move you from sun java to open jdk.

Yes and no... Given the more-or-less equivalence of the two JDKs, it means a minor nuisance for most people as they search the forums to figure out why Random App X inexplicably broke, and how to point their favorite toys at Open instead of Sun. Should they ever have needed to do so?


Upgrade Manager even tells you what it is doing.

To most people, an official "update" amounts to a calm reassurance that some geek-deities somewhere far away, perhaps Silicon Valley, perhaps Finland, perhaps Mars for all they know, have cast a spell that will make everything work out alright. Even among lower-tier tech-savvy people, very few would know whether or not they wanted to let the updater make the indicated change. Hell, even as a seasoned developer, I wouldn't necessarily know (prior to the change) what, if anything, would break as a result.


I don't disagree with you in spirit, but the issue still boils down to having changes made semi-unwittingly to your system, for political rather than technical reasons. Not because it will give you the best long-term outcome, but because an agreement has expired between parties you don't even recognize as even remotely relevant to the state of "your" PC.

And that I take as the heart of the FP's argument - We can't trust proprietary software because we can't know when a distribution agreement may retroactively expire, or a court may waves their wand-o'-justice to make P2P magically illegal overnight, or some government wants to censor any mention of Pastafarianism. None of those, except by my decision to play ball, should have any effect whatsoever on my PC that worked just fine the day before.

Re:The Era of Linux is at hand

[SplashMyBandit]

n00b. No one forces you to adopt the GPL. Only those enlightened souls who *actually create something* can choose to use the GPL. All the *non-creators* who want to use the stuff the creators made without giving their own users the same freedoms are the ones who whinge.

GPL is not slavery and saying it is means you have a poor grasp of it. GPL is set of copyright terms that are designed to avoid slavery/proprietary lock-in/corporate malfeasance to users. If you don't want to use/re-use GPL software then don't. The GPL creators owe you nothing so quit whinging. How about you *create* something yourself - then we'll see what the copyright infringers and software stealers (China is bad for this) make with your stuff.

Re:The Era of Linux is at hand

[SplashMyBandit]

The word 'piracy' is an attempt by Big Media to frame the debate. Let's be clear: 'piracy' is unlawfully attacking a ship on the high seas; 'copyright infringement' means unlawfully copying something. In this case 'freedom' will never equate to piracy. Freedom may mean ignoring copyright infringment if it is for the greater social good (which is my understanding of Stallman's position) - in fact in the past the USA was founded on industries that bypassed patents and copyrights held by British industry (such as automated looms etc), so such as position is not without precedent and is no less moral than the fledgling US government (the 'Founding Fathers' as they seem to be idolized as today).

Re:The Era of Linux is at hand

[GameboyRMH]

BSD fans are the libertarians of the software world. They want full freedom in theory even if it means serfdom in practice, rather than a system which is less free in theory but delivers more freedom in practice.

Re:Patriot Act Backlash Mk2

[Baloroth]

which is hilarious because our manufacturing base is gone.

Which is why we still have more manufacturing capability than any other country in the world, including China? Granted those stats are a bit old, it's still true. The number of jobs is down (by a lot), because US manufacturing has grown more efficient, which creates the impression that we lack manufacturing capability. Well, that and all the "Made in China" crap you find at Walmart. The reality is the US makes ~18% of the worlds manufactured stuff. And that is considered a "small fraction" of the US's economy. In an international context, the US is massive. Still by far the biggest player.

Also, the US probably should ban Chinese electronics in defense applications, but they don't.

Who watches the watchers?

[shmlco]

I find this sort of thing rather amusing. You didn't trust closed source software...

So you download ten million or so lines of source code from some anonymous server, written by thousands of people you've never met and will never know. You then build it using even more software and libraries and tools running under yet another OS, and you then install it on hardware with its own BIOS and roms and controllers.

Hundreds of millions of lines of code you've never seen, and never will see...

And yet the end product of THAT result is somehow more trustworthy.

Right.

Re:Who watches the watchers?

[PaladinAlpha]

True or false: it's easier to audit software you have the source to, compared to software you only have a binary for.

True or false: the source to a piece of distributed software is in the hands of many people.

True or false: if one person finds a problem, they can find others.

How would you feel if laws were secret? Yet, how often have you read through all the laws on the books?