Slashdot Mirror
FSF Responds To Microsoft's Privacy and Encryption Announcement
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft announced yesterday their plans to encrypt customer data to prevent government snooping. Free Software Foundation executive director John Sullivan questions the logic of trusting non-free software, regardless of promises or even intent. He says, 'Microsoft has made renewed security promises before. In the end, these promises are meaningless. Proprietary software like Windows is fundamentally insecure not because of Microsoft's privacy policies but because its code is hidden from the very users whose interests it is supposed to secure. A lock on your own house to which you do not have the master key is not a security system, it is a jail. ... If the NSA revelations have taught us anything, it is that journalists, governments, schools, advocacy organizations, companies, and individuals, must be using operating systems whose code can be reviewed and modified without Microsoft or any other third party's blessing. When we don't have that, back doors and privacy violations are inevitable.'"
Stupid Stallmanesque semantics, as usual. In this case, the idea behind making the source code available is better software, not more liberated software. I mean, the NSA is only to happy to share backdoors w/ everybody
I'm so sure you've read the entire source for Mint. Even if you had, I have all the confidence in the world that you would be able to find all the exploitable bugs.
Your personal trust in Mint is admirable, too. I'd really like to hear the criteria that you used in your decision to "trust" them.
Yeah, that was the sound of sarcasm. You fucking fanboys suck down the kool aid like each other's cocks.
The truth is that you have the illusion of choice involved in reviewing the source. 1 in a million have the skill, time and motivation to properly evaluate the linux kernel. Even less than that for each individual implementation of a distribution. Are you going to trust that 1 person in that million to do it for you? You're delusional if you think it's better than the alternative to trusting MS.
It kills me that Microsoft is actually trying to do something right and all people do is jack each other off with the same song and dance about OSS vs. closed source. I've been on this site since 1999 and it's the same discussion, except as I've grown older, the more I realize how fucking stupid this discussion is.