Let's not forget that most of the work that has been done on the Linux kernel was done by people who did it simply because they wanted to. Not because anybody was paying them or holding a gun to their head, but because they had the passion for an open project. And nobody who puts his free time into open source is forcibly responsible for anything. If you don't want to be responsible for the kernel, you simply don't work on it. The people who do work on the kernel do it because they love it. And I have enough faith in the OSS community that anyone who wrote code with a security flaw in it that knows about it, would take responsibility and fix it. That's just the way open-source coders operate; it's the open-source idealism.
For some reason I've never understood, a lot of people seem to think that because they write electronically, they don't have to spell correctly or use proper grammar. And even if they are naturally bad at such things, it's not like most e-mail clients lack spelling and/or grammar checks. I have no idea why people do this; especially in a situation like this where the writing is more formal and precise. Although for myself, I've conformed to more or less standard writing form in electronic communications.
Maybe it's someone else's fault...
on
Given Up to Spyware?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
...but it's still our problem. If people stopped using {spy,ad,mal}ware, those who make it would likewise stop. But while its true that uneducated people are the ones who truly perpetuate all this, it is the task of people who know more to try to educate the ignorant on alternatives. I mean, if we don't use it to help others, what's the point in having knowledge in the first place? So what we more technologically-minded folks can do to help is simply keep plugging away with the educational stuff. After all, community education is what got Open Source projects started in the first place. "There's a better way to do this..." has to be our motto if we want to contribute to fixing this problem. [My first Slashdot post, by the way.:^) ]
Slashdot Mirror
Let's not forget that most of the work that has been done on the Linux kernel was done by people who did it simply because they wanted to. Not because anybody was paying them or holding a gun to their head, but because they had the passion for an open project. And nobody who puts his free time into open source is forcibly responsible for anything. If you don't want to be responsible for the kernel, you simply don't work on it. The people who do work on the kernel do it because they love it. And I have enough faith in the OSS community that anyone who wrote code with a security flaw in it that knows about it, would take responsibility and fix it. That's just the way open-source coders operate; it's the open-source idealism.
For some reason I've never understood, a lot of people seem to think that because they write electronically, they don't have to spell correctly or use proper grammar. And even if they are naturally bad at such things, it's not like most e-mail clients lack spelling and/or grammar checks. I have no idea why people do this; especially in a situation like this where the writing is more formal and precise. Although for myself, I've conformed to more or less standard writing form in electronic communications.
...but it's still our problem. If people stopped using {spy,ad,mal}ware, those who make it would likewise stop. But while its true that uneducated people are the ones who truly perpetuate all this, it is the task of people who know more to try to educate the ignorant on alternatives. I mean, if we don't use it to help others, what's the point in having knowledge in the first place? So what we more technologically-minded folks can do to help is simply keep plugging away with the educational stuff. After all, community education is what got Open Source projects started in the first place. "There's a better way to do this..." has to be our motto if we want to contribute to fixing this problem. [My first Slashdot post, by the way. :^) ]