Alan Meyer posted on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:48:26 -0800 as excerpted: > On the issue of trust, for example, I trust that the open source > software that I run is safe. However I have found that a number of > closed source programs I have installed on my Windows machines included > spyware. And those are the ones I was able to find out about. There may > be many others that I didn't find out about that also include spyware. > > That's not to say that all authors of non-free software are > untrustworthy, but without the source code we can't easily tell if they > are trustworthy.
Here's something that's worth thinking about, that was reason enough for me to draw the line with the activation tech in eXPrivacy, such that I really had no /choice/ but to jump ship at that point. The issue is really two-pronged. 1) Activation is an anti-feature, period. That is, it does NOTHING good for the purchaser of the software, while having all /sorts/ of risks in terms of breaking things. One of the things taught in first year Engineering is that there's a direct relationship between complexity and failure. Put simply, the more complex something is, the more things there are that can break. Thus, it's drummed into the engineering student's head that you make things as complex as they have to be to get the job done, but NOT more so. Now let's talk software. All non-trivial software has bugs. In fact, it is said that the bug count per line of code at a particular maturity level is relatively constant. Somewhat surprisingly this holds relatively constant across languages and authors (well, authors at comparable experience level), as well. The more testing, reviewing, scanning both automated and not, etc, that a piece of code gets, with the bugs then worked out, the more mature it is and the less bugs that remain, but it can never be reliably assumed that no more bugs exist in the code. This is one aspect of why bloat is such a pejorative term as applied to software. It implies that the software has had features added beyond the point at which the use of the new features are worth the additional complexity, not just in initial development time and basic maintenance, but in additional bugs, some of which are likely to be pretty serious, as in potentially fatal to use of the software for some, or security critical for others (and BTW, it has been argued rather convincingly that nearly any crash in a native coded app is a potential security vuln, just waiting for the proper exploit -- consider that the next time your browser crashes at some unknown web site!). But... /most/ of that so-called "bloat" has at least /some/ redeeming use, for whatever number of users of that software find that feature useful. It can be argued that it's bloat, but as long as it's useful for / someone/, whether it's bloat or not does rather tend to be in the eye of the beholder/user. So what kind of /possible/ insanity would prompt a developer to add "anti- features", that is, additional code, complexity and potential for bugs, that has benefit for *NO* user, when every bit of added complexity is at additional cost in terms of maintenance and additional risk of critical failure and/or security vulnerabilities? With more code comes more bugs, GUARANTEED. And SOME of those bugs WILL be critical bugs, either security or function-wise, GUARANTEED! So again, what kind of INSANE person DELIBERATELY adds such things to their code, when it's something NOT EVEN ONE user will benefit from, and in fact, it's taken as a given that such an anti-feature WILL cause problems for SOME legitimate users? So with the development of such "anti-features" as software activation, MS is demonstrating one of two things: (a) A serious number of devs and management have gone SERIOUSLY INSANE, or (b) us "users" are no longer the real "users" they are creating the software for. Well, unless there's something strange in the water up there in Redmond, (a) can be pretty much ruled out, so that leaves (b). That then begs the question, OK, if we're not the users they're building for now, who is? The answer must be, MS itself. Like any monopoly over time, it has lost sight of the end users and is now treating them as simply more material to feed into the maw of the self-perpetuating monster it has become! And actually, quite contrary to MS' own claims in the courts, it obviously believes it *IS* a monopoly, that a significant share of its users REALLY have NO other choice and will thus pay whatever MS demands of them for whatever crap they spew out, because they literally have no where else to go. Otherwise, why would it be resorting to these tactics that it KNOWS to be customer repellent? After all, how did it gain market share when many of its competitors were resorting to yesteryear's activation technology, dongles and the like? Simply by not using such things on its own software, even at the known expense of some piracy. MS has time and again demonstrated itself too good a competitor to get tied up in such user repellent tactics when it believes there's other competition out there. Therefore, if they're using them, they obviously believe there's no viable competition, that they *ARE* a monopoly and don't have to care, because users have no other place to go. Their actions are conclusive demonstration of what they BELIEVE, no matter WHAT they say! Well, that's the first prong. MS was no longer customer focused, but only MS focused. Any company deliberately installing anti-features in their software, despite what we know about complexity, bug rates, and GUARANTEED breakage, isn't a company whose software I'm interested in using. Once it was demonstrated that's what they were up to, I knew I was getting off -- they were PUSHING me off! But I could still, within a limited frame of reference, pick my time and place to jump. And jumping the week that eXPrivacy came out was both the right time for me, as by then, I had been preparing for roughly two years and it was time, and highly symbolic. While the first prong is highly technical but very basic and directly related to MS itself, the second prong is built on the first but isn't as direct and is even more insidious in its implications as projected into the future, both from then, and very likely getting even worse moving into the future from now. While the first alone was bad enough that had I not already had a decade on MS, I'd have chosen another alternative at that point, the implications of the second were what really convinced me that MS and I had to part ways, no ifs, ands or buts, /despite/ that investment of a decade of time and experience that it was going to cost me. The second prong is simply this: If MS, after all the leader on its own platform, is doing all the above in spite of all the accumulated Engineering (not just software engineering, but civil engineering, mechanical engineering, NASA engineering... the reason the shuttle basically failed, despite all the money and engineering thrown into it, is that it was and remains an over-complex engineered solution to what was an already solved problem -- we'd landed men on the moon, after all!) wisdom to the contrary, what are the implications for where OTHERS, those who don't have the entire PLATFORM to defend and risk, are going to do. To what extent are they going to take the actions of MS, leading by its own example? You know what? I was predicting the likes of the Sony rootkit fiasco from the moment I understood what MS was doing with activation in XP. I really do not blame Sony for that rootkit; I blame MS for leading the way with the anti-feature of product validation and activation. And the question I have is this, why did people get so mad at Sony, when all it was doing was protecting its own interests in much the same way MS was doing? MS lead the way. Sony only followed, extending the principle only very little further. And now MS, with MS Windows 7, is going even further, with more or less continuous checks (every 90 days, IIRC), dramatically crippling the OS if something goes wrong with the validation checks. If it's OK for MS, it's gotta be OK for all the other software vendors out there. And with MS leading the way and implying permission, what sort of Sony rootkit like extensions are coming next? MS wants to be root on your machine. Sony obviously does as well, and with them, of course, so does everyone else, with their own schemes to protect their own interests. If MS can do it, why can't all the others. And if they're all given effective root access, who's running "your" machine, after all? So what /is/ malware, after all, and who's shipping it? Foreseeing all this as the implication and ultimate result of where MS was headed with eXPrivacy, is it any wonder I call it that, and any surprise I describe it as MS pushing me out? Ten years on MS, and honestly, while I appreciated to some extent the ideals of freedomware and wished I'd have gone that way, I really don't know if I'd have made that jump if it wasn't for MS' own actions, pushing me. But I'm oh so glad they did! =:^) Having now discovered the land of software freedom for myself, even if it was MS' push that made me jump, /especially/ because it was MS' push that made me jump and because I now understand even better than I did then the implications of servant-ware designed to keep the user as a servant of the master of that software, AND I've experienced the freedom, including freedom from anti-features, that true freedomware brings... what sort of enticements could servant-ware POSSIBLY offer to even BEGIN to make me think of going back? Now, computing has been my more-than-full-time hobby and a huge part of my life for going on 20 years now, and my some-time hobby for over a quarter century. I'd certainly have a hard time giving it up! But, what /would/ I do if somehow the SCOs and the MSs of the world won, and freedomware, at least as we know it, was made illegal? Well, I'll tell you what. I /used/ to be an avid reader. I have probably over a hundred books sitting around that I've yet to read, and that only because I've stopped going to the bookstores to get more. Even at a dime or quarter a copy for used books at the second-hand stores, I now just pass that aisle by, as I know if I stop and look, I'll only be tempted to buy more books I'm unlikely to ever get a chance to read. Well, should freedomware somehow be made illegal, I may well get that chance! =:^\ Or, alternatively, perhaps I'd physically emigrate, just as I did metaphorically from proprietaryware, or perhaps I'd do it anyway, choosing mental freedom and freedom of speech over physical freedom, taking imprisonment for my beliefs if it came to that. Whether I'd die for it... honestly probably not at this point, but just as sure as I believe in the ethical integrity of the folks on the underground railway here in the US prior to abolition of slavery, just as sure as I believe in the ethics of those who risked and often suffered death at the hand of the Nazis hiding Jews or others, so I believe were I to have equal ethical integrity, I'd be willing to sacrifice my own life for software freedom, as they did for other forms of freedom. Hmm... I suppose that makes me a Free Software zealot, but so be it. Anyway, it should be abundantly clear why I couldn't /possibly/ agree to a EULA and even if I could, wouldn't want to run other than freedomware, by this point. OTOH, there does remain the small matter of that one servantware game, which I've not yet given up, which by reason of logic pretty definitely makes me a servant thereof, I do admit. OTOH, I do at least console myself with the thought that it doesn't appear to have any network functionality at all, nor would it have been likely to given the time it was written and its purpose as a game, and the fact that were there too much risk in that black-box, someone would have surely found it in over a decade and a half... -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list Pan-users@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
