why free?

Rui Miguel Seabra rms at 1407.org
Mon Jul 18 21:39:10 UTC 2005


On Mon, 2005-07-18 at 23:32 +0200, David GLAUDE wrote:
> If some peaple outside the company were to write their own version of 
> the HAL and that this version would not respect the standard, it would 
> have dangerous consequence such as disturbing military radar frequency. 
> This could be by mistake or intentionnal. Also boosting the power of 
> your 802.11 card will be very unfair for your neighborg and if everybody 
> does like you it will make the system useless.
> 
> Is this a place where the potential harm of free software is more 
> dangerous than the good it make.

Sorry, but absolutely not. That a danger (?) that exists regardless of
being Free Software or not.

Its a well known fact among security guys that you don't actually need
the source code or rights to source code access to alter binary
programs... just remember all those exploits to the [secret source code]
Microsoft Windows operating system.

Rui

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?

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