Re: A more fundamental issue..

On Thu, 2003-11-13 at 12:48, Jeroen van Drie wrote:
> Barry I agree with what you wrote.
> 
> I tried to be ironic in my post with this paragraph about the NSA. Did the NSA 
> think they could get away with releasing such great secure code under the GPL 
> without getting fallout for it? "What were they thinking?" I think they knew 
> what they were doing, consciously chose the GPL over the BSD license; a bit 
> of a political test balloon as well.
> 
> To me, freedom and democracy are higher goods than "free enterprise and fair 
> competition"; China proves it; they have quite a lot of free enterprise and 
> fair competition without providing their own citizens with freedom and  
> democracy.
> 
> But a government that develops GPL code and hands it out to redhat, suse, et 
> all .. isn't that government in competition with Microsoft? How could MS ever 
> integrate such code?
> 
> My belief is that when a government (co)develops software and does not release 
> the source for its citizens benefit the only excuse is national security. 
> Embedded in government developed source code is a democratic process and 
> hence it is important citizens can both review and freely use that process. 
> 
> In fact as operating systems and libraries become part of the social 
> infrastructure I think it is vital for organisations like the NSA to get 
> involved doing their bit to secure that infrastructure from people who would 
> take advantage of it. Fortunately they're still hosting 
> http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/
> 
> 
> 
> On Thursday 13 November 2003 20:03, you wrote:
> > Jeroen van Drie wrote:
> > >And really what was the NSA thinking, using US taxpayer money to develop
> > > GPL software? While the principle of democratic governments developing
> > > GPL software is sound democratically, it is very much opposed to the
> > > ideas of free enterprise and fair competition.
> >
> > I was entirely with you up until this point...
> >
> > Although I disagree that it is entirely up to the business or end user
> > to choose.  Home users don't have a choice because they aren't provided
> > with a readily available one and most businesses rely on software
> > provided by other businesses, which usually runs on windows.  It's not
> > as simple as just "install GNU/Linux and have no more MS-related
> > vulnerabilities."  There really is a vendor lock-in going on here, but I
> > agree with the general premise of your point.
> >
> > However, I'm sick and tired of hearing this bunk about how the GNU GPL
> > is opposed to the ideas of *free* enterprise and *fair* competition.  It
> > is not the GNU GPL that is opposed to those ideas, it is proprietary
> > software that is directly opposed to them.
> >
> > If the argument you're making is that the government should have placed
> > selinux under a BSD-style license because proprietary companies can take
> > "fairly" and "freely" from the fruits of public resources - I
> > respectfully and forcefully disagree.  The very purpose of proprietizing
> > software is to generate a vendor lock-in.  There is no other purpose.
> > To argue that the right to allow a vendor lock-in is synonymous with
> > fair competition and free trade is like arguing that true freedom is
> > having the ability to take away the freedom of others.
> >
> > That is not freedom, that is chaos.  And chaos begets tyranny and hence
> > our current situation in the software industry.
> >
> > All you're doing by propagating ill-conceived notions of that sort is
> > setting the stage for making things worse over time.  Please do not
> > mistake chaos for freedom - there is a SIGNIFICANT difference.
> >
> >                 -Barry

NSA does not exist to help/hinder microsoft or redhat or any other
corporation. NSA exists to serve the American citizen. Microsoft and
redhat are corporate entities, and corporations do NOT have a "natural"
right to existance.

Given NSA's knowledge and expertise, would the NSA be failing in its
moral duty (if not legal) if it were to let American citizens remain
open to cyber attacks ? Yes!!!

Therefore the NSA is morally in the right. The NSA doesn't care about
secondary effects like free market and competition. Those are just some
of the tools to achieve the primary aim of democracy and protection of
the American citizen.

As for the licence, pretty soon Linux is going to be a usable desktop OS
for Joe Schmoe, while FreeBSD is still languishing as a server OS.
(please - I've worked on both sets of kernels so I dont want any BSD
"guru" telling me what is what). I installed NetBSD 1.6.1 on my laptop
and it would not even recognize my 3-year old NetGear Ethernet 10/100
PCMCIA card. I had to add that support to the kernel. Sloppy is the word
that comes to mind when it comes to adding support for new hardware on
BSDs. And snooty is the word that comes to mind when trying to interact
with BSD developers. And obviously Linux is light years ahead in terms
of peripherals support. So if NSA has to choose an OS, then it doesn't
have much of a choice, does it ? And if has to choose Linux, then the
licence has to be GPL!

I am not an NSA-fan - Echelon is a horrible travesty of the
Constitution, but I dont see what else the NSA could have done to reach
their goal in the shortest amount of time possible.
1. write an OS from scratch ? - waste of tax payer money
2. choose BSD - no support for the various devices supported by Windows
- hence BSD is not even a contender.
3. choose Linux - not a bad choice - 2.6 is the first UNIX-class Linux -
2.4 was close but not really.
4. choose Microsoft - hmmmm - not a good starting point.
5. choose OS X - double hmmm - what's the point ? (i know its BSD, i am
talking of OS X as a security solution platform as a whole).

-- 

Ranjeet Shetye
Senior Software Engineer
Zultys Technologies
Ranjeet dot Shetye2 at Zultys dot com
http://www.zultys.com/
 
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