8 ms·
That is one of the examples why Richard Stallman was right and free software is the way to go.
by madez 9y ago
That is one of the examples why Richard Stallman was right and free software is the way to go.
- Karunamon 9y agoHow would free software prevent permission abuse? Open source spyware is still spyware.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- smichel17 9y agoFLO software shifts the balance of power between users and developers, since (1) it's harder to sneak a "feature" in without people finding out, (2) if a developer makes a change that people don't like, it's much easier for people to continue using the old version, and (3) there is potentially more competition between developers, since they can start from a fork of the project instead of a clean slate. As that applies to the specific example in your comment, (1) people can verify whether or not a piece of open source software is listening and phoning home, (2) if it is spyware, a different programmer could make a fork and remove this antifeature, and (3) if they published the fork, now end users have the choice of using a version that does not track you. Does this mean Open Source software never tracks you? Of course not. But it is much more resistant to this sort of thing.
- Karunamon 9y agoNobody reads source code (hell they don’t even read the permissions and those are a lot easier to understand); the de-spied clone couldn’t use the same name, couldn’t necessarily communicate with the same servers, and wouldn’t get near as much exposure. The practical impact of such a change, even if it were forced top down by Google, is nil. Nobody outside a tiny minority of geeks treats free software as a selling point.
- davb 9y agoI don’t think end users would be the ones doing the code review. Making source auditable by “a tiny minority of geeks” would be a net positive, increasing the chance that someone (bug bounty hunter, appsec blogger, etc) would find and report on malicious apps. It would be no silver bullet, but more transparency would be no bad thing.
- madez 9y agoThe source being open puts huge pressure on the developer not to put in backdoors. Overmore, your claim > Nobody outside a tiny minority of geeks treats free software as a selling point. is wrong. Just to give one counterexample, the European Comission is not a bunch of geeks and they strongly prefer free software.
- Karunamon 9y agoWe're not talking about backdoors. We're talking about stuff that's exposed up front before the user can even install the program. The EC is a statistical anomaly. One agency out of how many out there?
- hdheiej88 9y agoReading it verbatim isn’t necessary for everyone A “paper trail” back to the contents of our gadgets that can be audited, and some people would no doubt, would be much better than “Fu society we own it all.” Open source is the means of production today. Let’s keep it that way.
- sparkie 9y agoIn theory you could automate the process of removing unwanted permissions in another app store. For example, if some game on the google app store wants the camera but doesn't need it, a "safe app store" could download its code and remove the camera permissions and any potential calls to functions which read from the camera. (They could be replaced with blank stubs or even a fake video like a rickroll). Same principle for address book (just provide fake/randomly generated people, etc). Obviously not everyone would use the safe version because of the network effect of Google's play store. But for anyone who becomes aware of the "safe app store" and is aware of privacy risks, they'll almost certainly chose to download their apps from there.
- psergeant 9y agoIf this wasn’t an endemic problem on Android while being hardly a problem at all on iOS then I’d agree
- orbifold 9y agoAndroid is not open source in the same way that gcc is. Sure it uses an open source license, but it is fully controlled by google.
- sitkack 9y agoIt has little to do with the software and everything to do with distribution. Users cannot install software on their devices. You eat the food given or you starve.
- danellis 9y agoDoesn't really help unless you build the software yourself, though, and even then only after you've audited the source. And, if we're going down that rabbit hole, with a compiler you've compiled yourself after auditing the source. Using a compiler you... well, you get the point.