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A bit further down the road you have Lenovo endangering their customers with the Superfish[1] spyware. And please don't give me "that was on consumer models on

A bit further down the road you have Lenovo endangering their customers with the Superfish[1] spyware. And please don't give me "that was on consumer models only". I really couldn't care less. A company pulling off such dirty shit winds up on my eternal shitlist. No matter how great their "professional" products are. I'm sure there are countless other examples. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish

EdwardDiego 6y ago
I'm reminded of Sony's rootkit that was, well, just awful, in every respect - ethically, engineering, etc. Interesting that the founders of Superfish are both Israeli, I wonder if they both served with the Unit 8200 that was posted on here recently?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gluegadget 6y ago
  But isn't this part of the point the author of the article is trying to make? In case of Superfish it was United States Department of Homeland Security who advised uninstalling it and in case of Sony's rootkit, a class-action lawsuit. In both cases higher authorities hired by people to protect them, protected them. Not FSF, nor the fact that the code wasn't GPL. Even if Superfish was GPL licensed, the issue would've persisted. As article mentions even laptops coming with Linux pre-installed hardly come with the Kernel and userspace tools source code and you need to download them separately. Should Lenovo have preloaded Superfish as Linux kernel module and shipped it to its consumer laptops, United States Department of Homeland Security would have still advised removing it.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    In both examples, a higher authority may have also acted but if they had done the same with free software things either would have been caught immediately or a lawsuit would have been possible for breach of license if they tried to hide it. >In both cases higher authorities hired by people to protect them, protected them. Not FSF, The FSF did a better job of protecting them with their unwavering stance. Neither would ever have caused an issue if you followed their advice to never use non-free software.

EdwardDiego 6y ago

I'm reminded of Sony's rootkit that was, well, just awful, in every respect - ethically, engineering, etc. Interesting that the founders of Superfish are both Israeli, I wonder if they both served with the Unit 8200 that was posted on here recently?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gluegadget 6y ago
But isn't this part of the point the author of the article is trying to make? In case of Superfish it was United States Department of Homeland Security who advised uninstalling it and in case of Sony's rootkit, a class-action lawsuit. In both cases higher authorities hired by people to protect them, protected them. Not FSF, nor the fact that the code wasn't GPL. Even if Superfish was GPL licensed, the issue would've persisted. As article mentions even laptops coming with Linux pre-installed hardly come with the Kernel and userspace tools source code and you need to download them separately. Should Lenovo have preloaded Superfish as Linux kernel module and shipped it to its consumer laptops, United States Department of Homeland Security would have still advised removing it.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  In both examples, a higher authority may have also acted but if they had done the same with free software things either would have been caught immediately or a lawsuit would have been possible for breach of license if they tried to hide it. >In both cases higher authorities hired by people to protect them, protected them. Not FSF, The FSF did a better job of protecting them with their unwavering stance. Neither would ever have caused an issue if you followed their advice to never use non-free software.