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A logical conclusion to this is that if/when governments start forcing people to supply them with their private keys, they will also start forcing companies pro
by rlpb 13y ago
A logical conclusion to this is that if/when governments start forcing people to supply them with their private keys, they will also start forcing companies producing encryption software to include backdoors.
At this point, I'm thankful that we have Free Software. With access to the source code, forcing the insertion of a backdoor is futile, since somebody else will fork and remove it. With Free Software, we'll still be capable of running our own encryption in a way that government intrusion will still be detectable by ourselves.
Unless, of course, governments then ban communication about backdoors, or instructions on removing them, or distributing source code altogether.
- oleganza 13y agoI agree with your sentiment, but want to provide a slight correction about "Free Software": MIT/BSD licensed software while not free in FSF/GPL sense, is still open and widely used and solves the problem we have right now. To avoid confusion with FSF ideals, I'd talk simply about Open Source software.
- lumberjack 13y agoI think you might be a bit confused. MIT/BSD are fully supported by the FSF and are GPL compliant. They are free software licenses in all aspects.
- chimeracoder 13y ago> MIT/BSD are fully supported by the FSF and are GPL compliant. They are free software licenses in all aspects. To be clear, GPL compliance is not a prerequisite to being a free software license. There exist many free software licenses which are not technically GPL compliant for various reasons: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibl... However, while freedom does not imply GPL compliance, I do believe GPL compliance implies freedom. I'm not 100% certain of this, but I can't think of a counterexample or how that might not be true. (I know you probably know this, but I want to make sure others reading your comment do too).
- green7ea 13y agoSorry to nitpick but MIT/BSD licensed software is free in the FSF/GPL sense. To be free software, you have to respect freedoms 0-3 as defined here: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html . This is the case for MIT/BSD licensed software and both those licenses are considered acceptable free software licenses by the FSF. The cheklist for Open Source software can be found here: http://opensource.org/docs/osd http://opensource.org/docs/osd. They are slightly different but in practice, most (if not all) free software licenses are also open source licenses and vice versa.
- cgore 13y agoStallman's definition of 'free software' isn't authoritative, lots of people have other definitions, and Stallman is quite explicit on trying to change definitions to suit him.
- oleganza 13y agoThanks for clarification. I thought that since MIT/BSD does not enforce source disclosure, users don't have the "freedom to change the software" according to GPL parlance.
- CodeMage 13y agoAt this point, I'm thankful that we have Free Software. Me too, which is why I'm worried about hardware. With enough effort, literally anyone can decide not to trust a binary and check the source. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for hardware: you can't print your own microchips.
- coldcode 13y agoFree software means you are a terrorist to them.
- MacsHeadroom 13y agoHardware? More than One Billion people are walking around with computers in their pockets running closed source, proprietary, binary blobs. These computers constantly track their owners while being connected to most (if not all) of their private communications services. Even people running a "fully" open source OS are affected. Not even the Ubuntu phone will help this problem for which there is no end in site. This is off topic, but it's high time we open source cellular radio drivers.
- masswerk 13y agoBut wasn't there an issue with the random seeds (and them possibly being corrupted) even in Free Software?