Again,
2. With non-free softwares, you can be sure of what features are present and what are not and what are the known bugs (as the company producing it is bound to make those details available to its customers). But with free s/w, Careless developers might not feel the same responsibility to update the documentation of the software or even the program description comments. So, a user downloading the software, can only trust God that what he/she is downloading is what he/she is expecting. How is this problem solved?
3. Will the developers with malicious intent not play around with free software and trick many unsuspecting people into loading the software (that has been maliciously modified by them), therby compromising heavily on the security of the companies confidential data. How is this countered?
4. Ultimately, is there any place for Responsibility / Answerablity in Free Software (unless voluntarily taken up by individuals)?
_Sriharsha_
PS: I never know till date the expansion of GNU (ya, I've been told its GNU Not Free, but what that first word GNU stands for is unknown. Is it proprietary? :-) )
Sriharsha Vedurmudi wrote:
- Will the developers with malicious intent not play around with free
software and trick many unsuspecting people into loading the software (that has been maliciously modified by them), therby compromising heavily on the security of the companies confidential data. How is this countered?
Agreed, you have the source code to modify it, and maybe add malicious things... but who is going to use package distributed by you... i may not trust you and insist on using the package distributed by its original author... You can't remove name of its original author from it...
PS: I never know till date the expansion of GNU (ya, I've been told its GNU Not Free, but what that first word GNU stands for is unknown. Is it proprietary? :-) )
GNU = GNU's Not Unix... sometime visit < www.gnu.org >
-Anurag
Anurag wrote:
Sriharsha Vedurmudi wrote:
- Will the developers with malicious intent not play around with
free software and trick many unsuspecting people into loading the software (that has been maliciously modified by them), therby compromising heavily on the security of the companies confidential data. How is this countered?
Agreed, you have the source code to modify it, and maybe add malicious things... but who is going to use package distributed by you... i may not trust you and insist on using the package distributed by its original author... You can't remove name of its original author from it...
You are a talented literate here my friend, But there are THOUSANDS (literally) who can trust a person who poses to be trust-worthy for sometime before he delivers the package, and hence can easily be cheated (atleast in India). Some of the greatest laws in India have cute loop holes, so how tough is it to forge software signatures (esp. if its only the ASCII text). Im not against anything per se.
PS: I never know till date the expansion of GNU (ya, I've been told its GNU Not Free, but what that first word GNU stands for is unknown. Is it proprietary? :-) )
GNU = GNU's Not Unix... sometime visit < www.gnu.org >
Sorry for typo, ya, its "GNU Not Unix"... but what does the first word "GNU" stands for in "GNU Not Unix" (obviously its not a recursion)? And yes, I've visited www.gnu.org scores of times, but couldnt locate it there too.....
-Harsha.
-
Anurag -
Sriharsha Vedurmudi