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 From : Sergey Lentsov                       2:4615/71.10   30 May 2002  16:15:15
 To : All
 Subject : URL: http://www.lwn.net/2002/0523/
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    - [25]OLS 2001
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    - [27]Kernel Summit
    - [28]Singapore Linux Conference
    - [29]djbdns
 
    Here is the [30]permanent site for this page.
 
    See also: [31]last week's LWN.
 
 Leading items and editorials
 
    The war requires closed source? Consider, for a moment, [32]this eWeek
    article, which covers Microsoft VP Jim Allchin's testimony at the
    antitrust trial:
 
      A senior Microsoft Corp. executive told a federal court last week
      that sharing information with competitors could damage national
      security and even threaten the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.
 
    Mr. Allchin, of course, is worried about the technical disclosure
    requirements that the nine dissident states are trying to work into
    the antitrust settlement.
 
    A high-profile, upstanding, public company like Microsoft would
    certainly never dream of using the war in Afganistan just to avoid
    some commercial discomfort, so one concludes that this threat must be
    real. The national security of the United States, it would seem, is
    dependent on the continued security-through-obscurity of closed source
    code.
 
    Of course, there is no way, really, to know if that claim is true or
    not. The code is closed, so we will never know where the problems
    might be until somebody breaks it. The public does not know, the
    government does not know. There is no way to verify the security of
    code that is running in truly mission critical situations. Not cool.
 
    The time for entrusting one's security to closed code has certainly
    passed. That time has passed whether the system in question is used by
    the kids to play games, is a corporate web server, is used by the CEO
    to play games, or is used by a general to run a military operation. If
    you cannot look at your software, you are depending entirely on the
    "trust me" claims of a corporation which has its own interests at
    heart. That is not a good position to be in, and it is increasingly
    unnecessary. The sooner that free software finds its way into "mission
    critical" applications, the safer we will all be.
 
    Software and warranties. Software is a strange business, in that it
    manages to escape the consequences of its mistakes in a way that few
    other industries can manage. If your disk drive explodes, your car's
    wheels fall off, your toaster catches fire, or your beer fails to make
    you attractive to the opposite sex, you can sue the manufacturer for
    damages. Well, maybe the brewer will get away with it. But, in
    general, vendors cannot escape liability for the things they sell -
    except for software vendors.
 
    There is a rumbling in the distance, however, that suggests that
    pressure for change is increasing. The National Academy of Sciences
    has called for software vendors to be liable for defects in their
    products. Bruce Schneier has also [33]called for liability as a way of
    reducing security problems:
 
      If we expect software vendors to reduce features, lengthen
      development cycles, and invest in secure software development
      processes, they must be liable for security vulnerabilities in
      their products.
 
    No doubt liability would change life for software vendors; they would
    be forced to concentrate far more attention on reliability and
    security. The cost of software would go up to fund that effort and to
    pay for liability claims. It would be a different world.
 
    Life would change for free software too, however. If a developer can
    be sued for a bug which appears in software which was released for
    free, the supply of free software will dry up in a hurry. Free
    software developers do not have the resources for fanatical quality
    control procedures or to buy insurance against liability suits. The
    free software development process depends heavily on users to help
    find problems.
 
    Distributors of free software also have much to fear from exposure to
    product liability suits. Some Linux distributors are more careful than
    others, but they all package up vast amounts of software that they did
    not write, and for which they are in no position to write guarantees.
 
    The software business as a whole, perhaps, is not yet in a position to
    assume liability for its products. The state of the art in software
    development remains primitive. Yet it would be a good thing to
    encourage software producers to focus more on the reliability and
    security of their offerings. But any such change must be done in a way
    that does not destroy the free software ecology.
 
    One possible position to take could be that closed-source software,
    being a proprietary black box, should come with warranties and
    liability coverage. By making its source available (not necessarily
    with a free license) a company could enable others to audit its
    software, and, in the act, transfer liability to the users of that
    software. All free software would, thus, retain its current "no
    warranty" status. Don't expect proprietary software companies - and
    the congressmen they buy - to be pleased with that idea, however.
 
    2600 case appeal denied. A U.S. Federal Appeals Court declined to
    review the 2600 DVD case, leaving the lower court ruling unchanged.
    Thus, it is still illegal to post the DeCSS code, or even a link to
    it. The one remaining option at this point is to appeal to the Supreme
    Court; no decision, yet, has been announced as to whether that course
    will be followed or not.
 
    The LWN.net Weekly Edition will not be published next week so that the
    LWN staff can enjoy the Memorial Day holiday, and so we can finish up
    a surprise that we hope to make available soon. The [34]daily updates
    page will be maintained as usual, and the Weekly Edition will return
    on June 6.
 
    Inside this LWN.net weekly edition:
      * [35]Security: Goodbye rlogind; fingerprint scanners; OpenSSH and
        Mailman releases
      * [36]Kernel: New quota code; the end of /dev/port, misusing
        copy_*_user.
      * [37]Distributions: Clustering and the Linux distribution;
        ClosedBSD.
      * [38]Development: GCC 3.1, MnoGoSearch 3.2.4, Analog 5.23, Guikachu
        1.2.0, OpenSSH 3.2.2, AlsaPlayer 0.99.70, WaveSurfer 1.4, Netscape
        7.0 Preview Release 1.
      * [39]Commerce: FSF Files Brief Amicus Curiae in Eldred v. Aschroft
        Supreme Court Case; Ericsson Joins Open Source Development Lab.
      * [40]Letters: Outlawing markers; RMS and GNU/Linux.
 
    ...plus the usual array of reports, updates, and announcements.
 
    This Week's LWN was brought to you by:
      * [41]Jonathan Corbet, Executive Editor
 
    May 23, 2002
 
                                Sponsored Link
 
    [42]Cheap and Effective
 
    LWN's text ads are a cheap and effective marketing tool for your
    organization. You can now purchase text ads automatically through our
    own credit card gateway. (No more PayPal).
                                                        [43]Next: Security
 
    [44]Eklektix, Inc. Linux powered! Copyright Л 2002 [45]Eklektix, Inc.,
    all rights reserved
    Linux (R) is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
 
 References
 
    1. http://lwn.net/
    2. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/security.php3
    3. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/kernel.php3
    4. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/dists.php3
    5. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/devel.php3
    6. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/commerce.php3
    7. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/press.php3
    8. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/announce.php3
    9. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/letters.php3
   10. http://lwn.net//2002/0523/bigpage.php3
   11. http://lwn.net/daily/
   12. http://linuxcalendar.com/
   13. http://lwn.net/stocks/
   14. http://lwn.net/Reviews/
   15. http://lwn.net/Gallery/
   16. http://lwn.net/archives/
   17. http://lwn.net/op/headlines.phtml
   18. http://lwn.net/mediakit/
   19. http://lwn.net/corp/paypal/donate.php3
   20. http://lwn.net/corp/supporters.php3
   21. http://lwn.net/op/Contact.html
   22. http://lwn.net/2002/features/rms.php3
   23. http://lwn.net/2001/features/Timeline/
   24. http://lwn.net/2001/features/oreilly2001/
   25. http://lwn.net/2001/features/OLS/
   26. http://lwn.net/2001/features/MandrakeSoft.php3
   27. http://lwn.net/2001/features/KernelSummit/
   28. http://lwn.net/2001/features/Singapore
   29. http://lwn.net/2001/features/djbdns.php3
   30. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/
   31. http://lwn.net/2002/0516/
   32. http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s%253D701%2526a%253D26875,00.asp
   33. http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0204.html#6
   34. http://lwn.net/daily/
   35. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/security.php3
   36. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/kernel.php3
   37. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/dists.php3
   38. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/devel.php3
   39. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/commerce.php3
   40. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/letters.php3
   41. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
   42.
 http://oasis.lwn.net/oasisc.php?s=2&c=5&cb=1231275721&url=http%3A%2F%2Flwn.net%2
 Fcorp%2Fadvertise%2Ftext%2F
   43. http://lwn.net/2002/0523/security.php3
   44. http://www.eklektix.com/
   45. http://www.eklektix.com/
 
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