Where free software should be required by law [LWN.net]

Where free software should be required by law

Posted Sep 12, 2002 9:31 UTC (Thu) by tres (guest, #352)
Parent article: Where free software should be required by law

Considering the two types of security, "black box" and "crystal ball", otherwise knowm as proprietary and Free Software, I believe that there are instances for both. As I pointed out in a letter to the editor this week, if I'm a cancer patient that is going in to be exposed to radiation, I want the software to be the best. Since not that many programmers are writing programs for radiation machines the quality of the software is something less than desired. The same for the voting machines. With a team of talented and dedicated programmers, I have no doubt that a quality free software solution could be developed. On the other hand, if the project cannot not attrack a cryptographer and security expert to help in auditing the code then problems will surely develop. If all of the states wanted to adopt a new system then they could band together and produce, or hire the job out, some quality software that is capable of doing the job. Short of that, the idiom becomes: security through obscurity. Even though we all know that it is not a very good security system, we must admit that it is better than nothing.

Regards,
Tres

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Where free software should be required by law

Posted Sep 12, 2002 13:24 UTC (Thu) by AAP (guest, #721) [Link]

My own question would be, why NOT open the source? True, it might be hard to attract geeks to specialty projects, but somebody writes those programs now. Why not pay them to write those programs, as they now do, and release the source for public scrutiny? Presumably, they don't make money off the software, just off the radiation treatments/voting machines. The only minus is that if they screw up, the proof will be out there.