Spiro Harvey wrote:
Shame you haven't talked to to others - like havp for example - before
doing this.
The announcement to EOL the old releases was made at the start of
october last year. If people using clam as an integral part of their
software don't read announcements, what fault is that of the clam
developers?
They had 6 months to sort it out.
The thing is that there are a few little issues here that, as points of law
are not clear yet. In what follows words like 'vendor' may not be used
entirely legally precisely, IANAL, but I am certain that with a bit of
squinting my meaning will be clear.
I know that in certain jurisdictions, reaching out to someone elses
computer (ie not your property) and disabling functionality on it could
constitute a criminal act.
I sincerely hope that someone somewhere under such a jurisdiction goes to
the police and reports the Clamav developers for such an offense.
Why?
Because Clamav is now in the same category as Apple, Amazon and Sony (to
name three that come to mind right away). This is the category of vendors
who have remotely disabled (or removed) software running on computers or
devices belonging to their customers. Not on computers or devices belonging
to the vendor and which are leased to customers, but the *property* of
those customers.
I believe that this is extremely inappropriate behavior for *any* vendor. I
am shocked that an OSS vendor would even consider such an action.
Note the massive amount of negative press that Amazon got for remotely
deleting copies of George Orwell's 1984 from the Kindle. Sony have recently
started remotely disabling Linux functionality on the PS3 iirc. Do we
really want the OSS community to be tarred with the same brush?
This kind of high-handed arrogance NEEDS to be put down and hard.
I imagine that the Clamav team would be hard put to raise a decent legal
defense against this and, so, if they lose such a case a legal precedent
could be set which could conceivably deter this kind of thing from larger
organisations.
I would really love to see that happen even if it destroys the Clamav project.
No hard feelings against them, but if Clamav want to set themselves up as
sacrificial lambs to test a point of law and it ultimately benefits society
at large, great.
--
Please remember that an email is just like a postcard; it is not
confidential nor private nor secure and can be read by many other people
than the intended recipient. A postcard can be read by anyone at the mail
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is not realistic. Please hold no higher expectation of email.
If you need to send confidential information in an email you need to use
encryption. PGP is Pretty good for this.
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