Hey Reco,
I must admit that this is not the first time I was confused as a
trolling creature.
And responding to the above mentioned arguments\ideas\thoughts.
I know some might disagree with me about my point of view and I do not
have any obligations to change my mind but I can clarify my thoughts.
You have asked if I am a windows user and the answer is that I do use
windows and I find it a very nice piece of software.
But I will need to clarify couple things since I am almost sure you
misinterpreted what I was writing.
There are couple things to consider with software.
Like any other job the programmers need money and software authors are
not obligated to publish their work to be available to all humanity(or
at-least these parts of humanity that are connected to the WWW).
The above is something I think is right and it is right especially for
security and health related software.
As opposed to what some think that software should be available for all
I am on the side which thinks that secrecy or confidentiality is a value
which is either required or wanted by people.
So the above doesn't implies that anyone should use any software. And
also in any case of software usage there is a great need to consider the
pros and cos and to see if it matches the requirements and needs.
I am not writing and talking about debian specifically since this is not
the question(at-least from my side of the glass).
If some vendors supply compiled software that was audited by their
programmers, QA team and security personnel it is OK for me.
If I pay for the software then it's fine from my side to get a packaged
product.
I had a talk with a friend about the dangerous things on the Internet
and the conclusion was that some might not understand that the Internet
is just a "reflection" of the real world and there is no magic there.
The same crooks can be found both in the real world and the Internet.
In a case that a software vendor is suspected to be violating basic
security requirements intentionally it would black list the name brand
and the software.
If we are talking about a complex piece of software then it is possible
that flaws do exist and it is also applies to any Linux and open source
software the same way(statistically) as non open source.
Since I do have some experience with health care related programming
subjects and I do also have couple medical facilities that runs a
software with critical code I wrote and designed I can give a scenario.
When a sysadmin decides on what software to use for these mission
critical human life related systems he needs to fully understand the
weight of using software(open source and non open source, free or non-free).
He needs to be able to run a command such as "apt-get install squid"
without any fear that human life's would be affected by it.
It means that he will have someone that he can trust to test it
externally and verify it fits the purpose or that the software was
tested enough by the developers and by the distribution team.
Free and non Free, open source or non open source is not the question at
all in this case.
For some, when looking at a non-free software in banking or health care
the question is not if it is more dangerous since the main question and
almost only question is "is this piece of software fit for this role I
requrie?" and it contains kind of "recursively" security and operations
sides.
The only dangerous software is a "dangerous" software!
The definition of dangerous is not by free or non free, open source or
none open source.
It's a subject by itself that requires a new definition in any software
adoption steps.
Would a bug in exim, a fatal one, makes exim a dangerous piece of
software? The answer is that in some cases it would indeed do that but
in other cases it would be dangerous the same way as postfix or MS exchange.
You can have arguments about a specific vendor\provider\programmer
software or a repository based on it's characteristics and statistically
it might fit debian non-free repo but it cannot make all non-free
software out-there to be dangerous and it's not an argument from debian
non-free to other software or from other software to debian non-free.
A part of the health care facility sysadmin duties is to make sure that
he can maintain the software or at-least to make sure that there are
out-there developers, testers and others who can answer the facility
requirements.
The above is one of the main reasons that many sysadmins prefer to use
RedHat and Windows despite the fact that both companies cannot always be
aware of very critical bugs.
This is not what makes these companies and their software dangerous.
If you do feel that this is what makes software dangerous indeed it's an
argument but it might not meet reality or reality requirements in many
facilities.
Then, what do you mean by dangerous? it was not really clear from your
words.
Thanks,
Eliezer
On 25/09/2015 15:26, Reco wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 09:54:05PM +1200, Chris Bannister wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 01:24:45PM +0300, Reco wrote:
>>> Hi.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 07:36:32AM +0300, Eliezer Croitoru wrote:
>>>> I will not argue since truth can be seen from more then one side.
>>>> Proprietary software usage is normal in all cases.
>>>
>>> No surprise in such position here, since apparently you're using
Windows.
>>> And you came to the wrong place to promote such view of things.
>>
>> I believe you have just been trolled!
>
> Let's recount.
>
> Number of personal attacks - 0.
> Number of naughty words - 0.
> Number of off-list e-mails with kill threats/suicide propositions - 0.
> Number of doxxings - 0.
> Number of kittens harmed - 0.
> Windoze users fended off - 1.
>
> Nope, I have to disagree with your assertion
>
> Therefore, my point stands unchallenged - non-free software users should
> suffer anyway.
>
> Reco
>
