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I think Linux is the right model | 474 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
I think Linux is the right model
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 04 2012 @ 01:36 PM EDT

Not from the standpoint of the technology.... from the standpoint of the license: GPL

Question for you:

    Do you honestly believe a proprietary company couldn't build the same application software as currently runes on smartphones using the pipe model?
The key in the picture is not the tech model - although I do agree with you that functionality should be simple and focused. A lot of Linux already does that and it's a great underlying security model.

The key in the picture is whether or not the public can see the code to see what the software is actually doing. Like harvesting the contact information and sending it off to the mother ship.

It's beyond proven we can not trust proprietary mindsets to keep our privacy and wishes in mind. We can not trust them to disclose fully what they want to do with our information and provide us the means to individually decide what we wish to allow and what we wish to disallow. Like wanting to share our score on a particular game with a contact but not share that contatct with the mother ship.

Take Carrier IQ as a great example. It wasn't until the application was traced by someone skilled enough to do so and then publicly disclosed before people knew it was a key logger harvesting login credentials.

How much sooner would that oops* have been pointed out had the code been available for lots more eyes to peruse?

Take Android phones as another great example: Sure, it's got a few of the Linux libraries at it's core, but the bulk of Android is licensed under the Apache license which allows the phone manufacturers to lock down the phone and install lots of proprietary software that I'd dearly love to remove without having to hack the device. Now that it's official that Google owns Motorola, I dearly hope they will be producing a truly open phone. One the consumer has total control over what software is on it.

Thanks, but I'll stick with GPL protected software. It's the only license that helps provide even a basic warantee that someone who does something that's not quite right will be found out.

*: I give the company the benefit of doubt they really didn't realize it was harvesting credentials for the purpose of this discussion. I don't believe for an instant they are actually that innocent.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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