Re: [LUG] Red Hat EL considered harmful

On 19 January 2014 15:39, Gordon Henderson <gordon+lug@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Wish I knew what you were on about.

Yeah, it's unclear. Sorry. (It's not me who's on about it though.)

This is just a goofy subject (with a reference to a 1968 article by Dijkstra which is going to be lost of 95% of the people here)

Jeez. OK, OK.

and a link to a comment in the middle of an article

Yes, sorry again. That's the link I got. FWIW, I scrolled to the top and read down.

that really doesn't make any sense at all.

Ah well, I can't help you there. Unable to replicate.

Can't you post a summary?

RHEL is distributed binary-only. The source code is public but the build process/toolchain is not. Much circumstantial evidence of RHEL's close and cosy relationships, often big money ones, with security- and privacy-hostile entities in the military-industrial complex, some with track records of damaging software security, specifically and particularly the NSA.

Tin-foil hat stuff... only until it turns out all to be true. If the last year has taught us anything (or should have), it's that you can scarcely imagine what poodles American tech corporations are for Washington's securocrats, and how badly behaved they are with regard to their customers' security and privacy and non-tech things that they can't be expected to understand or care about like due process.

Reminds me of the great "doctor of journalism" Hunter S. Thompson, who had spent much of the late '60s and early '70s foaming at the mouth with superlative and unrestrained invective about Nixon, the Pentagon, the FBI and the CIA. "1973? Oh yeah. That was the year people stopped using the word 'paranoid' when talking to me."

Roy Schestowitz is an excellent and reputable source (IMO). He covers the waterfront on software freedom, DRM, privacy and security, and when he speculates, as here, it is in entirely reasonable and well reasoned terms. I consider him RMS' voice on earth, or at least this island.

Mud is easily slung. Cheaply too. One can reasonably choose to be wary and skeptical about this but I see nothing to justify dismissing it out of hand.

--
Phil Hudson http://hudson-it.no-ip.biz
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