[nzlug] Trusted Executables?

[Simon Bridge]

On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 17:16 +1200, Greg Fawcett wrote:

> However, another factor is that with open source, there is (currently) far
> less incentive to do this - you aren't going to make pots of money by
> smuggling nasties onto people's systems. It'll be interesting to see how
> this develops as open source systems become more popular, but at least it's
> always going to be easier to catch companies at it.

There is scope for adware - especially in third-party scripts which
promise to make installing "missing" things easier.

There is a tendency to feel that if it did nasty stuff, people would
notice and complain. But look at the amount of spyware windows users put
up with.

Personally, though, I feel that if such an app were really useful, then
someone will get annoyed and put out a version without the malware.


I remember, ages ago now, getting updates from MSN. I see a message
about how MSN is getting information about my computer. It explained
that this was so MSN could work out what updates and free stuff to offer
me. It also promised that everything was confidential.

This, to me, failed a basic snake-oil test (though I used a stronger
term back then). Vis: Why does it need to know all about my computer?
Surely I can download a list of all the software available, compare with
a list on my computer, then request the software I want? No need to
trust MSN at all.

When I pointed this out to MS folk, I was told that was unreasonable.

Imagine my excitement later...