On 11-Dec-2002, Fyodor wrote:
> Anyway, DNet has apparently made their decision on this matter, and I
> have better things to do than try to argue or fight it. I simply
> won't use their software. Other than that I have no (more) hard
> feelings. Please CC me on any responses you wish me to read, as I
> don't follow this list. Further information on this matter is
> available at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=172618 .
Thank you for this public statement regarding your views toward our
position. I have always been frustrated that I could not add substance
to this issue each time the question is posed to us since my only
record of your views was in private email to me which I did not feel
comfortable redistributing. Not to mention that some of your comments
to me were of an equally inflammatory tone as the sentence of mine that
you chose to share with this list.
I still believe that your concerns, while not entirely without merit,
are unrealistically myopic and represent an unwavering philosophy that
is at odds with real people doing real work in the real world. I
Adding a layer of obscurity in combination with other methods of security
is not misguided, and I believe that we do an adequate job of communicating
the limitations of our approach and that we are aware of those limitations.
The offer still stands, of course, for you (or anyone) to propose a mechanism
which you would find more aesthetic. It is unfair, however, for you to
demand that we implement a security mechanism which would allow us to
distribute fully open source without proposing how exactly this is supposed
to be possible. In six years we've not come up with a way to do this and
suspect that it is simply not possible. I wish that you would not hold us
personally responsible for this unfortunate reality.
I also object to your position that distributed.net is somehow
harming the cause of open source by releasing precompiled binaries. In
our email exchange in 1998 you basically left us with only two options
which would satisfy you -- open our source and deal with the substantially
increased incidence of abuse that comes with open source, or discontinue
our public projects and cease operations. Living with your services file
editorial was clearly the most agreeable choice you left for us.
In any event, I'm pleased to see your post to this list and also
your proposed changes to the services file. Thank you.
-- ________________________________________________________________________ |David McNett |To ensure privacy and data integrity this message| |nugget@distributed.net|has been encrypted by using dual rounds of ROT-13| |Austin, TX USA |finger nugget@distributed.net for my news and pgp|
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