Re:US Cybersecurity: The Urgent Need for Memory Safety in So...
by TeMPOraL on Friday September 22, 2023 @01:53PM
(#37615290)
> What we need is a method to sell a binary (and source-code) that are completely free of human-perceivable information AND authorized against a purchase server.
That sounds impossible in principle, not without taking away ownership of the machine from the user. I guess TPM + homomorphic encryption might allow this one day, but that doesn't feel like a win for society.
> But for some awful reason, programmers are expected/required to ship the means of production
Pedantic, perhaps, but I wouldn't classify code as "means of production". Dev tools and supporting tooling, maybe, which no one is required to ship.
I sort of agree with you're saying overall - you're pointing out the fundamental issue, open source is just something enabled by it. I focused on open source because, arguably, this reality of "messed up balance" was still manageable through the legal system, and it's the FLOSS becoming a cultural phenomenon in the industry that broke this.
That sounds impossible in principle, not without taking away ownership of the machine from the user. I guess TPM + homomorphic encryption might allow this one day, but that doesn't feel like a win for society.
> But for some awful reason, programmers are expected/required to ship the means of production
Pedantic, perhaps, but I wouldn't classify code as "means of production". Dev tools and supporting tooling, maybe, which no one is required to ship.
I sort of agree with you're saying overall - you're pointing out the fundamental issue, open source is just something enabled by it. I focused on open source because, arguably, this reality of "messed up balance" was still manageable through the legal system, and it's the FLOSS becoming a cultural phenomenon in the industry that broke this.