[Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting

Wed Apr 11 12:49:41 PDT 2018

In my not so humble opinion, Linux has made it virtually impossible to make money as a programmer.  That’s largely why the last 20 years or so I’ve been “virtually homeless”.  You see it all over California too, former tech people living on the streets in cardboard boxes, all because people don’t want to pay for software and services, and would rather foreigners support and develop this software --- in some cases software we use for our own ‘national security’, how dumb is that.

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From: Robert Wilkens
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 2:53 PM
To: LILUG Mailing List
Subject: RE: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting

Recall them, then : - )

I remember a professor back in college in 1996 said “There is too much stuff done wrong in exactly the same way as real unix for Linux not to have been copied almost directly from UNIX code”

-Rob

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From: iN8sWoRld.net
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 9:56 AM
To: LILUG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting

I take issue with your characterization of Linux and BSD as "pirated" software as this has been litigated (to death) by patent trolls who create NOTHING and waste tons of other people's time and money trying to make money off of other people's work.  Neither Linux nor BSD can properly be called "pirated" software in any sense, its just incorrect and quite like the FUD I recognize as typical of Microsoft and SCO.  They are "unix-like" operating systems, they do not use unix code.  In fact, if anyone pirated things, its Microsoft who were using BSD TCP/IP stack right up until sometime before Win7?  They did comply and put the disclaimer in there that the code was from BSD however.
Another point I'd like to make is that you can place any disclaimer you wish on anything you sell, but what matters is whether that claim will hold up in court.  This typically depends on which state you are in and whether you show "gross negligence" in your application.  Speaking as someone who has been involved in the making of actual physical products for 25 years (some with Linux), I can confirm that lawyers will use any tactic possible to pin a failure on the weakest link in the chain (provided that link also has enough money to be a worthwhile target - there is a calculus there), so you certainly would be wise to evaluate the tools you use carefully, and document that things are tested against specifications with third party agencies.  If Linux should not be used in actual real world application you've got some serious problems. You would need to recall billions of phones, almost every super computer, not to mention high energy physics colliders, all Amazon and Google server farms, and soon you won't be able to buy a darn thing (iOT) without some kind of Linux in it. 

On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 8:56 AM, Robert Wilkens <rob.wilkens at ieee.org> wrote:
Sorry to keep replying to myself, but here’s why software guys (at least not with an engineering background) shouldn’t be involved in designing ‘security’ into systems..

Back in 2001, I was working on a U.S. Army project with people from intelligence agencies from various other governments (such as the Mossat, and MI-Whatever that british agency) .. And I was only there less than two months..  And this was JUST BEFORE 9/11 by a matter of 3-4 months.. And I managed to break through all this incredible software security (completely by accident, not knowing it was there), when one of those foreign agents casually asked me to reinstall windows for them..   So, despite layers and layers of security controls in the system, this military security as it was some 17 years ago (I’m disclosing this now, hoping they learned their lesson), all it took to bypass this wonderful security the military had was to reinstall windows from the commercial install disk over-the-counter.

I know Linus Torvalds’ was pissed when Spectre and Meltdown were ‘revealed’ to the public, but sometimes backdoors are put into systems ON PURPOSE, whether or not that is smart.  Sometimes it’s a government insisting on a back-way-in, and other times it’s an individual who thinks they’re smart, and sometimes it’s actually just an accident, and going back in time to figure out which is virtually impossible (even if it were possible, the factors involved in decision making are often difficult to determine).

-Rob

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From: Robert Wilkens
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 7:59 AM

To: LILUG Mailing List
Subject: RE: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting

ON a side note, MacOS is built on BSD which is also an ‘educational’ (pirated) operating system, BSD=University of California at Berkeley I believe.. As such, pirating MacOS should be considered free to do, since they didn’t have a problem with that, and I wouldn’t dare use a Mac in industry running BSD.

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From: Robert Wilkens
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 7:41 AM
To: LILUG Mailing List
Subject: RE: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting

Again, pardon typos, my eyeglasses were lost, it’ll probably be a week or two until replacements arrive

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From: Robert Wilkens
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 7:39 AM
To: LILUG Mailing List
Subject: RE: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting

And this, again, is why  Linux should never ever be used in industy legally.  It’s educational, it’s open source clone of real UNIX which professional like myself have contributed to.. However, Linux ultimately is pirated software, which is valid for educational use, scientific experimentation and learning, but never in practice should it ever be used.

-Rob

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From: Robert Wilkens
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 7:05 AM
To: LILUG Mailing List
Subject: RE: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting

I saw a five line or so comment at the top of some source code disclaiming all warranties, expressed or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, etc. etc.

>From my understanding this is what they consider a “blanket disclaimer”

What separates scientists (people who research) from Engineers (people who practice) is that the practitioners HAVE to have responsibility for their products, like I said there are a lot of products today that are potentially deadly that rely on software, and if we’re talking murder or manslaughter, we CAN NOT just say “well, I said I wasn’t responsible, therefore I am not”.  

By the way, if any ‘software engineers’ in new York aren’t aware, you cannot legally call yourself an engineer in new York state without approval from NCEES (I believe it is called), this is a certification process for licensing, the term engineer is protected in new york state.  NCEES incidentally has a mailing address in the same town that I want to college.

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From: iN8sWoRld.net
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 7:01 AM
To: LILUG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Lilug] On-topic to last night's meeting

As this interested me I took a quick look on github and all I can find is that Atom is released under the MIT license.
Is this the "waiver" to which you refer?  The MIT license doesn't imply any warranty at all and doesn't require users sign any waiver that I'm aware.

https://github.com/atom/atom/blob/master/LICENSE.md
Nate

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On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 6:01 AM, Robert Wilkens <rob.wilkens at ieee.org> wrote:
I’ve noticed that there was a ‘blanket disclaimer’ on the ATOM source code shown.  I’ve heard these blanket disclaimers might start becoming invalid or disallowed as computers are more and more involved in tasks that involve life and death (such as self driving cars).  Clearly someone has to be responsible.   Does anyone here have opinions on the elimination of the legality of discarding all liabilities with a simple statement making that claim?

Rob

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