RE: [ga] Working Group Decision-Making Software

[Roeland Meyer <rmeyer@mhsc.com>]

> From: Joop Teernstra [mailto:terastra@terabytz.co.nz]
> Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2001 2:45 PM
> 
> On 10:20 21/04/01 -0700, Roeland Meyer said:
> 
> >2) Closed source. 'nuff said.
> 
> Here I disagree with you, Roeland.  
> Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of open -source 
> development very  much. 
> 
> We have had these discussions  before and my conclusion is that for
> political decisionmaking software a proprietary product is 
> much preferable over an open source product.  

We can agree to disagree. But, since my primary market, for years, has been
secured systems, I can state that the majority of cypherpunk thinking is
that; you can't trust code that you can't see. Otherwise, you will always be
vulnerable to trojans. All crypto-code that I use is compiled from sources,
on the systems where they are run. I maintain my own CVS trees just for this
purpose.

> We have savvy participant here, with their own interests at stake.
> If the inner workings of the software are open to 
> participants, it becomes too great a temptation for some to hack or
manipulate it.

I disagree on both counts. There are only a few of us that are qualified
System Admins. Even fewer that are also professional programmers. Most of us
can be trusted, or we would no longer be working in our fields.

> Aside from this, open source would just deflect our attention from the
> substance of what we discuss/decide to the code and it 
> possible weaknesses.

Now this is where I think we can agree. It might indeed be too much of a
distraction from our core activity.
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