[Fsf-friends] Continuation....of Basics......

[Mahesh T. Pai]

Sriharsha Vedurmudi said on Fri, Sep 24, 2004 at 12:16:31PM +0530,:

 > Coming to  the concept of Digital  Signatures, I have  not seen for
 > myself  nor seen  my administrators  bother anything  about digital
 > certificates/signatures.   "Find  a  link,  download,  install  and
 > use...." is a very common concept

That  is a  problem with  the people,  not the  movement,  the concept
underlying it, this institution, or the technology.
 
 > among  the   vast  majority  of  non-software   companies  who  are
 > interested in  using a popular software,  if it is  free. Now, dont
 > you think that  cheating such a company is  easy? Honestly, one can
 > mutate a program

You are wrong here. You have a very wrong notion of the community.
 
 > (atleast the C source code is in plain ASCII?) and then take the CD
 > to  that company  saying he/she  has downloaded  that  software and
 > install it (and  the company feels happy that  their time and money
 > is saved from getting used for downloading it, esp. if its large).

1. Mr. L. User, the boss here, deserves the sysadmin he has.

2. The sysadmin deserves the software he gets.

3. You can verify by compiling the sources yourselves, which you
   cannot with non-free software. Not even if it is opensource, like
   the way M$ has offerred the UK government the other day.

 > (and I  say so after  having witnessed disasters caused  by similar
 > methods). My point here was that apart from

Ah.  A  /disaster/? Can  I have details?   Please ask the  master mind
behind the disaster to give the full source code to his modifications.
If you  are sure that the  guy who modified was  acting with malicious
motives, why did you not take appropriate action??

On the  other hand, if  your point is  that a guy simply  downloaded a
program off  the net  for free, and  installed it  for you for  a fee,
well, it  is intended to work  that way. If  you did not get  what you
wanted, remember, when you pay monkeys, you get peanuts!!!

-- 
         Mahesh T. Pai    <<>>   http://paivakil.port5.com
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