[Fsf-friends] Free software best suited for UI card project

Vikram Vincent vincentvikram at gmail.com
Sat Sep 26 12:53:27 IST 2009


2009/9/26 Krishnakant <krmane at gmail.com>:
>
> I think the analysis is pritty good but the words used are wrong.  We
> can't say "americans ".  RMS is An American and so are many free
> software developers, wellwishers and promoters.
> So while it is true that some organisations like M$ might be used by the
> american government for their bennifit against many countries, it is not
> proper to generalise about this.

As Prabir pointed out:



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: prabir <prabirp at gmail.com>
Date: 2009/9/26
Subject: Re: [fosscomm] Free software best suited for UI card project
To: Indian FOSS Community Network list <network at lists.fosscom.in>


>
> Why are you equating Microsoft = Americans/American Government ?
>
> RMS is an American, so is EMS and so is Linus (at least these days)
> and so are all the staff of FSF Boston and so are countless hackers ,
> so are they all part of the 'American sabotage'. ?
>
>
There is a simple distinction between Americans as people and American
companies. There is also a distinction of developing proprietary
software in which any back door as a security risk can be kept and
free and open source software, where such back doors would be
immediately known.
Any American company (also Chinese, British or from any other country)
has to observe the laws of the home country. The US Government has
restricted the 'strength' of cryptography which can be sent out of the
country.. The restrictions have not been removed (in 2007, it is still
illegal to export cryptographic software using key lengths greater
than 64-bits without authorization from the U.S. Bureau of Industry
and Security Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_size). This
allows the US Government agencies to crack encryption systems and is
the stated reason by the US Government for restricting the strength of
encryption software.
This restriction of course applies to all US companies and not M$ alone.
This problem is well known and certain defense related systems do not
use Windows for this reason in many countries including India.
In general, I would oppose the UID scheme for various reasons. But
M$'s involvement in such a project is doubly dangerous and is not the
same as Americans working on free software.
Prabir


-- 
Vikram Vincent
+919448810822
http://swatantra.org/
http://fsmk.org/


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