[ILUG-BOM] Linux India Initiative

[Amish Munshi]

On Wednesday 25 December 2002 01:54 pm, Kapil Karekar wrote:
> ****************************************
> * LUG meet on 12 Jan. 2003 @ VJTI
> ****************************************
>
> Hi Luggers!
>
>

> 3. The third option, in my opinion, suits well to product based
> companies. The company should be bound to release the source code of
> the product in the event of
>     -    Support being discontinued for the product.
>     -    The company is being bought by some other company.
>     -    The company is closing down.
>     This option sheilds product based companies from hijackers. It
> also gives the option to the clients of the company to support
> themselves when support is no longer available.
>


	How about an organization who check the source code and maintains a copy of 
the source code with itself. It will be issuing certificates to the softwares 
that companies develop. Every company who wants to sell their software should 
have a certificate from this organization.
	For example a government organization called Software Checker (SC) will be 
responsible to test source code of every major softwares like operating 
system , databases, etc. A company who likes to gain more clients will try to 
get such certificates from SC(here the SC organization can charge them for 
it). 
	The source of idea is cryptography - when two people dont trust each other 
they need to trust a third party.  Here the 3rd party is SC. So the source 
code does not get leaked, while the client is happy that the source code is 
secure to use and does not have any back door trojans, etc. If for 
cryptography we can trust Verisign (Microsoft company) then we can always 
trust someone for source code.

	This ofcourse is easier said than done.
	

> Keep your opinions rolling...
>
> Cheers :-))
> Kapil Karekar
> Libre Technologies
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> Let us build a Free Software Economy
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