[plug] Linux Desktop Market

[Leon Brooks]

On Wednesday 26 October 2005 14:47, John Knight wrote:
> But as OSS, we have security through transparency, so we
> wouldn't have problems to the same extent.

Mister Anarchist, you just contradicted yourself. You say that security 
through transparency works in the same post that you advocate 
downloading and installing random (ie opaque) _binaries_.

Linux users in general (I'd even go so far as to claim "admins in 
general") would no more scrutinise the source code than MS-Windows 
users would, and if you download a binary you have no guarantee 
whatsoever that it was built from the source in the next archive 
across.

The people who build distributions, however, do read and check the 
source, and are painfully aware of what patches are included and why. 
That's why you should pay for a distro when you use it. I get my 
customers to do that (a drop in the ocean compared with what they've 
already saved), mainly because I don't want to be forced to do that job 
myself.

That's why software branding is so highly regarded in the Windows world. 
Everyone packages their own stuff, and there is no serious way of 
verifying an .msi file or a random .exe; TuCows and its peers are a 
kind of compensation for that; it only takes a few hundred people 
getting burned, and TuCows will tear the download off its list.

Microsoft would do well to simply digitally sign packages, but as usual 
Trey wants to over-reach, so if you get any kind of validation at all 
it comes bundled with all-intrusive check-your-soul-in-at-the-door DRM.

What I would like to see is a common _source_ package agreed upon, that 
RPMs, DEBs, Slack-TGZs etc could be quickly and automatically built 
from. Then you would get TuCows-like sites arising that build and offer 
the packages that the distros themselves miss. That would mostly keep 
both sides of this argument happy.

To do that, some standardisation of package naming conventions needs to 
happen between distros, and they need to agree upon a common dependency 
format and stick to the LSB (FHS, at least) somewhat better than they 
typically are.

Cheers; Leon

--
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