On Jan 24, 2009, at 2:41 PM, Alex wrote: > I'm criticizing the switch from "Wikia leasing office space to WMF" to > "Is the CIA evil?" I just responded to the most recent email in my > inbox; I thought that would be more appropriate than responding to all > 17 CIA/NSA-related emails. I was not criticizing you in particular. > > The topic of this thread is "Wikia leasing office space to WMF," that > should be rather clear from the subject. And the topic of the list is > "Wikimedia related issues." Its almost on topic for the list > (MediaWiki > is at least mentioned occasionally), its certainly not at all > related to > the topic of the thread. > > Brian wrote: >> It was a clear factual error which I corrected. If you aren't going >> to >> criticize the original comment you have no basis for criticizing the >> correction. >> At any rate, what exactly is the topic of this thread, in your >> opinion? >> >> >> On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Alex <mrzmanw...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Brian wrote: >>>>> If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure >>>> PHP is an interpreted language. Surely you wouldn't use someone >>>> elses >>> byte >>>> code. >>>> >>>> >>>> On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 8:32 AM, Platonides <platoni...@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>>>> Nikola Smolenski wrote: >>>>>> Given that we know that NSA conducts massive illegal spying >>>>>> operations, >>>>> there >>>>>> is possibility that selinux is altered in a fashion that will >>>>>> make it >>>>> easier >>>>>> for NSA to spy on selinux' users. I don't know what are CIA's >>>>> contributions >>>>>> to MediaWiki, but unless it is trivial to review them, I would >>>>>> not >>> accept >>>>>> them. >>>>> If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure. >>>>> You could >>>>> very well be suspicious about it. But we're talking about open >>>>> source. >>>>> They would be providing the changes, which are to be reviewed, >>>>> like any >>>>> other code, or perhaps even more, due to coming from the CIA. >>>>> >>>>> Take into account that CIA and NSA need good software, too. So >>>>> if they >>>>> add a backdoor, they would need to add it *and* at the same time >>>>> make it >>>>> easy to protect from it, as they wouldn't want their own systems >>>>> spied >>>>> by their own rootkit (and someone will end up forgetting to >>>>> apply it). >>>>> >>>>> Instead, contributing good fixes, make everything easier. >>>>> >>>>> OTOH I encourage you to review selinux. That would make a great >>>>> heading >>>>> 'Nikola Smolenski discovers NSA backdoor on Linux code' >>>>> >>> This is getting rather off-topic, especially for this thread, and >>> possibly for the list as well. >>> >>> -- >>> Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man) >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> foundation-l mailing list >>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ >> foundation-l >> > > > -- > Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)
Yeah, agreed. While on-topic for the list, it's off-topic for this thread. U.S. intelligence agency involvement in the development of open source products, especially media wiki, however *IS* a topic I am very much interested in seeing further discussion about; to that end I would much rather fork this thread into a different title than see it be killed totally. -dan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l