Hello, I have a request, which is how do developers address the circumstance in which someone utilizes your code as part of some effort to deprive (or steal as the case may be) someone of their bitcoin?
This hasn't happened to me, but I have posed a question about it at bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=454903.msg5045596#msg5045596 It was prompted by the apparent use of sx by a malware author who then generated something called Stealthbit (which is malware, and which no-one should touch). [fortunately I have not tried to access or use Stealthbit.) However, this is a question that also touches on bitcoin development generally, due to that (it's happened before, it will happen again, etc.) people may end up using bitcoin code (if they haven't already) to develop something else that would then be used expressly to deprive someone of their bitcoins (such as steal them, but I am not thinking only of theft here). My question for developers is: Given that code is open source and anything can be done with it, good or bad, what are common development approaches to mitigate or potentially prevent malware authors from being able to easily appropriate the code you develop? I realize this question may sound dumb and out of place being that it is pretty obvious that code which is developed in a free, open source context can technically be used for anything. However, beyond suggesting that people just go to bitcoin.org for wallet technology, what can be done in the development community that would lessen the likelihood that the code you develop might be "misappropriated?" Please note: I am not sure how this issue might be approached from a development perspective, or license (MIT, Affero GPL, etc.) perspective, or any other perspective.. I'm just asking the question. I support bitcoin and other decentralized currency efforts including walled development such as darkwallet, and I appreciate what you all are doing. Maybe I'm asking the wrong question and it should be put another way, but I hope you will rephrase my question(s) in a way that makes more sense in the context of the list discussion here. Thanks for your work. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Managing the Performance of Cloud-Based Applications Take advantage of what the Cloud has to offer - Avoid Common Pitfalls. Read the Whitepaper. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=121051231&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
