On 10 Oct 2003 at 16:09, Gareth Williams wrote: > Surely a person has the right to say "I'm giving you this for free, use it at > your own risk if you like, but I don't take any responsibility for it. I'm > offering you this, it's up to you if you take it". Right? When you log into a > Debian GNU/Linux system for example, you see the "blah blah blah... > ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY". This is fair enough. If they give it away for free, > why should they be asked to take responsibility for it too? > > So to extend this idea, surely a person (or company, such as Microsoft) has > the right to say "We're selling you this for a [in our opinion] very low > price, we're almost _giving_ it to you it's so dirt cheap, but we don't take > any responsibility for it. We're offering you this, it's up to you if you > take it". If you want security too, or someone else to take responsibility > for your security, you pay for it.
Pretty much my line of thinking, too. To elaborate a bit: In the case of M$, they do take unnecessary risks by refusing to use public standards. They prefer to develop propriety security products, which have (according to Bruce Schneier) been broken every time in every OS. The even modified Kerebos... Which is why I think a bit of cage rattling is a good thing :-) have fun this weekend! -J
