On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 11:08 -0800, Bill Kendrick wrote: > As for whether there's 'spyware' for Linux, that's a good question. > ...If closed source, people will complain.)
I'm not sure that it's true that linux users would catch closed source spyware and complain. To give an example: holding my nose, I installed skype on my laptop last weekend. (I play Battle for Wesnoth with a couple of friends who are not very free-software-aware, and skype is the only really effective solution for talking to them while playing). I'd be surprised if skype *doesn't* perform some spyware-like activities. It's a closed source program that implements a proprietary network protocol and communicates god-knows-what information to other machines just to do what it's supposed to do. For all I know it could be slurping /etc/passwd and feeding it off to skype world domination HQ. There are legitimate reasons for such a program to read /etc/passwd, so just running it under strace wouldn't catch it. Of course they do have a cute graphic that says "no spyware" on their web site, so they must be OK right? -- Josh Parsons Philosophy Department 1238 Social Sciences and Humanities Bldg. University of California Davis, CA 95616-8673 USA Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html _______________________________________________ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech