From: Johan Vromans <jvromans_at_squirrel.nl>
Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 21:57:44 +0200

Fred Maxwell <rockbox_at_anti-spam.org> writes:

> Most big projects only have a handful of coders, most of whom are
> only familiar with a small subset of the code.

True, but to every coder there are many readers that understand the
code as well.

> Look at Interbase. It was open source for a year before it was
> discovered that there was a back-door account hard-coded into it.
> libpcap & tcpdump were released with malicious code in them.

Actually, this proves that the principle works. The malicious code was
found and eliminated.

> If I install software on a Windows box, I have many tools at my
> disposal to find out what it's doing.

Most of these tools are closed software themselves.
Maybe you should (re)read Ken Thomson's famous article on "Reflections
on Trusting Trust".

Regards,
-- Johan
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Received on 2004-08-09