[nycbug-talk] interesting read

[Bob Ippolito]

On May 21, 2005, at 11:28 AM, alex at pilosoft.com wrote:

> On Sat, 21 May 2005, Bob Ippolito wrote:
>
>
>>>> Let's keep in mind that the trustworthiness of a life-critical
>>>> application has everything to do with how that program was written
>>>> and absolutely nothing to do with the license under which it was
>>>> released.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Okay. Back to original question. What is the benefit for you to be
>>> able to recompile source code for your pacemaker?
>>>
>>
>> Independent audits.
>>
> Orthogonal to open source.

I don't know where you learned the word orthogonal, but that's  
certainly not what it meant in my math classes.  Open source implies  
that audits are possible, so they're not statistically independent.

> Remind you - there's lots of software that comes with source (heck,  
> even
> Windows, if you pay enough) - that doesn't mean it is open source.
>
> I think I wasn't precise enough in previous question: "What is the  
> benefit
> for you to be able to recompile *and* redistribute source code for  
> your
> pacemaker?".

Publishing the results of an audit of this kind is going to need some  
kind of redistribution rights.  Again, you can have this without open  
source, but open source implies that this is legal.

-bob