[cap-talk] Virtues and Vices of Open Source

[Peter Amstutz]

On Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 02:16:08AM +0200, Pierre THIERRY wrote:
> Scribit Peter Amstutz dies 21/06/2007 hora 15:48:
> > I don't know if capability security provides any answers to this
> > problem, but it's worth considering that this *is* a computer security
> > problem.
> 
> Isn't it a very fundamental and classical problem of distributed
> computation?

It is, but this fact tends to be obscured by the reality that the 
security problem is *so hard* that most practical approaches to 
distributed computing like clustering largely ignore security and assume 
all systems are in the same administrative domain.  Then when something 
misbehaves, you find the person responsible and fire them.

The observation was that social structure enables certain technological 
structures that are only feasable in the context of being able to 
enforce social order.  Usually people talk about it the other way around 
(technology changing social structure), perhaps because social influence 
on technology is so pervasive as to be subtle.

It's worth considering how better security can enable new types of 
software, which is precisely why many of us participate in this mailing 
list.

-- 
[   Peter Amstutz  ][ tetron at interreality.org ][ peter.amstutz at gdit.com ]
[Lead Programmer][Interreality Project][Virtual Reality for the Internet]
[ VOS: Next Generation Internet Communication][ http://interreality.org ]
[ http://interreality.org/~tetron ][ pgpkey:  pgpkeys.mit.edu  18C21DF7 ]

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