[KLUG Advocacy] The infamous "libz" "Open Source hole" exists on Windows! -- WAS: Dell-Oracle-RedHat "Unbreakable Linux"

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Thu, 2002-06-06 at 12:26, Jamie McCarthy wrote:
> http://newsforge.com/comments.pl?sid=24112&cid=14949
> Very insightful.  I hadn't thought of that.

Yeah, I love it!  All these MS-IT media bigots going on and on how "how
could such a crucial, popular Open Source (BSD) library have such a
critical hole for so long?"  Hey, it happens!  I agree, it was a
shocker!

But then, you find out Windows is using the _same_damn_ libz library
_unchanged_ for LZ77 algorithm compression in Windows for _everything_,
from Expand (the *.??_ files) to CABs (*.cab)!  But do we hear anything
about this in the MS-IT media?  No!  Now this "study" comes out.  Oh,
BSD is "safer" than GPL because it can be taken "closed source."  Yeah,
I'll believe that after seeing "libz" in Windows -- yeah.

As a 10-year veteran of seeing NT "mature," this disgusts me.  I'm
sorry, but the said state of _denial_ in the MS-IT industry is just
_pitiful_.  Windows is _built_ on BSD/public domain Open Source. 
Anything that affects Open Source affects Windows.  Given the exodus to
GPL/copyleft by more and more BSD/public domain projects and you can see
_why_ Microsoft is worried!

"But it's national security we're talking about!"  Yeah, and they're on
the wrong side of the argument.  As they even admit, 80% of major
Internet services are running GPL -- yet that 20% of non-GPL seems to
get all the "cracks"?  Yeah, hmmm, yeah.

-- Bryan

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Bryan J. Smith, SmithConcepts, Inc.    mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
Engineers and IT Professionals      http://www.SmithConcepts.com