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Symantec CEO says source code reviews by foreign states pose unacceptable risk

reuters.com

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Re: Symantec CEO says source code reviews by foreign states pose unacceptable risk

#6
post #3

It's interesting that Symantec claims to be denying governments the ability to review code for the safety of their end-users, but won't allow those same end-users the ability to review the code for themselves.

In many cases those governments are the end users. They're buying the same licenses as run-of-the-mill businesses.

Furthermore, if you said "well, private users only can review the code," then every government is just going to ask its code reviewers to independently purchase private licenses. There's no way to keep government users out of source code reviews unless you totally block code reviews whole cloth.

Re: Symantec CEO says source code reviews by foreign states pose unacceptable risk

#9

They're not so arrogant about their code being bulletproof that they're willing to hand it to an adversary and say, "Sure, knock yourself out - see if you can find any holes"? Yeah, I'm not sure that I see a problem here.

If Symantec considers the government to be an adversary, then why are they trying to court them as a customer?

From the article:

Tech companies have been under increasing pressure to allow the Russian government to examine source code, the closely guarded inner workings of software, in exchange for approvals to sell products in Russia.

Re: Symantec CEO says source code reviews by foreign states pose unacceptable risk

#10

They're not so arrogant about their code being bulletproof that they're willing to hand it to an adversary and say, "Sure, knock yourself out - see if you can find any holes"? Yeah, I'm not sure that I see a problem here.

Yes. Handing out code to everyone (open source) can provide many benefits, but there's no benefit to handing it over only to agents you do not expect to cooperate (foreign governments, or governments in general).
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