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Karen Sandler of the Software Freedom Conservancy delivered a keynote presentation last week at linux.conf.au 2018 (LCA) in Sydney, Australia. Specifically she spoke about her multi-year odyssey to try to gain access to the source code for the pacemaker attached to her heart and upon which her life currently depends. Non-free software is having an increasingly (negative) impact on society as people entrust more of their lives to it. That software is found in an increasing number of places, both high and low, as all kinds of devices start to run fully networked microcomputers.
In her first LCA keynote 6 years ago, Karen first told the people of LCA about her heart condition and the defibrillator that she needed to have implanted. This year she described her continued quest to receive the source code for the software running in her defibrillator, and how far she has been able to get in obtaining the source code that she's been requesting for over a decade now.
Source : Karen Sandler Delivered Keynote at Linux.conf.au
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:13PM
You're right, if it's a few hundred lines of embedded code, it can be formally verified. The way things are going these days, the people doing the "verification" might not be up to it though. Peer review and independent scrutiny of these things is essential. The point I was trying to make through use of polemic was that some standards are very low these days, and frequently the people who put themselves in charge of upholding the standards aren't as clever or thorough as they think they are.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].