An anonymous coward writes "Former cypherpunk shares his conspiratorial view on Linux security:
Since then, more has happened to reveal the true story here, the depth of which surprised even me. The GTK development story and the systemd debate on Debian revealed much corporate pressure being brought to bear in Linux. [...] Some really startling facts about Red Hat came to light. For me the biggest was the fact that the US military is Red Hat's largest customer:
"When we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using open source," General Justice continued. "It may come as a surprise to many of you, but the U.S. Army is 'the' single largest install base for Red Hat Linux. I'm their largest customer." (2008)
This is pretty much what I had figured. I'm not exactly new to this, and I figured that in some way the military-industrial/corporate/intelligence complex was in control of Red Hat and Linux. [...] But I didn't expect it to be stated so plainly. Any fool should realize that "biggest customer" doesn't mean tallest or widest, it means the most money. In other words, most of Red Hat's money comes from the military and, as a result, they have significant pull in its development. In that respect, the connection between the military and spying agencies, etc. should be obvious.
Next, the FOSDEM: NSA Operation ORCHESTRA Annual Status Report is well worth watching in its entirety (including the Q&A at the end). To me, this turned out to be a road-map detailing how Red Hat is operating on Linux!"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Dopefish on Thursday February 20 2014, @09:11AM
Hi Lagg! I very much appreciate your counterpoint to AC's submission. I don't see anything particularly nefarious with systemd's rise in use within Linux distributions, Red Hat or RHEL notwithstanding. With the open development process that the Linux kernel and most of the userland is subjected to, it can be rather difficult to quantify a government conspiracy. Still, I felt it was important to hear out what AC had in mind and I hope it didn't rustle too many jimmies in the process.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Thursday February 20 2014, @09:18AM
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿