Re: Should distros take steps to reduce russian access to Free Software?

["Federico Leva (Nemo)" <nemowiki@gmail.com>]

Il 13/03/22 05:52, Aaron Wolf ha scritto:
> The inventors of nuclear technology might feel guilty about their role 
> in the threat of nuclear war, but it's too late now to undo that.

The same is true or any invention or creation. You can hope to keep it 
secret if it's so dangerous, but once it's out there in the world, it's 
too late. If you restrict access, chances are only the worst actors will 
get access to it.

This concern about dangerous software seems related more to trade 
secrets than to copyright. Keeping something secret so that nobody knows 
about it is a completely different kind of problem than "what's the best 
copyright regime for the use of this work by copyright-complying 
entities". Making it public but regulating its usage by private actors 
is more likely to be a matter of patenting and the like. (If a software 
is so dangerous, it must be for the ideas/inventions it contains, rather 
than for the creativity of the specific software implementation.)

As usual, the "intellectual property" bandwagon probably makes people 
more confused. People often forget the basics, so it's useful to spread 
pages where trade secrets and patents are discussed, like:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/danger-of-software-patents

As for the example of nuclear, it's not particularly useful because any 
conclusion depends entirely on your personal assumptions, particularly 
about whether centralised power is good or bad. If you like centralised 
power, you will argue for more trade secrets, more patents, stricter 
copyright; and vice versa. I would argue that nuclear catastrophe has 
been avoided due to popular pressure and decentralised actions of 
responsible people, more than by exercise of central power, therefore I 
would argue for less secrets, less patents and less copyright restrictions.

See for instance how Stanislav Petrov saved the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident

He was able to make the correct decision because he knew some details 
about how the alert systems worked. If he had trusted the software, we 
would not be talking now. More transparency (at least internal, possibly 
external too) would increase the chances of such correct interpretations.

Federico

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