SCO Group CEO Darl McBride (who else) wrote to US senators and representatives in January that year claiming that open source software threatened the US economy, technological innovation, and even national security.
“I assert that open source software – available widely through the Internet – has the potential to provide our nation’s enemies or potential enemies with computing capabilities that are restricted by US law," he wrote.
McBride, first off, is a scammer, trying to make money of bogus lawsuits, which he is in the Process of Loosing.EG they have no merit.
Second, Open Source Software is not soley developed in the United States. Second, Most of these Export restriction laws, only apply to electronic versions of of Source code and binaries made from them. How alot of stuff made it out of the country to begin with was, They Printed it on Paper in a book that Sold Internationally.
Dan O’Dowd, CEO of embedded systems vendor Green Hills Software, took up the baton in April 2004, claiming that embedded Linux is unsuitable for use in US defense systems because it is open to contributions from the open source community at large.
"Now that foreign intelligence agencies and terrorists know that Linux is going to control our most advanced defense systems, they can use fake identities to contribute subversive software that will soon be incorporated into our most advanced defense systems," he said.
"Every day new code is added to Linux in Russia, China and elsewhere throughout the world. Every day that code is incorporated into our command, control, communications and weapons systems. This must stop."
While it is possible for Chinese and Russian Hackers use fake id's to contribute to OSS.
It is really a non issue.
Why? Because it is OPEN SOURCE. The DOD can download the Source, and have their own Internal Security Auditors, check for backdoors, loopholes and such, and then create their own binaries from their audited source code. Hence, Unless the DOD is Daft, OSS is no threat at all to National Security, while at the Same time saving the DOD millions in development costs, or from Relying on Microsoft, which being closed source, is a far more likely target for the Chinese and other governments to want to target, because the DoD wont have ready access to MS code.
