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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: 4, Interesting) by janrinok on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:47AM
We've long been complaining that the 'other' big OS has cornered the market in government contracts etc. This proves that, when it comes down to getting a job done at a fair price, Linux is every bit as good a contender. I wish more government departments, of many nations, would realise that they can save taxpayers' money by using Linux. France has already converted half of the Gendarmerie Nationale to Linux and will have finished the conversion, I believe, next year. They have saved millions of euros by doing so. The US military has made the same discovery, as has the UK military, and is converting to Linux where possible. There are similar stories in many European nations and around the world.
This is a good force to have behind Linux. There will be support for Linux not only until at least the end of these current contracts but I suspect far into the future. But I've got some bad news for the doom and gloom merchants, though. Linux has been use by the nasty military for operations that have resulted in people being killed for quite some time. Get used to it. It is also being used in hospitals to help provide a better service to patients, it is being used in research to find new medicines, it is being used to solve difficult problems, to help forecast the weather, to improve the logistical distribution of a myriad of items, in CERN's research projects, and so the list goes on.
No-one is worried about the health service, research laboratories, CERN or meteorological offices having an influence on how Linux is developed. The military is just another customer, although a very big one in this instance.
I hope that I see a lot more stories on this theme!
It's always my fault...