TPP will ban rules that require source-code disclosure

[euansmith]

It is so last millennium.

[tzs]

“It carves out “critical infrastructure” (power plants), but leaves intact cars, HVAC, medical devices, and even databases used to store sensitive public information”

It only applies to mass-market software or to products that contain mass-market software.

[NickSay]

What a great way to prepare for autonomous vehicles on the road!

[euansmith]

If only you were on of the people voting on it.

[anon41977465]

finally I can stop maintaining some level of quality!

[aluchko]

@restlesshead

My first thought is that the TPP may remove any possibility that independent review of voting machines will be mandated by law. Yay, democracy!

Source availability in voting machines is a red herring.

If I’m the manufacturer trying to fix an election a big source dump is the first thing I’m giving you.

Just don’t expect that code to be on the machine come election time.

@micah

My guess is that this provision was desired by companies like Microsoft and Cisco, who don’t want the Chinese to be able to require source code disclosure as a condition to importing their products. I wonder what the NSA’s position is, since they probably want Cisco and its ilk to be able to continue to ship NSA-approved black boxes overseas without scrutiny, but might not be so thrilled about Huawei or its ilk bringing NSA-proof black boxes into the US.

That’s my what my gut says. I suspect the NSA isn’t too worried however, they’ve got the best crackers and there’s not a lot of US infrastructure running software written in China anyway.

I do share people’s uneasiness about the GPL, does a software license really count as a “commercially negotiated contract”? Of course I can’t imagine the treaty would actually try to kill open source.

[celesteh]

Seriously. Other countries count their votes by hand. If every other country on earth can do it, so can we.

[renke]

Some of the German Bundesländer use panachage and cumulative voting for local elections - and voting is done with a pen on a sheet of paper.

Yes, the manual counting can take some time (The Horror! It’s not possible to declare a winner within 10 minutes of poll closing!) but it work’s fine and is transparent - imho for a democray much more important than faster results.