Re: [RFC] Reclassification list

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <330D536F.6A54@swbell.net>,  <rubywand@swbell.net> wrote:
>     A problem will be getting anything like guaranteed, authentic 
>verification for more than a very few wares. As recent examples have 
>illustrated, there is virtually no such thing on the net.

   No, what just happened was a pathological liar spouting off, and
nobody believed him as usual. He was wrong, Corel had not decided
anything about Wordperfect at that time, and when they got around to
doing it themselves, they found that they didn't have any legal right
to do so.

   However, should someone who tends to tell the truth post something,
such as the Lost Classics program on GEnie, people can believe
them. Too bad that a few nitwits have spoiled the trust of postings on
the internet; it didn't have to be that way if they (1) told the
truth, (2) shut up otherwise.

>     About the best one can reasonably expect is that someone, posting 
>from his/her own genuine email address is willing to claim that 
>a product is public domain, freeware, or shareware and supply 
>some reason to believe that the claim is true. So long as the claim 
>is not challenged, those who reference the list would have some 
>reason to believe that the product belongs in the list.

   There are ways of trusting email and postings, something known as
PGP. Basically, it encodes up an authentication key based on the
poster's published public key, allowing others to verify that it came
from that person. It's already well accepted online as being secure
and trustable.

   Obviously, you have to know what the key is, but if it appears in a
well-documented hardcopy location (such as SSII), there's no way in
hell a spoofer is going to break into everyone's homes and replace
their copy of SSII with the PGP key for trusting lists of
once-commercial software now made publically available.

   As I said above, this shouldn't have had to be a problem, but
thanks to a few pathological liars sowing distrust and disease into
the community, look what they've done. I hope we don't have to move to
such a stage (cut the cancer out now before it causes more problems),
but I'd be willing to help arrange a secure mechanism for this. And,
I'll repeat my offer to put up lists on web pages created by
trustworthy sources.

Nathan Mates


--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein