Had that discussion before. Was attacked because I use a f&os lib from GitHub instead of a paid and licensed one, the latter somehow meaning it's error free. Spoiler alert: it wasn't. Or at least their usage wasn't.
This has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with liability.
You can't really sue an open source project using a proper license, they disclaim any liability or warranty, meaning the buck stops with you.
If you hire a software development firm and pay for them to build software for you, you will have a different license, the software company can just repackage open source software into their own UI and branding, take the money and declare bankruptcy if their customers try to sue them.
The customers are mostly happy, they get to tick the box that they have a support contract for the software and a company is liable if shit hits the fan. The software development company is happy, they get money for doing very little actual work.
The open source project probably doesn't know about the abuse of the license and thus mostly doesn't care.
At one place I worked we couldn't use eclipse licensed things because the license mentioned indemnification or something. I don't really understand what that meant because I think some other licenses mentioned it too. Plus literally all of us used Eclipse IDE.
I've been in these meetings and you're on the money. Insurance (the concept, not necessarily the product) is almost always the reason any time you see some stupid policy.
When I was young and naive I thought the technologically correct way to do things was the best. In the business world that's seldom the case, though.
My org told me “you can’t install open source software”
Everyone uses Firefox
I just want OpenShell
Honestly, a policy of "no free-of-charge software installed on workstations except FOSS" might improve security a bit and probably without doing all that much damage to the day-to-day workings of the company.
For that matter, if my employer instituted a policy of "no software except FOSS", my own particular job probably would be a surprisingly small adjustment. As long as they were willing to do the work to set up infrastructure and/or let us switch to FOSS alternatives that require third-party server providers as necessary. About all I can think of that's installed on my work machine that's proprietary is:
Beyond that, I honestly can't think specifically of anything else proprietary installed on my work machine. My personal computers have far less proprietary software installed than the above list.
Every day I wake up I thank God I'm not an MBA 🙏
Sometimes I wish I was a piece of shit so I didn't need to worry about money.
MBAs would just buy an LLM software subscription to fix it
"This fucking paycheck! What am I going to do with all this money?"
Everyday my misnathropy is justified
I majored in Anthropology in college. I should have done Misanthropology.
You did; just need to apply it.
I'll try that. Fuck you.
They grow up so fast sheds tear
Print the fucking t-shirt man. I'll buy one for every day of the week.
It's not more secure, it's so they can offload blame and have people to sue if/when something ugly happens. Liability control, essentially.
We had to pay for fucking Docker container licenses at my last job because we needed an escalation to the vendor in case our SMEs couldnt handle things (they could), and so we had a vendor to blame if something out of our control happened. And that happened: we sued Mirantis when shit broke.
Hey PS: search engines do return a result for a suit against that company so potential self-doxxing territory (but maybe you’re open in your comment history IDK)
(Don’t have a PACER login so couldn’t tell what was up with the suit that came back when I checked this morn, also could’ve been an unrelated suit)
It's "more secure" because there's a specific company to blame when it goes wrong.
That would make some sense if the company was purchasing a solution, not a tool. Or a contract/SaaS model or something. Instead, it's like banning known screwdriver brands and expecting people to still have no problem loosening and tightening screws...
Sure but what if they have "we can at best refund you, no more liability from us" in the EULA?
Like, when the $10 "Yeblie PDF Censorship Tool" turns out to just have drawn a black rectangle and kept the CEO's SSN underneath copiable, what's stopping Yeblie from just forking over the $10 (and perhaps rebranding to Gtriik for good measure)?
Yeah, i worked briefly at multinational japanese motor company and this was their logic. I was hired as a software developer contractor and HQ had rules stating, no open source software, no free software and the one that puzzled me the most no in house executables (WHY THE FUCK DID THEY HIRE ME?)
this is supposed to be more secure because it costs money
It makes blaming someone really easy though and that's all that matters in a corporate world.
This is legitimately it. The same reason corporations often pay for Linux (e.g. RHEL)—the people in charge want to be able to pick up a phone and harass someone until they fix their problem. They simply can't fathom any alternative approach to managing dependencies.
There is an entire sub-industry and probably thousands of jobs being propped up by this stupid way of thinking about software. I can't be mad at it because it pays the bills for a few of my friends...
Don't forget your new 32 character/symbol/number/nordic rune passwords that will need to be changed every 17 days.
Oh you gonna love those new directives for SSL certificates we got cooking!
I hate sites that make me constantly change passwords. it's been shown time and time again that making users change passwords often decreases security by a pretty large factor, and yet a lot of sites still do it
Our workplace did that. You had to change every month and you weren't allowed to just add a digit. It meant that people started writing their passwords on post-its stuck to the monitor.
Mind you, back in the 90s your password was the same as your username. It was very handy, because if someone went home leaving a document locked, you could just log in and unlock it. Our first "proper" IT professional was horrified.
My last boss got rid of the pfSense routers because "open source is not secure". I argued that pfSense has been vetted over and over and over again. Nope. "Everyone can see the source code." That's the fucking point!
TBF, pfSense isn't the fastest routing, but at our small company is was more than sufficient.
Worked for a company that had a similar policy against free software, but simultaneously encouraged employees to use open-source software to save money. I don't think upper management was talking to the IT department.
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