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From: Alexandre Garreau
Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel
Subject: Re: Does service lookup by name work on Windows now?
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2019 22:08:11 +0100
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Cc: Eli Zaretskii , Emacs developers ,
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To: Tim Cross
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On 2019-01-27 at 16:11, Tim Cross wrote:
> The only problem with continuing to support any OS which is no longer
> maintained is that, in many cases, we are implicitly supporting users on
> platforms with significant and well known exploits. This is especially tr=
ue
> with Windows XP, which has numerous, well documented and easy to exploit
> vulnerabilities.
If so it=E2=80=99d mean emacs would be supporting Windows at all, so it sho=
uld
stop supporting it at all, which complies with what previously said.
However emacs is present on Windows to give a (imho, very good) taste of
what free software can be (in one of the best way of showing it), so to
advertise for other operating systems, so it=E2=80=99s not supporting anyth=
ing
at all but freedom.
> While I would agree that the decision to use a vulnerable OS is up to the
> individual user, in practice, many users don't understand the risks and
> consequences. To make it worse, exploited systems can also be a threat (or
> inconvenience) to other users (for example, by being the source of botnets
> or DDoS attacks).
When a computer is under Windows XP it is often because it=E2=80=99s simply
impossible to switch. It is then way better to allow most of (free)
software(s) to keep being updated on these, as otherwise it=E2=80=99s simply
that the old versions of these are going to be used instead, increasing
the attack surface. So this is an argument supporting much more the
reverse: it would harm to make emacs stop supporting XP.
Also a lot of XP computers are ran on special hardware that allegedly
can=E2=80=99t be changed at all without more problem (I=E2=80=99ve heard =
=E2=80=9Cnuclear
plants=E2=80=9D once, meanwhile I effectively observed XP being consistently
used in nuclear installations, though not active nuclear plants), and
that is consequently kept offline (yes there are offline attacks such as
worms, stuxnet, etc. but that=E2=80=99s also a question of policy).
Also while I regularely see Vista being used by many unaware uncaring
users, I didn=E2=80=99t see XP since a very long time ago except on compute=
rs of
more expecienced peoples that *had* the technical knowledge allowing
them to know there is indeed more crap in Vista than XP. So I believe
the technical level of awareness is better for XP users than Vista users
in the end.
> There is an argument that it would be more responsible to not support any
> OS once it is no longer maintained and receiving patches for security
> vulnerabilities to discourage continued use of vulnerable systems and
> encourage users to update to a current and more secure OS (which of course
> could be GNU Linux!). This may also make maintenance of Emacs easier as =
it
> would reduce the need for exceptions and work arounds for older systems
> which don';t support more modern OS practices.
Quirks are to be excepted from everywhere. Especially from old
not-that-used UNIXes: Windows is much more a case of something
consistent with itself (since it=E2=80=99s completely opaque), and used by =
many
many many people (so it=E2=80=99s less work to make it compatible with more
environments).
It=E2=80=99s not only the fault of old systems but much more from diversity.
That is something you mostly find in more =E2=80=9Copen=E2=80=9D (lots of c=
ommercial
UNIXes), free (all the free distributions), and imho is going to
increase in the future, albeit some other proprietary, highly insecure,
and widely as well as increasingly used non-GNU/Linux systems, such as
Android (which imho is going to be with time way worse than anything XP
could have been).
Btw it=E2=80=99s GNU/Linux, GNU=E2=80=93Linux, GNU-Linux, etc=E2=80=A6 mayb=
e even =E2=80=9CGNU=E2=80=9D alone in
some cases =E2=80=A6but not =E2=80=9CGNU Linux=E2=80=9D, since we are talki=
ng of the whole
operating system, not some =E2=80=9CLinux=E2=80=9D (which is a kernel), whi=
ch would be
from GNU (and there is none, or you are confusing with GNU Linux-libre
maybe).
--=-=-=
Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="==-=-="
--==-=-=
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
On 2019-01-27 at 16:11, Tim Cross wrote:
The only problem with continuing to support any OS which is no longer
maintained is that, in many cases, we are implicitly supporting users on
platforms with significant and well known exploits. This is especially true
with Windows XP, which has numerous, well documented and easy to exploit
vulnerabilities.
If so it=E2=80=99d mean emacs would be supporting Windows at all, so it sho=
uld
stop supporting it at all, which complies with what previously said.
However emacs is present on Windows to give a (imho, very good) taste of
what free software can be (in one of the best way of showing it), so to
advertise for other operating systems, so it=E2=80=99s not supporting anyth=
ing
at all but freedom.
While I would agree that the decision to use a vulnerable OS is up to the
individual user, in practice, many users don't understand the risks and
consequences. To make it worse, exploited systems can also be a threat (or
inconvenience) to other users (for example, by being the source of botnets
or DDoS attacks).
When a computer is under Windows XP it is often because it=E2=80=99s simply
impossible to switch. It is then way better to allow most of (free)
software(s) to keep being updated on these, as otherwise it=E2=80=99s simply
that the old versions of these are going to be used instead, increasing
the attack surface. So this is an argument supporting much more the
reverse: it would harm to make emacs stop supporting XP.
Also a lot of XP computers are ran on special hardware that allegedly
can=E2=80=99t be changed at all without more problem (I=E2=80=99ve heard =
=E2=80=9Cnuclear
plants=E2=80=9D once, meanwhile I effectively observed XP being consistently
used in nuclear installations, though not active nuclear plants), and
that is consequently kept offline (yes there are offline attacks such as
worms, stuxnet, etc. but that=E2=80=99s also a question of policy).
Also while I regularely see Vista being used by many unaware uncaring
users, I didn=E2=80=99t see XP since a very long time ago except on compute=
rs of
more expecienced peoples that had the technical knowledge allowing
them to know there is indeed more crap in Vista than XP. So I believe
the technical level of awareness is better for XP users than Vista users
in the end.
There is an argument that it would be more responsible to not support any
OS once it is no longer maintained and receiving patches for security
vulnerabilities to discourage continued use of vulnerable systems and
encourage users to update to a current and more secure OS (which of course
could be GNU Linux!). This may also make maintenance of Emacs easier as it
would reduce the need for exceptions and work arounds for older systems
which don';t support more modern OS practices.
Quirks are to be excepted from everywhere. Especially from old
not-that-used UNIXes: Windows is much more a case of something
consistent with itself (since it=E2=80=99s completely opaque), and used by =
many
many many people (so it=E2=80=99s less work to make it compatible with more
environments).
It=E2=80=99s not only the fault of old systems but much more from diversity.
That is something you mostly find in more =E2=80=9Copen=E2=80=9D (lots of c=
ommercial
UNIXes), free (all the free distributions), and imho is going to
increase in the future, albeit some other proprietary, highly insecure,
and widely as well as increasingly used non-GNU/Linux systems, such as
Android (which imho is going to be with time way worse than anything XP
could have been).
Btw it=E2=80=99s GNU/Linux, GNU=E2=80=93Linux, GNU-Linux, etc=E2=80=A6 mayb=
e even =E2=80=9CGNU=E2=80=9D alone in
some cases =E2=80=A6but not =E2=80=9CGNU Linux=E2=80=9D, since we are talki=
ng of the whole
operating system, not some =E2=80=9CLinux=E2=80=9D (which is a kernel), whi=
ch would be
from GNU (and there is none, or you are confusing with GNU Linux-libre
maybe).
--==-=-=--
--=-=-=--