[atlas] Survey results on Atlas open-sourcing

On 1/4/12 16:11 , Simon Josefsson wrote:
> "Richard L. Barnes"<rbarnes at bbn.com>  writes:
>
>> Analyze as you will :)
> One thing that strikes me from the discussion has been an absence of
> answers to this question: What would reasons be to _not_ release the
> source code?
>
> I believe that unless there is a strong reason not to release the
> source, it should be done because there is interest in it and there is
> potential to get improvements out of it.
>
There are some non-technical arguments that I won't list here.

One argument for not releasing is security by obscurity. It is easier to 
find security holes if you can just download the source. Instead of 
trying to obtain a probe, getting the firmware out of it and decompiling 
the binaries. In short, within RIPE NCC the question needs to be 
answered whether the source can released as is, or whether a security 
audit is required. Needless to say, a security audit is likely to cost 
money.

Dumping the source just as a tar file on a web site is easy. But that 
will be one way communication. And most likely fork the project. Not good.

If you want to turn it into an open source project, then a lot of stuff 
has to happen. In particular, the project has to be mature enough that 
it can actually be installed without too much pain. Of course, this 
costs time and money.