I wonder how this will impact us infrastructure types. I am sure there must have been an exception to the rule at least once in my career but I can’t recall any, code I have made for all governments has been open source and if you lost it somehow I would just email it.
My only concern would be the systems that my code runs on top of won’t be willing to share. It is one thing to demand it from me, another to demand it from Siemens. Then you add in very low level code for individual devices such as VFDs
I guess the nightmare would be that PLC/DCS/VFD makers would basically be blacklisted and I would have to work around that fact.
My only concern would be the systems that my code runs on top of won’t be willing to share. It is one thing to demand it from me, another to demand it from Siemens. Then you add in very low level code for individual devices such as VFDs
The fact the code is open sourced is much less significant than the fact now the Swiss government will need to negotiate complete ownership of any software they commission.
That’s going to make things more expensive for them, and limit the vendors prepared to work with them.
At least for ASTRA, for software developed in their projects that’s already the case. Frameworks etc. used are not covered, but all source code for PLC and SCADA are theirs and you’re required to hand over all code as part of documentation at the end. As a zip on a USB key, never to be looked at again.
No, that is counter intuitive. It may appear more expensive at first, but on the long run it is a lot more cheaper. It avoid vendor lock-in, recurring increase of dev costs and licensing and lots of other plagues of closed proprietary development like blackbox development and justification of hidden complexity as a driving factor on costs. I worked with legacy closed proprietary sw development and lock-in combined with legacy complexity made man-hour costs exorbitant. These are partially solved by open-sourcing, as kicking out a team and putting a new one is easier, but most importantly transparency as a driving factor on quality of development.
Nothing “recent” about Microsoft hacks, it’s been happening for decades, the only difference is that the victim was you, now for a change, we have been made aware that Microsoft itself was hacked, but only because it impacted people outside Microsoft.
Microsoft was forced to reveal that it was hacked back in November 2023, and still hasn’t managed to prove that their systems are not still compromised today in July 2024. Just so we’re clear, their internal network was breached.
We also don’t know if it started in November, or if that’s just a convenient date because nobody externally has yet discovered evidence to show any different.
If the Lemmy repository was hacked and malicious code was added, people here would lose their shit. That’s what hit Microsoft and the fact that it’s only talked about in ICT professional circles is a good indication of just how bad this really is.
So, yeah, open source, open data, open governance, all of it.
I’m curious if this also applies to military or intelligence software. I’m guessing at the very least software embedded in weapons systems is not included. If I understood the article correctly there were some exemptions for security reasons.