I'm not insisting anything, I'm just saying that I don't think your arguments are purely objective, but rather from a matter of principle, which is fine, but to frame it as some kind of established fact that it's being "Weaponized" even though I'd say it's a bit extreme.
I don't like Windows, especially Windows 11, but I can understand why they exist and what markets they serve.
> but I don't understand why Windows Team or Microsoft doesn't use function multi versioning
because otherwise they'd have to support systems for a really long time and they'd be unable to support newer features that *they* think are important.
> I'm not saying that Windows would be dead if it was open source, but we'd have versions where ads and telemetry are straight up ripped from every possible part of it.
this is what I mean. your views are incompatible with closed-source software. not saying all closed-source software needs to have telemetry, but for the average user, this stuff probably helps catch bugs and things.
local accounts, I agree, I've never bothered with Windows 11 for that reason.
it's enshittification, not weaponization.
> You can always make it sense, if you decide to do that. There's SQLite for example.
this is just not a very good point. we're talking about paid products, paid OS that is paid by an OEM or an end-user.
> Not with hardware requirements primarily, but how it herds the user and siphons data out of the computer in the name of telemetry.
what data specifically? I'm not a fan of this either and I'd always disable everything, but it might again be something that people would really not care about. and for an organization like Microsoft, telemetry is probably very useful because otherwise they'd have to rely on user reports or test everything themselves
> Ha, no. A small anecdote
I really think you're dismissing this just because of your principles like "security through obscurity isn't security"
yet security through obscurity literally works. it's not foolproof, but a lot of bugs are never found because of it. and a big part of finding bugs is to get enough information to know where to look
like you saying "look my friend got a bug 15 years ago" doesn't disprove what I claimed.
> Also, with the leaks we have learnt that NSA had a truckload of zero days to infiltrate Windows systems. Great for security, right?
and what are you saying with this? the fact that only NSA (and some others probably) had the ability to find bugs is proof that the security failed?
> Finding, fixing and evading the introduction of vulnerabilities are a lot easier if the source is open.
yes, that is why I said "in fact it can be less so if people don't have eyes on it".
> Do we know that there's no universal backdoor in Windows? I don't.
that's right. we can't know there isn't one in MacOS either.
and yes, I do know about DUAL_EC_DRBG and Crypto AG.
"Closed source something can't be audited to be secure or anything. It doesn't make it harder to attack"
It literally does. the only argument against it is that with it being open you'd have others that would catch bugs and report them to the vendor, vs. keeping it to themselves, which I think is fair, but it doesn't make it harder to attack, at least historically when you had to put a lot of effort into security research which of course the intelligence agencies could leverage. I think this is changing with LLMs.
"Security through obscurity never stopped anyone from infiltrating anything. With enough persistence, ..."
it has stopped tons of attempts. literally.
there simply isn't an infinite amount of "persistence" available to people/orgs. it takes a huge amount of time to meticulously reverse engineer and find security holes in an OS like Windows, it's like games with DRM like Denuvo, it works. it's security through obscurity, but it works, it has held off games for like 6+ months after release.
"security" doesn't mean impenetrable, there's always going to be new bugs even in Linux, Chromium and others even though they're open.
but with closed source software, it is much harder to comb through it and find bugs.
> Please, we have gone through this 30 years ago. These arguments doesn't hold water anymore.
like, I don't understand what you mean with this.
you're talking like this is a settled argument and that you're just absolutely right, closed-source software is not harder to attack and it's just propaganda from the NSA or something?
like, we can be objective and point out the flaws of closed-source software and security through obscurity, but we also have to be realistic. things may be changing now, but at least up until very recently, only the most determined actors (usually organized groups) would be able to conduct sophisticated attacks against these systems
but also remember that a lot of the major vulnerabilities against Windows have been through leaks from the CIA and etc. that is not Windows being "breached yesterday and today". and Microsoft has the resources to hire very well-paid engineers who work on security around the clock, unlike with many FOSS projects