Hacker News Reader

Comment by hulitu | Hacker News Reader

> However, a security system should be deployed to protect the user from adversaries

They all (Google, Microsoft and Apple) say that . The problem is that they do the exact opposite. All your user data belongs to Google, Microsoft and Apple because they protect the root user.

But all data is in your user account.

View on HN

Huh, but it's Google and Apple operating systems that are the only ones that actually protect user data by sandboxing apps from each other so they can only access their own data?

It's the open source operating systems (and MS) that only protect the root account, because they're designed for servers or academic/corporate campuses and not personal computers.

If I install a program from a package manager on Linux, it has access to my whole home directory. If I install an app from the Apple App Store, it only has access to the files I specifically tell the OS to open with it.

SELinux is a couple decades old.

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/selinux-gett...

And we get back to "open source operating systems are only designed for servers":

"Why doesn't SELinux confine desktop applications" https://access.redhat.com/solutions/1578673

If your text editor can own your account, it doesn't count.

SELinux can confine desktop applications perfectly fine.

Notice how that dovetails into stallman's main ideological point. The reason they can want "security" for the user, while actually only protecting themselves, is that they've already perpetrated the original sin of proprietary software.

The "user account" isn't an abstraction used to help you, it's an abstraction that serves the companies.

Thing is, Google, Microsoft and Apple are the adversaries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com