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Comment by megablast | Hacker News Reader

Governments and Universities can already get access to Windows source. I think the difference is that China can write the source for Linux.

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When I was in University (some 16 years ago), that was already the case. However, you could only browse the source - some essential pieces were missing that made it impossible to build a working system from that code.

Thus, you still have to trust that code you view is the code you run -- which is almost as bad as trusting documentation.

> I think the difference is that China can write the source for Linux.

I think the key here is that they are able to verify that the code they review is the code the run, by building the system.

And, I'm aware of "reflections on trusting trust", but I'm sure that they have a clean-room bootstrapped C compiler capable enough of bootstrapping tcc or gcc and thus the linux kernel.

Some governments have access to that source code, but it gives them no guarantees that what they run is faithful to it, and it doesn't let them replace the usual products with something audited. Even if they can compile something out of that source, I suspect they can't boot or run the whole thing, and they certainly can't distribute it.

Universities are given access to Windows source? I'd never heard of this before. Do they give access to all accredited universities, or is there some other kind of restriction?

See http://www.microsoft.com/education/facultyconnection/article...

> Use of the Windows Research Kernel requires academic affiliation with an accredited institution of higher education and direct involvement in teaching and/or research, such as being academic faculty members, system or lab administrators or instructors, students enrolled in relevant undergraduate or graduate programs, or academic researchers working on faculty sponsored projects.

As I thought.

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