[SLL] Fedora project lead seems to have played role in installing malware for FBI

[Chuck Wolber]

On Mon, 20 Apr 2009, Bradley Willson wrote:

> It smacks of about half of the facts are there and all of the 
> supposition is present.

[...]

Perhaps, but it's also very easy to throw arrows and miss the forest for 
the trees...

Having considered employment with the FBI a long time ago, I've been 
through an exceedingly small portion of the grueling special agent 
selection process (I chose to voluntarily discontinue my participation for 
personal reasons).

I can attest to the fact that those who are selected as special agents are 
quite impressive physically and intellectually. I am certain the Fedora 
project and by extension, the OSS community, are great beneficiaries of 
the work of Paul W. Frields and his team of talented engineers and 
developers.

However...

What I think some people are missing here is that Fedora fills a very 
important niche and is also a very large player, especially if you 
consider that RHEL is fed by improvements to Fedora and that CentOS is 
basically the same as RHEL. That's a huge freaking install base where 
Linux is concerned.

It is reasonable to air out some publically available facts, especially 
where a project leader (or similarly involved member) of such a large 
project is concerned. It is also reasonable to reject any obvious 
implication in a developing story.

Personally, I don't see how Mr. Frields will be able to say anything at 
all for security reasons, but I am glad the facts were brought to my 
attention. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out...

..Ch:W..

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