What?
In a joint effort, Microsoft Canada and the RCMP built a piece of software to ferret out child pornographers. It’s not open source software; why would it be? You would just naturally assume that it isn’t. Nowhere does Microsoft call it open source, or the RCMP for that matter… So why do news sources that supposedly “get” technology like Wired and Slashdot calling it open source? Maybe I missed something.
Maybe it’s only supposed to find child pornographers who write open source software.
Update: I e-mailed Slashdot, Wired and now the Associated Press about the bogus information; Slashdot changed the title of their story to reflect that it’s not open source about five minutes after I wrote them. Very nice. Wired sent me a simple message telling me that they don’t correct wire stories (which is I guess no surprise).
Tech Knight said,
April 8, 2005 @ 1:50 pm
The source code reads:
if ($person eq “asking for the source”)
arrest($person);
}