[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Re: kernel modules

[From: Daniel.Stone at nokia.com]

On Jan 13th, Zoran Kolic wrote:
> Why all of people in nokia opose to firewall? You put it on the box.
> Lets make it fully functional, please.

Because it doesn't make any sense.  Even if you are using outbound
services, that doesn't magically open a hole in your machine that
other people can access, because there's nothing listening.

If you install extra services that listen on ports on public
interfaces: a) those should be fixed, and b) if they must be open,
then a firewall would be useful to _restrict_ access.

However, short of that, then there's no point.  If there are no
open ports (via listening services), then there is nothing for a
firewall to protect, period.  It would be like erecting an enormous
flood barrier in the middle of the Australian desert, or putting
traffic lights in the middle of a large park.  It just doesn't make
sense, full stop.

This is exactly the same approach that Ubuntu (used by tens of
millions worldwide) takes, because we decided very early on to ship
it with zero open ports.  Therefore, there was no point in having a
firewall, because there was _nothing to protect_.

This is the exact same situation as with Internet Tablet OS.

Cheers,
Daniel
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-developers/attachments/20070113/d0416cc7/attachment.htm