On Dec 10, 2008, at 8:41 AM, Judd Pickell wrote:

> In a country in which children's information is held (or is supposed  
> to be held) so secretive, can we really trust a fully FOSS setup, or  
> would it make more sense to have a small set of subprograms that  
> handled such sensitive data not be FOSS?

Hm.  I think you need to distinguish between software and data here.   
If my social security number is held in a MySQL database, then anyone  
can have access to the MySQL source code due to the GPL.  That does  
not mean anyone has a right to access to my social security number.   
They're entirely separate concepts.

The problems of electronic voting machines shows that we need open  
code even more strongly when it comes to securing sensitive data.   
Closed source does not equal secure code.  I'm totally convinced of  
that argument.

alex