Thursday, March 16, 2006

UK prepared to cancel Jet Fighter order over OS

Cory reports that the "UK government has threatened to cancel an order for US-built Joint Strike Fighter jets unless America turns over the source-code for the jets' firmware." VUNet says "Lord Drayson, minister for defence procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be "switched off" by the Americans without warning." Cory's spot on: "This is the big fight for the next twenty years: do your devices take orders from you or someone else? Whether it's the box on top of your TV, the phone in your pocket, or the fighter-jet in the hangar"

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