THE FREEDOM DAEMON

[bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204]

Gary Jeffers proposes a system to perform remailing and chat-session relay
which, among other proposed features, propagates itself by virus and worm
approaches; the important issue is not the precise semantics of the differences,
but that the thing tries to spread itself and run without the help or
even permission of the owners of the machines it tries to run on.

This is bad.  It's offensive to try and run your stuff on people's machines
without asking them or informing them.  It can break stuff, it can
hog their resources for your application (which is no more pro-freedom
than having them hog your resources wihtout permission), and it's
*so bloody unnecessary*!  If you make a system that's easy to install
and propagates information about how to get a copy of it (e.g. by sending
header or signature lines in any mail it remails), then you can 
still propagate your software, but you can do it as a good guy
rather than a bad guy.

I have no more desire to have a "FREEDOM VIRUS" appear on my systems 
than a "BIG BROTHER VIRUS".  

		Bill