Linus Torvalds admits he was asked to insert a backdoor into GNU/Linux

[Andy Isaacson]

On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 02:48:37PM -0500, CypherPunk wrote:
> On 09/19/2013 02:39 PM, Tom Ritter wrote:
> >> Torvalds responded "no" while shaking his head "yes," as the
> >> audience broke into spontaneous laughter.
> > 
> > Is there any indication he took the question seriously and wasn't just
> > making a joke?  This is a lot to conclude from a single sentence.
> 
> While he certainly could have been being humorous, I can't see why he
> would have indicated 'yes' for any reason.

Because it's funny, and one of the ways that humans deal with stressful
situations is through humor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_humour#Humor_as_defense_mechanism

Having seen Linus give many talks through the years, I can assure you
that he might make such a joke regardless of the true situation.

> I mean, he could have made a
> funny comment or something sarcastic or any number of other responses.
> The shaking his head yes while saying now would seem to indicate that
> he's been told not to say that he's been asked.

Or it might indicate that he knew it would get a laugh from the
audience.  It's invalid to read detail into a single such comment.

> It would seem logical that he would have been approached though. I mean,
> they want total tech coverage. Why would Linux escape their attention?

It would seem logical, yes.  It would also seem logical for Them (tm) to
game-theory two more stages, and specifically avoid asking the most
prominent maintainers in favor of pressuring or encouraging lower-level
contributors to insert (or avoid fixing) bugdoors.  I don't think we
have enough information to make an informed judgement which scenario has
happened.

-andy