[ntp:hackers] Standardizing NTP...

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Tue Jun 14 04:29:40 PDT 2005


In message <42AEBA59.5090800 at hda.hydro.com>, Terje Mathisen writes:


>I.e. you claim that the computer logs generated by the current ntpd are
>legally worthless, while we all know that exactly these kinds of logs
>from other systems/programs have been admitted as evidence.

Be aware that there is a very big geographical difference in how
logfiles (and other "automatically recorded evidence") is treated
as evidence.

Most of the cases have had the logfiles be part of sworn testimony,
ie: the ISP's employee swears that the contents is correct and
untampered with and that there is no signs or warnings that the
computers were wrong, or the Lady from the phone company testifies
that the sum of minutes on the phonebills for the entire exchange
add up to the independent "total minute" counters and match the
line utilization records so qed: the telephoneswitch didn't count
double for this customer.

In other words, the court put a person in the hot spot and let them
use the recorded evidence to bolster their credibility.

Of course the other sides lawyers are free to dispute the evidence
and testimony, but courts don't look kindly on lawyers who become
instant specialists on somebody elses kit.  (Just watch the IBM SCO
case where an SCO employee started telling IBM how their SCM tool
works).

Therefore the main convincing of trust is usually for the owner
of the computer and for his auditor.


With that being said, with my many years of experience in FreeBSD
I have also seen many instances of people who get a great commercial
idea and fail to get the rest of the project along with it for a
large number of reasons which make perfect sense to, on average,
one side of the battle..

Todd is in the same situation here and my best advice to him is to
go solo and not try to drag the project along.

I'm sure any patches he sends back will get a just reading and a
warm welcome.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.



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