Re: Desktop apps interoperability

[Tom <tom@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 01:28:29PM +0800, Rogelio Serrano wrote:
> > > He does have a point, though - sometimes the application can not be
> > > changed. It may be a legacy application and for all I care, those are
> > > the ones most in need of a protective cage.
> 
> Unchangeable legacy apps should die.

Just like hunger and war, yes. The fact remains that they exist, and
you and I have to work with (and/or around) them.

Now, you _can_ do binary patching or even runtime binary patching, you
can overload system calls, you can do all sorts of dirty tricks to
change the behaviour of an "unchangeable" app. In most cases that's
non-trivial and it'll certainly mean you lose customer support.

SELinux is an excellent way to deal with these abominations and beat a
little sense into them. Were you on the list 2 years ago or so, when I
wrote policies for commercial Linux games? The audit log is an
interesting read, you wouldn't _believe_ what they try to access for no
obvious reason.



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