Comment by rollcat

> You can’t exactly stop someone from putting an open source OS on their hardware [...]

Of course you can. It's a train, not a PC. Its primary function is to *safely* get me from point A to point B. No safety certification for the whole thing (including software), means it doesn't go on tracks. The freedom of your fist ends where my nose begins, which means your freedom to mess up the train's software ends where I step on board.

Poland has had its share of railroad catastrophes, and I very narrowly avoided being a victim - I got late for this train: <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17248735>. I no longer live there - I like trains, but the trains in Poland are an unmitigated disaster every single time I visit.

> [...] and if the train software was open-source, then this “clawback code” nonsense would have been impossible to keep secret.

There's two problems with that:

1. Just because it's open source, doesn't mean you get to load your own modified version (see above); which means the software that's actually running on the train can trivially be made different from the sources you were delivered;

2. Just because it's open source, doesn't mean it can't have a hardware backdoor, or some sort of manufacturer-installed APT.

You can't even buy an Intel CPU that doesn't include an entire separate core, with its own Ethernet controller and OS - and that is the stuff that's actually documented and sold as an "enterprise" feature. Imagine an entire train of nooks and crannies to hide this sort of nonsense.