[gluegadget]

But isn't this part of the point the author of the article is trying to make? In case of Superfish it was United States Department of Homeland Security who advised uninstalling it and in case of Sony's rootkit, a class-action lawsuit. In both cases higher authorities hired by people to protect them, protected them. Not FSF, nor the fact that the code wasn't GPL.

Even if Superfish was GPL licensed, the issue would've persisted. As article mentions even laptops coming with Linux pre-installed hardly come with the Kernel and userspace tools source code and you need to download them separately. Should Lenovo have preloaded Superfish as Linux kernel module and shipped it to its consumer laptops, United States Department of Homeland Security would have still advised removing it.

[boomboomsubban]

In both examples, a higher authority may have also acted but if they had done the same with free software things either would have been caught immediately or a lawsuit would have been possible for breach of license if they tried to hide it.

>In both cases higher authorities hired by people to protect them, protected them. Not FSF,

The FSF did a better job of protecting them with their unwavering stance. Neither would ever have caused an issue if you followed their advice to never use non-free software.