Some day someone will write a tool which can determine an application (eg, on Windows) is destructive, by recursing into its code and finding all file accesses. You could easily monitor ever application running and make sure it doesn't, eg, write to c:/Windows.
So there are other ways than requiring the hardware manufacturer to vet safe software at the expense of the rebels and tinkerers.
I believe the pieces in Windows are already in place to do this, you can restrict an application to only be able to write in a preset set of directories, etc. What they need is an set of standards for applications that makes this possible, and then for application installations to use that by default.
Comments
Some day someone will write a tool which can determine an application (eg, on Windows) is destructive, by recursing into its code and finding all file accesses. You could easily monitor ever application running and make sure it doesn't, eg, write to c:/Windows.
So there are other ways than requiring the hardware manufacturer to vet safe software at the expense of the rebels and tinkerers.
I believe the pieces in Windows are already in place to do this, you can restrict an application to only be able to write in a preset set of directories, etc. What they need is an set of standards for applications that makes this possible, and then for application installations to use that by default.