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No. The technology is different this time. I argue software is a form of literacy, and literacy demands openness.

My great hope is the VW emissions scandal where the CTO of the company had to commit lines of code that said “do billion dollar crime”.

In a git repo.

We can see your crimes now.

Wikipedia is this in microcosm - we can see the edits, we can use software to watch for us, everything is in the open and the feudalism and rent seeking exist best in the hidden darkness

What we do with that is up to us.

My great hope is the VW emissions scandal where the CTO of the company had to commit lines of code that said “do billion dollar crime”.

We know that VW did not write the code. It was the supplier Bosch that did it. VW simply activated a feature through configuration.

I understood that the VW CTO committed the config chnage ?

the statement of facts[0] essentially disagrees with that perspective.

"33. Supervisors B, C, and F, and others, however, realized that VW could not design a diesel engine that would both meet the stricter US NOx emissions standards that would become effective in 2007 and attract sufficient customer demand in the US market. Instead of bringing to market a diesel vehicle that could legitimately meet the new , more restrictive US NOx emissions standards, VW AG employees acting at the direct of Supervisors B, C, and F and others, including Company A employees, designed, created, and implemented a software function to detect, evade, and defeat US emissions standards.

tl;dr : Bosch (company A) along with VW employees created the evasion function at the behest of supervisors.

[0]: https://www.mass.gov/doc/vw-statement-of-factspdf/download

Do you remember where you read that information?

My great hope is the VW emissions scandal where the CTO of the company had to commit lines of code that said “do billion dollar crime”.

There's zero chance that the CTO at a company as big as VW is going to be personally committing to code repos.

I thought it was already established that's exactly what happened?

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