Well, if Minix was developed on NL and EU taxpayer dime it’s quite disconcerting that it’s now being used to potentially bug the computers of those same taxpayers.
I’m sure nobody would agree to paying for that, so why on earth does this man feel entitled to give away the product of “our” taxes without any restriction
As far as I am concerned I am not paying for my computer to be bugged. MINIX is a research project that is useful and interesting in its own right. That's what the EU is funding. GPS, the internet and the microchip were also publicly funded technologies. I don't think that anyone should object to the funding of these inventions because there are dubious uses of them (all of them sometimes in involuntary surveillance).
Ideally, bugging computers is a legislative issue, and the contract between the vendor of the particular technology employed to do it (in this case not even particularly built for that purpose) and its user is irrelevant.
Considering we have laws prohibiting the sale of surveillance technology to states suspected of human rights violations, as well as the sale of goods intended for misuse according to our own ethical standards (think medicines used in lethal injection executions) it would be quite asinine to look the other way claiming that fulfilling that particular research purpose exhausts all further uses.
Particularly if it’s potentially used against us, citizens.
Looking at MINIX as "surveillace technology" or "intended for misuse" (isn't that an oxymoron?) is stretching the definition very inclusively – it's an operating system. Yes, people that use computers for bad things sometimes use operating systems to facilitate those bad things. Whether you buy a license for Microsoft Bob or use MINIX for free is beside the point.
I specifically did not suggest "looking the other way" either, I just don't think the problem is open source operating system software that anyone can benefit from, it's involuntary surveillance, and I think that should be addressed legislatively rather than inhibiting publicly available research on very broadly applicable subjects.
Conversely, you could look at other research like the microchip, GPS and the Internet, all publicly funded to fulfill some defense purpose, and all having more than occasionally been used for indiscriminate surveillance. Would we be better off without these things? I don't necessarily assume a "no" to that, but it is fair to say that there are plenty of uses of these technologies that have had positive effects on society.
I’m sure nobody would agree to paying for that, so why on earth does this man feel entitled to give away the product of “our” taxes without any restriction