Hacker News Reader

Could you elaborate on what definition of "malware" you're using here? I'm not certain it is the same as how the word is used in common parlance, but I would be interested to hear more if you disagree.

View on HN

Malicious software: software that instructs your computer to do something you don't want it to do. (Not a common definition, but I don't think it's a wrong one.)

So GNOME is malware because when I hit the key combination to "switch workspace right" on a secondary monitor it either moves my primary monitor's workspace right or all workspaces right depending on the setting, but not the focused monitor's workspace. And that's not what I want it to do.

Or if you're a programmer debugging something, the software is malware until you fix and recompile. Because during that time you are debugging it, it is instructing your computer to produce output that you don't want to observe.

It has to do with intention. The key feature of malware is that aspects of its behavior that its users experience as bugs are, to someone else, features. That is, malware is software with antifeatures, which are just intentional bugs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com