This must never happen again

This must never, ever be allowed to happen again.

I propose that we need a new law, mandating that all hardware driver software be supplied in Source Code form.

And it *will* take a law -- otherwise manufacturers are just going to bleat about "giving our competitors an unfair advantage". (Then they'll just get straight back in the back room and carry on reverse-engineering their competitors' products.) At least if everybody is *forced* to release their code (and maybe a general IP amnesty is declared at the same time, just in case they have tried to hide evidence of copyright or patent violations behind Closed Source) then nobody gets an unfair advantage.

@Danny: The whole point is, there are *more* "good guys" looking for flaws to fix than there are "bad guys" looking for flaws to exploit. Hence for any given bug, the greater probability is that it will be found by a "good guy" (and therefore fixed).