[sobjornstad]

I worked at a place like this and we had a software registry, where if you had installed something and it wasn't on the registry somebody would start sending you nasty emails. This kind of thing would happen all the time: maybe the Linux machines weren't in the scans, or anything that came with the OS was whitelisted.

But if you wanted to install it separately on a computer that didn't have it already, then you'd need to get it “approved.”

[godelski]

  > maybe the Linux machines weren't in the scans

Honest question, how would you actually detect this? I mean I understand using the package manager install (and that's easy for them to control) but building from source and doing a local install (i.e. no `sudo make install`)? Everything is a file. How would you differentiate without massive amounts of false positives?

[johnisgood]

Even if it is your own work computer?

[zabzonk]

if the computer is provided for work, by the company you work for, it is not "yours"

limitations on what you can install on such machines can be quite draconian, including forbidding anything that IT Security and similar departments may not like.