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[Grampa]

I installed Build 760 and noticed that a number of activities did not work (mplayer, Sonata, xo-get, and others). After a little experimenting, I determined that the new security system using isolation was to blame. I disabled this system by deleting the file /etc/olpc-security -- it is an empty file that can be easily recreated -- and that fixed all of these activities (mplayer still needs a little tweaking by installing a font).

My question is: What are the downsides to disabling security?

[mavrothal]

My question is: What are the downsides to disabling security?

Depends how do you feel about security... 
From what I understand this inactivates Rainbow http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Rainbow so (among other things) activities can access directories otherwise not permitted, have inappropriate uid and gid etc.
Obviously malformed or malicious activities can mess up your system, but with the XO the solution is only a clean-install away .
Better open a ticket or inform the activity developers for a long-term solution.

[Grampa]

That's pretty much what I thought. While I haven't actually seen a ticket, I have seen several references to the fact that these activities are broken -- since around build 703. I suspect that the activity developers have lost interest.

I'm willing to risk possible infection in order to get a working media player. As you said, it's no big deal to do a clean install.

[Grampa]

This is just to report that there are some other downsides to disabling isolation security. Certain programs appear to require it. For example the Firefox installers for Adobe Flash and Java are set up to place files in the ~/isolation folder. After installing into those folders, Flash and Java don't work if security is disabled; they begin working again once security is re-enabled. I suspect it wouldn't be too difficult to install these programs manually -- i.e., not using the Firefox installer -- so that they wouldn't require the isolation folders. But I don't know how many other programs will be adversely affected by disabling security.

I think I'll leave security enabled except when I want to play music or run an older activity that is incompatible with security.