Jesse, I will add still more "anecdotal evidence" to this discussion:
Apache is the most used webserver in the world. It is a Free and Open Source package, and sits at the gateway to most server systems. If Free and Open Source is by its very nature hackable, why haven't more disasters occurred due to the use of Apache? Why don't more people use close-source proprietary servers? BIND is probably the most used nameserver in the world. It too is Open Source. Surely smart crackers could look at the code and find exploits. SENDMAIL probably carries more email long-distance than any other mail transport. Eric Allman wrote it about twenty years ago, and it has been Open Source the entire time. Just because a piece of code is Open Source does not mean that it is more or less vulnerable to attack. But it can be patched a lot faster, particularly across multiple hardware architectures from multiple hardware vendors, across multiple versions, once an exploit is known. Regards, md -- Jon "maddog" Hall Executive Director Linux International(R) email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 80 Amherst St. Voice: +1.603.672.4557 Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A. WWW: http://www.li.org Board Member: Uniforum Association, USENIX Association (R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. (R)Linux International is a registered trademark in the USA used pursuant to a license from Linux Mark Institute, authorized licensor of Linus Torvalds, owner of the Linux trademark on a worldwide basis (R)UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the USA and other countries. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
