-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On March 22, 2004 01:43, Curtis Sloan wrote: > DISCLAIMER: I have been in rant mode about security lately, I don't know > why. Take all of the following with a grain of salt. :-)
=) > Ugh, propaganda just drives me nuts; it sells an agenda, not the > product/service/ideal/whatever. agreed. > 4) "It's simply going to be more secure than proprietary software." > > There's no evidence to support this. Open Source software can be more > secure; it can also be much worse than closed source. i don't think he was referring to some empirical logic approach to proving such a statement, but rather making an observations based on historical trends. one can argue the case _logically_ in both directions (though i personally tend to agree with the Free / Open Source arguments), but at the end of the day when the rubber hits the road Open Source software has historically tended to be more secure. why? lots of reasons, some of which are simply coincidence. but that's the history, and there's currently no reason to think that trend will change. > Secure software has > little to do with whether it's open or not; good software design and > adhering to best practices has more to do with it. IANAD (Developer), but i agree; the question is where do good design and best practices more often crop up? closed or open source? this is a very interesting topic, and one in which it is easily shown that Open Source has great potential that most of the larger projects excercise to the full extent. > "We haven't had a 9/11 of computer security," Andreessen says, but it's > coming, and "it will wipe hard drives and propagate." > > WHAT?! This is by far the worst statement in the entire article. FLOSS > advocates would call this FUD coming from Microsoft (or anyone else, for > that matter). A rose by any other name... yes, this was poorly worded. > 5) "Open source benefits from anti-American sentiments." as was this... it seems he mistakes the pride and sense of security people have in their own country as being Anti-American. just because some country wishes to rely on their own steam and support their own economy and people doesn't equate to Anti-American. but ... oh well ... =/ > 8) "Servers have always been expensive and proprietary, but Linux runs on > Intel." > > OK, I know Linux isn't expensive and proprietary. So why is Intel in this > statement? it's a reflection on the history of UNIX/VMS/mainframes (aka "real servers"): great systems, but amazingly expensive hardware. why? you were locked into proprietary, low-volume platforms mostly because the code was closed and controlled by a single vendor. MS has done pretty much the same with Windows, except that their platform of choice is innexpensive. in any case, servers that could pack a punch USED to be damned expensive. today they aren't. Andreesen is just saying that you don't have to compromise capability (e.g. UNIX) for economy anymore, and that that is partly due to the hardware platforms one can choose from (e.g. the Intel hardware family, which includes AMD and others). > Maybe I'm just being picky, but last I checked the *BSDs were open source > and ran on Intel. Mostly it sounds like a marketing scam based on the good > name of Linux. nah.. Andreesen's just a well know guy who's a source of... uhm ... warm air. not all marketing is a scam, but all products need to be marketed. one can be pedantically correct in marketing, but then 99% of people miss the actual message (attention spans, technical knowledge levels, etc). for Andreesen, perhaps Linux has been or currently is his Open Source experience and he was simply speaking out of his own experience. so from that perspective it really is a moot point if BSD is also Free Software ... and to be honest, BSD doesn't have all the current perks and benefits that Linux has and probably never will. there is BSD licensed software that does, but the OSes that share that moniker have yet to make that market leap. - -- Aaron J. Seigo GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43 while (!horse()); cart(); -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2-rc1-SuSE (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAYckW1rcusafx20MRAqoyAJkBTT3gcWcktv6EB6kcM3GK5LygfQCglDOU /0XXmZocoilZJfhyUYzXmyo= =gLuz -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
