"Robert C Wittig" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [...] > Anyone can peruse the code at any time, and they are not required to > 'report back' to the distro which provided the code, when they do so.
"At any time" is may be particulary important to those of us interested in making maximum use of older systems. Unlike commercial software development, a "dead" project can be brought back to life so long as somebody is around who is interested enough to maintain it. It needen't be "viable" in the commercial sense. There needn't BE the legion of programmers around to keep something up and going. I think Stephen's BasicLinux is a good example of this. The lone codesmith can keep things running just fine. > The code can then be used in any way, shape, form, or non-related > project, in whole or in part, as long as the Open Source licence it > was published under, is not violated in the process. Hehe. We'll have to see what SCO comes up with here. :) > [...] My > guess is, that a global enterprise, that is giving away free source > code to anyone who wants to play with it, has the numbers edge over a > closed source operation, that pays their workers a lot of money, but > demands secrecy from them... even from one module to the next, in the > same project. A mixed blessing sometimes perhaps! As Frederick Brooks made clear, it's not the NUMBER of programmers that determines quality. Open Source -- WITH good peer review and quality -- can yield good results (i.e. OpenBSD and relatives, Debian). However, if the same "release date" mentality gets applied (i.e. RedHat), it's no guarantee of superior quality OR security. I have to groan when I hear the marketeers starting up about these things! Along with variety of options and cost (of course), I think that the Open Source approach has raised the bar considerably for RESPONSIVENESS. Were it not for fixes being made quickly -- often within hours -- for GNU/Linux, BSD etc., I doubt we'd have seen Microsoft move away from the Service Pack approach, making us wait MONTHS for fixes. To their credit, they've announced and made available fixes for most recent exploits well in advance. Now if only there weren't SO MANY of them to deal with! - Bob To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
