Re: tlug: The Myth of Open Source Security

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Simon" == Simon Cozens <simon@example.com> writes:

    Simon> And he misses out the obvious conclusion: open source
    Simon> projects are not *magically* secure - someone still has to
    Simon> do the work.

I don't see your point.  He makes exactly this point in three or four
places.

    Simon> With closed source projects, you don't even
    Simon> have the option.

This is true.  Open source is a GoodThang[tm].  But that's not the
point; Viega is hardly likely to be attacking open source qua open
source.

The point is that people who don't understand the arguments that
people like Eric Raymond (ESR) make makes them think that open source
is a magic bullet.  Not so surprising, since ESR himself evidently
believes it to be a silver bullet at worst.

I don't know if you had joined FSB (the Free Software Business mailing
list) at that point yet, but about two weeks ago I had an exchange
with Crispin to the effect that Linux distros will be forced to
specialize, resulting in fewer resources being devoted to development.
_I_ didn't have evidence, just theory, but looky! looky! Chris
describes exactly the process I was talking about:

>>>>> "wile y" == Chris Sekiya <sekiya@example.com> writes:

    wile y> Linux isn't as cool as it used to be.  The quality of the
    wile y> kernel code has ceased to impress me, especially when
    wile y> compared to that of NetBSD.
[...]

    wile y> Hell, support for non-intel platforms has seriously
    wile y> suffered in the 2.3.x tree (but this will the the subject
    wile y> of a separate rant, essentially indicting RedHat for
    wile y> determining the sparc hardware support priorities).

Well, whaddayaknow.

    wile y> There _is_ a pattern.

Indeed.

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