MS Cites National Security to Justify Closed Source

guacamolefoo writes: "It was recently reported in eWeek that "A senior Microsoft Corp. executive told a federal court last week that sharing information with competitors could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. He later acknowledged that some Microsoft code was so flawed it could not be safely disclosed." (Emphasis added.) The follow up from Microsoft is even better: As a result of the flaws, Microsoft has asked the court to allow a "national security" carve-out from the requirement that any code or API's be made public. Microsoft has therefore taken the position that their code is so bad that it must kept secret to keep people from being killed by it. Windows - the Pinto of the 21st century."

Comments

smells rotten in here

[e_AltF4]

> He later acknowledged that some Microsoft
> code was so flawed it could not be safely
> disclosed.

a) we better hire 100 cheap law benders (@4K/hr each) and donate some bucks to our preferred lobby group (and some donations to a political party or two can't hurt) to keep the bugs in the code, but we shouldn't start hiring 200 testers and 200 chief programmers (@1K/hr each) to begin getting the bugs out

b) where has the MS 'bug resolution month' gone ? wasn't there a supposed change in quality ? oh, i forgot - that came from the marketing gurus ("FUD-departemnt")

c) suppose terrorists and criminal crackers won't simply sign their "shared source" agreements and then do whatever they want - they wouldn't break the law and just spit on that agreement, would they ?

d) security by obscurity has always been better than actually fixing buggy code

e) how could we convince the crowd to buy our new, innovative and improved releases (a.k.a bugfixes users have to pay for) year by year ?

ouch - my head hurts !