Bill Gates: Windows Patched Faster than Linux

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday October 16, 2003 @11:15AM from the arguing-over-who-sucks-less dept.

petard writes "In a very interesting interview published by the Register, Bill Gates made several interesting claims about Longhorn. Many of them have been extensively covered recently, including plans to force users to patch automatically. Surprisingly, everyone seems to have overlooked his statement that Microsoft fixes bugs faster than Linux developers do. 'We've gone from little over 40 hours on average to 24 hours. With Linux, that would be a couple of weeks on average.' Either he's lying or woefully misinformed; their recent performance seems to be more on the order of 3+ months, or over 2000 hours."

1 of 679 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Who Solves Security Problems Faster? by Crispin+Cowan · 2003-10-16 11:34 · Score: 4, Informative

My favorite study on this question was "Linux vs. Microsoft: Who Solves Security Problems Faster?" by Jim Reavis. The data is from 1999 and 2000, but it is nicely systematic. At least back in 2000, Linux was much faster than Microsoft, averaging 11 days vs. 16 days.
Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, Immunix Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution