Is Open Source Fertile Ground for Foul Play?

jsrjsr writes "In an article DevX.com entitled Open Source Is Fertile Ground for Foul Play, W. Russell Jones argues that open source software is bad stuff. He argues that open source software, because of its very openness, will inevitably lead to security concerns. He says that this makes adoption of open source software by governments particularly worrisome. In his words: 'An old adage that governments would be well-served to heed is: You get what you pay for. When you rely on free or low-cost products, you often get the shaft, and that, in my opinion, is exactly what governments are on track to get.'"

Comments

Good idea, they probably installed a patch

[Tony Hammitt]

First install the patches up to current, then go trolling to try to piss off the slashdot crowd.

Doing it in the other order would be a really bad idea

RTFA

[freek_daddy]

From the 2nd paragraph of article:

First, and least worrisome, is that the core project code could be compromised by inclusion of source contributed as a fix or extension. As the core Linux code is carefully scrutinized, that's not terribly likely.