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Defending Open Source Security

Posted by michael on from the as-if-it-needed-defending dept.

dpilgrim writes "DevX's A. Russell Jones as thrown down the gauntlet, questioning the security of Open Source software. I've picked up the gauntlet and posted a response over on the O'Reilly Network. As previously discussed on /. Jones' comments are too controversial to ignore."

1 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. not far-fetched, eh? by saforrest · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Much more likely is that distributions will be [...] created with the express purpose of marketing them to governments at cut-rate pricing. As anyone can create and market a distribution, it's not far-fetched to imagine a version subsidized and supported by organizations that may not have U.S. or other government interests at heart.

    Oh no! Linux is funded by Al Qaeda!

    This ridiculous hysteria, more than anything else, shows how much this is just propaganda. Cut-rate contractors who code for low-budget government agencies already exist; why would a closed-source one be any more trustworthy than an open-source one?

    If your quality control and background checks on outside contractors are so terrible that cut-rate Linux distributors could put in backdoors, why would you not have this problem with a bunch of contract VB coders? Especially since, in the latter case, they may only ever give you a compiled binary.