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MS Patches Go For Quality Over Quantity?
greengrass writes "eWeek.com is running a story about another Microsoft 'study'. This one discusses how good Microsoft is at providing patches for their OS. This is Part 2 of 3 in a series of articles, the first of which compared Linux and Windows on legacy systems." From the article: "Bill Hilf, who is director of Platform Technology Strategy at Microsoft and heads its Linux and open-source lab, told eWEEK in a recent interview that 'the differentiator for customers is not the number comparison, but which vendor makes the patching and updating experience the least complex, most efficient and easiest to manage.'"
Microsoft Corp. seems to be moving away from focusing on the actual number of security patches and updates that it and its software competitors release.
But of course they are...since Joe Brockmeier and Joe Barr of NewsForge , as well as Pamela Jones of Groklaw did such a masterful job of debunking the ridiculous annual summary of vulnerabilities by US-CERT (discussed earlier on Slashdot), Microsoft has necessarily had to switch propaganda tactics.
Instead, it is concentrating on making it easy and efficient for customers to obtain the security fixes and update their systems.
That's funny...I've never had a problem with my Yast Online Update...
"...patching, particularly for security, is not a 'Microsoft problem,' but something that affects all operating system and platform vendors," Hilf said.
Nice straw man, Hilf. No one is claiming that non-Microsoft operating systems don't need to be patched. The issue is whether the patches are issued in a timely manner...or not.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
It may be good to have lots of patches, but once you have a car where the duct tape weighs more than any other parts combined, isn't it time to just get another car?
How about, which vendor makes the patches unnecessary (i.e., few and far between) because it released a solid, working program?
I don't want patch quality. I want program quality.
I work in proprietary software. Most places that do proprietary software are overworked and quality suffers. (EA is an extreme example where workplace quality suffered as well as program quality.)
In the places I've worked, everyone's too busy doing what they've been assigned and they're overworked because they're understaffed. Hiring more people means less money for the company so that generally doesn't happen.
With FOSS, anyone can pick up the source if they have some spare time and hack away at it, and even if individual contributions are small, there's always someone with some spare time and a different view about how something should work.
Once you start doing for money's sake, you spend more time worrying about your bottom line than about quality.
If the rumors of Vista are true and it is an efficient and secure operating system that can function in plain jane deterministic manners, then I want it dual booting with Linux and nothing more ... ever.
Those rumours have preceded every version of MS-Windows since NT 3.51 (the most secure and stable version of MS-Windows to date, in my experience). I've stopped waiting for MS to produce an exceptional operating system. There are much, much better alternatives out there -- OS X, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, etc. What's the point of waiting for MS to play catch-up?
I'm interested in seeing Vista in action. I'll probably take a look when someone at work here picks it up. I don't hold out a lot of hope that it will beat the stability of Solaris, the ease-of-use and consistency of OS X, or the openness and general all-over chocolatey goodness of Linux and *BSD.
Let's see if they still group programs by vendor, and not by function.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
"IN MY OPINION, the largest thing Microsoft has to fear is a perfectly secure operation system they have created and distributed throughout the world. This is because they will no longer have "upgrades" or new versions of Windows to offer costumers."
Just to play devil's advocate, Apple's OS is largely bug-free and secure, and yet quite a few people pay cash money for an upgrade every year or so. This is presumably because each new release of OSX has enough cool features to give it some appeal, even without a bunch of critical security updates.
Would Apple sell enough upgrades to make a profit if they weren't making money from hardware (and iPod) sales? Maybe not, but it's worth asking.