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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.'"
I'll be the first to point this out (as I'm sure it's been pointed out many times on slashdot)--Gates has openly stated in an interview with Focus Magazine that users aren't interested in bug fixes.
... ever.
I've read other interviews with Gates in which he went further to explain himself by saying that the feedback they received from users was rarely requesting a bug fix. He listed a percentage in the high nineties that was feedback suggesting new features. And so, with each upgrade and patch, the aim wasn't for security or bug fixes but instead for new features which a lot of people asked for. The engineers will blame him for taking that approach but I'm sure the businessmen will laugh and follow Gates all the way to the bank.
Now, to be fair, it seems he has changed his stance (which--calm down--I believe people are allowed to do). And I applaud them if they really are trying to rectify what they made mistakes on in the past with their new patching strategy. There is (obviously) much debate about if they actually are trying to fix it and if these are actually quality patches. I'm sure the flamewar that ensues on this article will demonstrate that adequately.
I will make a speculation though. 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. Yes, some customers are looking for new features, but oftentimes I find myself on my Windows machine just begging it to behave properly as a cut and dry OS. 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
My work here is dung.
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.
____
~ |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?
I wouldn't normally think of 4 hours and 6 zillion reboots as "efficient" or "easy". -Julius
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.
that the head of their "Linux and open-source lab" is also their "director of Platform Technology Strategy"? Why ever should that be?
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
...but which vendor makes the patching and updating experience the least complex, most efficient and easiest to manage.
My office recently donated some P3 machines to a homeless shelter. The process of wiping the drive and installing Win 2000(SP4) and updating it to be current took nearly 4 hours for one machine. This was a machine that had just the OS. I had to run Windows Update and reboot at least a dozen times. Each time, I'd select and install all patches available. Due to prerequisite patch dependencies, however, each update/reboot cycle would make another 10-15 patches available. Hardly efficient. You'd think they could roll it all up into one huge patch and make it available. (And yes, I can understand the need for some places to avoid certain patches - make that the option, not the norm!)
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
ART on dA
XP still doesn't have support for Bluetooth...
You mean the Bluetooth connection between my notebook and my cellphone that I use to connect to the Internet on the road doesn't really work? Uh oh...
-h-
Reading that article made such a refreshing change compared to the Microsoft 'propaganda' stories we usually get linked to. eWeek gave Linux vendors the chance to answer and explain all of the figures which seemed to side with Microsoft - and invairiably once dissected, the usual Microsoft massaging of figures clearly comes to light.
One great example was this:
Interestingly, Microsoft's Hilf has a personal Red Hat workstation in his office that he uses on a daily basis. He selected a random week in October to provide a snapshot of the updates made to his Red Hat Enterprise Linux workstation over that period. He found that, between Oct. 6, 2005, and Oct. 11, 2005, his workstation was updated 66 times.
"I chose those dates randomly," he said. "I use this system daily, so it was literally a snapshot of a given workweek. All this illustrates is that patching and updating are part of any 'living' software system. It is part of the nature of modern software: Things change, bugs happen, features get added, and software needs to get updated."
But Red Hat's Cox pointed out that the second update release for RHEL4 was issued Oct. 5, resulting in a very large number of updated packages over the period of a day or two, "which is what Hilf saw. We only issued two Update releases for RHEL4 in 2005, so he was quite unlucky in his choice of a random snapshot," he said, tongue in cheek.
Unlucky indeed. Nice to see some unbiased reporting and not just verbatim duplication of Microsoft comments and 'press releases' for a change.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
...maybe. Wrong? Not really. The only thing more rediculous than rebooting a workstation several times after a small batch of updates though is doing the same with a server. I'm going to get a tad bit off topic, but in the same thread of throught, so bear with me. Every time someone posts on Slashdot that Unices have better uptimes than Windows boxen, you invariably get a half-dozen disgruntled Windows admins spouting off numbers of how long their servers have been up. What they don't take into account is that if those systems have been up as long as they claim, the necessary updates have not been applied. Most Windows updates still require that a system is rebooted before the patch actually takes effect. Unix-like systems, on the other hand, are routinely patched hot, and typically only require a reboot in the case of a kernel update or invasive hardware maintenance. If Microsoft does finally fix the design flaw that requires one to reboot after nearly every patch, it will not be innovative so much as becoming more Unix-like in design.
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.