Open Source is 'Not Reliable or Dependable'

Exter-C writes "News.com is reporting that Jonathan Murray, the vice president and chief technology officer of Microsoft Europe has made claims that 'some people want to use community-based software, and they get value out of sharing with other people in the community. Other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model.'"

Comments

RTFT

[mechanosm]

That's the title of the article at news.com.com.com.com. Perhaps you can address your question to the editors there.

I have to agree in general

[erroneus]

Because, after all, what is "reliable" or "dependable"? By whose standards?

I just loaded FC5 on a machine cleanly. I then had it do a yum update. Once completed, firefox was unable to start as a regular user. (Root could start it.) Turns out that somehow the ${HOME}/.mozilla directory was chown root.root for some reason. I changed it and all was well again.

So yeah, it's "imperfect."

But GOOD-FREAKING-GOD! This is Microsoft claiming this? As if they set the standard for reliability and dependability? All this while their EULA states that their software is not guaranteed to be suitable for any purpose at all. That just OOZES customer-service, reliability and dependability.

Ridiculous...

An anoying AC asks for references.

[twitter]

The vast majority of internet-facing computers that function as zombies are in that state thanks to user intervention. I dare you to prove otherwise. Because if that wasn't the case then every single "Windoze" computer on the internet would be a zombie, and that is not the case, now is it?

Well, the majority of M$ computers ARE infected. It does not take long and it requires no "stupid" action by the user. Indeed, no action is required other than plugging the thing in. Study after study has shown this, but here are two for you:

• 2002, BBC, most read english language news site, tells users to "avoid Internet Explorer" based on drive by exploits.
• 2004, Botnet responsible for 80% of world's spam
• The Internet Storm Center, 2004, 20 minute half life.
• Avantgarde Study, 2004, 4 minute minimum time.
• A 2005 study of zombies, a total underestimation but one that shows large numbers.

Things have gotten worse not better and the numbers match personal experience all of us have. I've seen people bringing broken computers into stores. I've seen broken computers in banks, you know, the ones so far gone nothing can be done. While a user can help the process by going to net nasty sites, it's still not the user's fault. Their computer should not fail them that way.