Slashdot Mirror
611 Defects, 71 Vulnerabilities Found In Firefox
Danny Begonia writes, "Some folks at Klocwork examined the large and complicated code base of the popular open source browser, Firefox. Overall, Firefox is a well written and high quality piece of software. Several builds were performed on the code, culminating in the final analysis of version 1.5.0.6. The analysis resulted in 611 defects and 71 potential security vulnerabilities. The Firefox team has been given the analysis results, and they will determine if or how they will deal with the issues." What are your thoughts — do Firefox and the open source community welcome this kind of analysis?
It seems mainly the problems were to do with memory leaks. Which having seen firefox eat 700mb of ram doesnt surprise me....As long as these probs get fixed i cant complain...Doning this kinda of analysis is much easier with the source code i imagine.
Especially now that firefox is so popular. Firefox makes up 10% of users on the general Internet (as counter by thecounter.com), with IE at 85%. My own tech related site has 76.4% of users using firefox, with just 10.1% on IE, and my other more casual site has 23.1% firefox and 64% IE (the rest being safari, opera, konq, etc.)
Warhammer forums
slightly OT I know, but relevent:
Back when I was a nurse, in the days before programming sucked me in, I was a manager in a private elderly care home for people with dimentia.
We kept excruciatingly detailed records of every scratch, cut and injury, serious or otherwise, that happened to our clients. So much so that on paper our accident record look awful compared to other homes, who tended not to be so open. We actually had fewer such incidents then other homes in our region, but we documented *everything*.
However, come official inspection day, the health authority inspectors were always very pleased with our records, and always passed us with a very high grade.
The reason? Instead of hunting around for hidden evidence that had been concealed, they just had to consult our records.
We were open about problems, and always sought solutions. We were also, because of our policy on recording everything, able more easily to identify problems with patients who were more likely to get cut, and work to alter their environment or diet to try and help.
The result was that we ended up being the top specialist care home in our region.
When I moved into computer science, the only software model that I would work with was open source. Again there is nothing gained from hiding problems with code, and it's much easier to identify issues. I discovered remarkable similarities with my old nursing practices and the Open Source method.
I realise the comparison may seem odd, but my point is that being open about problems is a far better way to reach solutions, whatever field it is applied to.