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Linux Foundation: Security Problems Threaten 'Golden Age' of Open Source (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Posted by Soulskill on from the they-never-seemed-to-slow-microsoft-down dept.

Mickeycaskill writes: Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, has outlined the organization's plans to improve open source security. He says failing to do so could threaten a "golden age" which has created billion dollar companies and seen Microsoft, Apple, and others embrace open technologies. Not long ago, the organization launched the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), a body backed by 20 major IT firms, and is investing millions of dollars in grants, tools, and other support for open source projects that have been underfunded. This was never move obvious than following the discovery of the Heartbleed Open SSL bug last year. "Almost the entirety of the internet is entirely reliant on open source software," Zemlin said. "We've reached a golden age of open source. Virtually every technology and product and service is created using open source. Heartbleed literally broke the security of the Internet. Over a long period of time, whether we knew it or not, we became dependent on open source for the security and Integrity of the internet."

2 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. it needed to happen. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Interesting

    heartbleed was a blessing in disguise because companies were blindly assuming this software was secure and thus never investing a dime in it's development. this internet-scale problem woke up some people and now they are actually investing in real security.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  2. Open Source is working as intended by PvtVoid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's really, really good that somebody is stepping up and providing funding to maintain what have become critical Open Source infrastructures.

    At the same time, it's totally disingenuous to imply that recent security issues are somehow caused by the fact that they are Open Source. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that, had the same services been proprietary, they would have had fewer bugs affecting security. In fact, the only effect of having critical services closed source would very likely have been that the security issues would have gone undiscovered for even longer. Making the critical security infrastructure for the internet closed source would be insane.

    Open Source is working exactly as intended here: critical security issues were identified (ok, way too late, agreed), and fixed. Now the people who rely on those infrastructures are realizing (also way too late) that it is in their interest to provide funding to maintain them. This is how it's supposed to work.