Global Knowledge: Why Open Source Software Can Help Create a More Secure IT Infrastructure @ VIRTUALIZATION JOURNAL

Global Knowledge: Why Open Source Software Can Help Create a More Secure IT Infrastructure

Evaluating the state of IT security and associated market statistics, it is apparent that traditional operating environments have not consistently provided acceptable levels of security to enterprise computing. Security-related exposures, liabilities, and losses are rapidly increasing, while conventional computing (hardware, system software, and network bandwidth) costs are all decreasing strongly year over year. Most of the operating environment vendors do not embrace a holistic approach to security - it is clearly an afterthought. There are major systemic flaws in their approach to security - and users are suffering the consequences every day.

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#9	jacksonj04 commented on the 15 Dec 2004 Linux Kernel is solid. Sadly, once you put useful applications on it (like the ones that make WXP 40 million lines long) it will fall apart.
#8	EightBits commented on the 15 Dec 2004 Comparing an OS to a Kernel is all nice and dandy, but maybe we should be comparing an entire Linux-based OS to Windows XP. Remember that Windows XP comes with a media player, wordpad, notepad, and many many other tools. So let's take the full Redhat Enterprise WS distro (since it's a pretty popular commercial distro) and track down all it's bugs and see if that average doesn't change. I don't think we should be comparing OS vs Kernel. It takes a lot more than a kernel to make my Linux machine go. Having said that, I would be very interested in a comparison of the Windows XP kernel to the Linux kernel.
#7	pcardno commented on the 15 Dec 2004 XP has been released for roughly 3 years. According to the poster, it's roughly 8 times the size of the code these guys analysed, in which they found 985 errors. So to be at the same level, that would allow for around 7880 bugs, or about 8-10 bugs being found per day since its release. Is that the frequency that's implied here? Also I would question though that the "bugs" they found would seem to be pure programming bugs, since they just analysed the source code. The majority of bugs found in systems are usually found by actually using the software and often come about as a result of either unexpected circumstances, unexpected input or compatability issues. Merely reporting the straight programming errors really isn't the same thing.
#6	JaJ_D commented on the 15 Dec 2004 If 5.7 million lines of code should have "114,000 to 171,000 bugs" that should be that Windows has 800k - 1.2 million bugs!!!
#5	vasqzr commented on the 15 Dec 2004 >>>>Talk about misleading stats...Apple != Orange<<<< What about if you throw in KDE or GNOME, Mozilla, etc, everything that you'd have to add to really equal the features of Windows XP....
#4	The-Bus commented on the 15 Dec 2004 Everything is based on estimates. Now, you know and I know that the Linux kernel has less bugs... but this is a tentative (at best, shoddy at worst) way of presenting that idea.
#3	kin_korn_karn commented on the 15 Dec 2004 Talk about misleading stats...Apple != Orange The Windows XP code base includes all of the extraneous crap that gets bundled with and on top of the kernel. The "Linux" code base just includes the kernel.
#2	uthGy commented on the 15 Dec 2004 >>>>Yes, but did the researchers say how many bugs were in those 40 million lines of XP code? Maybe there were far FEWER than 985 x 7 (a pro rate comparison), in which case Windows, not the Linux kernel, would come out on top.<<<< How can they have seen the XP code, dummy - it's closed source remember!!!
#1	Fair? commented on the 15 Dec 2004 Yes, but did the researchers say how many bugs were in those 40 million lines of XP code? Maybe there were far FEWER than 985 x 7 (a pro rate comparison), in which case Windows, not the Linux kernel, would come out on top.