Linux not accountable

© October 2003 Tony Lawrence

Tue Oct 21 18:28:27 GMT 2003 Linux not accountable

Update 2011-03-06: Has Microsoft become "accountable" for their security problems yet? Nope..

(Link checked, no longer working, sorry.)

Link: Linux not accountable for security, Ballmer says

What sets Windows apart from Linux in terms of development, security and patching, Ballmer said, is that Microsoft has an infrastructure that takes responsibility for Windows. "There's no roadmap for Linux. Nobody is held accountable for security problems with Linux."

Hmm. I wonder if he's read his own EULA lately? Just how are you "accountable" if you aren't actually.. accountable ?

Sure, Microsoft COULD make themselves accountable for security. If they did, they'd be sued out of business, so that's not going to happen.

"There's no reason to believe it would be of higher quality. I'm not necessarily claiming it should be of worse quality, but why should code submitted randomly by some hacker in China and distributed by some open source project, why is that, by definition, better?"

I'll tell you why: because J. Random Hacker doesn't have a boss who says "No, your patch causes too many problems for other stuff we want to do, so we aren't going to use it".

Microsoft is profit driven, Linux isn't. If fixing a security problems breaks half a dozen apps that stupidly need that hole, the Linux folks don't care: they fix the problem, and it's up to the app people to fix their problem. With Microsoft, the app people could conceivably say "No, don't do that" or ask for delays because they need more time to fix their stuff. THAT'S why Linux security management is better.

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