MSoft goes after the Pentagon use of open source

budge budge at el-pleasant.org
Fri May 24 13:08:15 PDT 2002


On Thu, 23 May 2002 at 12:27pm Ian Murray wrote:
>
> Microsoft Corp. is aggressively lobbying the Pentagon to
> squelch its growing use of freely distributed computer
> software and switch to proprietary systems such as those
> sold by the software giant, according to officials
> familiar with the campaign.

There have been quite a few discussions over the years in comp.risks about military use of M$ OS's for mission critical systems. They've had entire warship systems just stop wowking due to Winblows 'blue screens of death' etc.

The ironic thing is that a LOT of open source software has been developed with direct or indirect DOD funding over the years.


> Microsoft also said open-source software is inherently less secure
> because the code is available for the world to examine for flaws, making
> it possible for hackers or criminals to exploit them. Proprietary
> software, the company argued, is more secure because of its closed
> nature.

This is an outrageous claim that if uttered by a security professional would be a serious ethical breach. What they are advoctating is "security through obscurity", which has been shown again and again (particularly w.r.t. M$'s products!) to be NO security at all. I find it hard to believe -- no, I take that back, I don't find it hard to believe at all...


> "I've never seen a systematic study that showed open source to be more
> secure," said Dorothy Denning, a professor of computer science at
> Georgetown University who specializes in information warfare.

How about a stduy that shows the opposite, Dorothy, hmmm?


> Jonathan Shapiro, who teaches computer science at Johns Hopkins
> University, said: "There is data that when the customer can inspect the
> code the vendor is more responsive. . . . Microsoft is in a very weak
> position to make this argument. Whose software is the largest, most
> consistent source of security flaws? It's Microsoft."

Yes, indeed.

-- no Onan

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate.

Hate leads to using Windows

NT for mission-critical applications.

-- What Yoda *meant* to say (Stolen from a Usent .sig)



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