Linux-Advocacy Digest #226, Volume #34 Sat, 5 May 01 19:13:04 EDT
Contents:
Re: Linux advocacy or Windows bashing? (Mig)
Re: article on Windows 2002 ("Bobby D. Bryant")
Re: Alan Cox responds to Mundie (Tim Smith)
Re: Linux is paralyzed before it even starts (GreyCloud)
Re: Linux a Miserable Consumer OS (Donn Miller)
Re: How to hack with a crash, another Microsoft "feature" (GreyCloud)
Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT (Chad Everett)
Re: The Text of Craig Mundie's Speech (GreyCloud)
Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT (Chad Everett)
Re: Windos is *unfriendly* (GreyCloud)
Re: Linux advocacy or Windows bashing? (Donn Miller)
Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT ("Adam Warner")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Mig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux advocacy or Windows bashing?
Date: Sat, 5 May 2001 23:50:54 +0200
Mikkel Elmholdt wrote:
> "Mig" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>> Why do you open a thread in a group supposed to be about Linux advocacy
>> then?
>
> Because I don't see much Linux advocacy here, that's why. Most posters
> here seem to believe that bashing Microsoft is equivalent to advocating
> Linux. I happen to disagree. Everybody knows by now that MS products lacks
> in stability (OK - there seem to be a few die-hard trolls around who claim
> the opposite, but then there are also people claiming that the world is
> flat). But abandoning Windows is not the same as taking up with Linux.
> There *are* alternatives, you know.
Youre assuming that the *.advocacy groups purpose is to argument for the
use ot this or that OS. This is not the case - these groups were created
with the purpose of removing flamewars from the real technical groups and
have people throw dirt in a innocent way at each other- THIS WORKS WELL
HERE ;-)
The reason for bashing MS is simply because after a day at the office using
W2K and having it crash Exploder, Netscape, Outlook etc at regular
intervals, it feels good to logon to the net wiht ones Linux, *BSD or
whatever Box and screem the Micros~1 SUX ;-) Amazingly even people running
Windows and using OE do the same here
> To be honest, even if I am not a Linux/Open Source convert, I am not
> totally immune to the luring calls from that camp, and I an certainly not
> a MS fan either (seen enough strange things from our NT servers &
> workstations for that). But still not being totally converted, I go to a
> seemingly Linux advocacy group to find some compelling arguments for using
> Linux. And what do I find? A load of drivel, outright BS, and mindnumbing
> MS bashing! That frankly irritates me. You are convincing anyone new with
> this party line.
I agree with you except that this "bashing" is innocent and just is
"letting steam off". I never understood why the average user should switch
to Linux - its fine as it is now with the tech guys using it- the is no
need for Joe Windows to be Joe Linux.
* Cheers
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: article on Windows 2002
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 15:59:51 +0600
"pp@o" wrote:
> It is must be hard to give simple version number to products, something
> like 1,2,3,4,5.... yes, must be really hard.
I think the switchover to using years for version numbers was a ploy to make
things sound out of date sooner. If you're running XYZ 3.2 it's easy to say BFD
when 3.3 comes out. If you're running XYZ 2000, then you're --gasp!-- a whole
year out of date now.
Kind of like Detroit coming out with a "new" model every year. Nine times out
of 10 it's the same as last year's model, with a few cosmetic changes, but it
plays well with the "keep up with the Jones's" mentality.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tim Smith)
Subject: Re: Alan Cox responds to Mundie
Date: 5 May 2001 14:53:38 -0700
Reply-To: Tim Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Fri, 4 May 2001 02:23:59 -0500, Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>And he's CERTAINLY making a critical error when over exagerates the forking
>of Windows (claiming that 98 and ME are seperate forks, rather than simply
>next versions) and claiming that NT, 2000 and the different editions are
>seperate forks as well. If that were the case, then there are literally
>thousands of Linux forks, maybe millions. There are three forks in Windows.
>3.x/9x based systems, NT based systems, and CE based systems. 3.x/9x based
You are not correct here, at least from a programmer's point of view.
>From a programmer's point of view, there are enough differences between
any pair from {95, 95osr2, 98, Me, NT 3.x, NT 4.x, 2K, XP} that I'd
count them as all forks: I can not write and test a program solely on
one, and have a reasonable level of confidence it will work on the
others.
--Tim Smith
------------------------------
From: GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux is paralyzed before it even starts
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 15:10:51 -0700
"T. Max Devlin" wrote:
>
> Said [EMAIL PROTECTED] in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Sat, 05 May 2001
> [...]
> >I won't argue that point!!!
> >
> >Flatfish
>
> BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA! As if you've ever 'argued a point'. LOL.
>
> You go troll, now, little flatfishie. Go insult some more people who
> know more than a tired old man who never really was very good with
> computers.
>
Thanks a lot!
> --
> T. Max Devlin
> *** The best way to convince another is
> to state your case moderately and
> accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
--
V
------------------------------
From: Donn Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux a Miserable Consumer OS
Date: 5 May 2001 17:16:08 -0500
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Linux was/is and will continue to be a miserable failure as a consumer
> desktop OS until it wakes up and starts offering an end result that is
> superior instead of an inferior result based upon theoretical superior
> technologies.
Actually, Linux isn't necessarily for instant gratification. If you want
that, go to se a whore. The computing equivalent of that whore is MS
Windows. Linux is a great platform. The only advantage Windows has over it
is application availability. That's it. The ease-of-use arguments are
bogus. Windows is the most widespread and popular consumer OS, so people
have no choice but to learn it. I can tell you, I've seen total and complete
computer newbies sit down in front of a PC for the first time. That would be
any time from 2000 to the present. They struggled mightily even with Windows
95 and 98. This is real what I'm telling you, the fact that I HAVE seen and
supervised and tutored people who have never ever sat down in front of a PC
before in their life. They struggled with Windows 95 and 98.
Now, I never taught them how to use Linux or anything. BUT, one person who I
supervised seemed to like the fact that you can just type "halt" at the
prompt to halt Linux instead of moving your mouse down to the start button,
click on "Shutdown...", etc. etc. Simple and direct, Linux is.
I'd be willing to bet you anything that they could learn to use Linux or
FreeBSD easier. There's no doubt in my mind. The Windows GUI is garbage.
Why the hell else would "Create start-up disk" be located under
"Settings->add/remove programs"? Hell, even I wouldn't have thought of that.
Linux and FreeBSD just don't enjoy the commercial application support that
Windows does, and that is why people are not willing to learn or use unix.
The fact is that Windows is NOT easy to use, but rather, people have already
learned it and are familiar with it, so that gives a false impression that it
is easy to use.
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------------------------------
From: GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: How to hack with a crash, another Microsoft "feature"
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 15:26:03 -0700
Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>
> "Charles Lyttle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
> > >
> > > "Roy Culley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > > In article <Ny7I6.22197$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> > > > "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > > > >
> > > > > I guess it depends on what you mean by "secure". If someone doesn't
> > > know
> > > > > the decode algorithm, 4-bit encryption could be quite secure
> > > >
> > > > What crap. If you don't understand something don't make pathetic
> > > > attempts to show that you do. ANY 4-bit encryption algorithm could be
> > > > cracked by brute force in less time than it took you to write such
> > > > rubbish. The best known encryption algorithms are known and open to
> > > > peer review. If you invent a new encryption algorithm but won't make
> > > > it open to peer review then it just will not be accepted. Security
> > > > through obscurity just doesn't cut it at any time.
> > >
> > > What's crap is your understanding.
> > >
> > > You can only brute force it if you know the decode algorithm. You can
> > > guess, and analyze and do lots of things, but it could be things like
> XORing
> > > the data against a pets name, while rotating 3 bits and compressing it
> using
> > > 10 different compression algorithms. The number of possible
> combinations of
> > > decode algorithms is limitless.
> > >
> > You aren't required to know the algorithm to crack encryption. You don't
> > care about the algorithm, you care about recovering the message. So the
> > attack has to create an algorithm that decodes the message. It doesn't
> > matter if the algorithm is the "correct" algorithm or not. In fact,
> > doing things such as you suggest often make a code easier to crack. When
> > you apply multiple compression algorithms, or multiple xor, the attacker
> > doesn't have to know how many times you compressed, he just has to find
> > one scheme to go from encrypted message to plain text.
>
> Ahh, but that's just it. Such a scheme typically needs to have a "rosetta
> stone" or some way to identify at least one character or word in the data.
> Suppose the encrypted data isn't plain text at all, but something that is
> based on a random character set chosen for the day it was encrypted? You
> need a point of reference, and without having that, you might as well have
> monkeys banging on keyboards.
>
> Typically, when trying to break encryption without knowing the algorithm,
> you either look for common algorithms, or you look for patterns that match
> known language patterns. If you disguise the language patterns by making
> sure that even the same phrase doesn't create the same series of bytes, then
> you remove the ability to deduce a new algorithm.
>
> > > Yes, if you had the software that encoded the data, you could probably
> > > reverse engineer it and figure it out, but if you only have encrypted
> data
> > > and know that a key is 4 bits, then you could spend eternity looking for
> the
> > > right algorithm.
> >
> > There are only 16 possible 4 bit keys. NSA would probably spend about 16
> > microseconds decrypting your message, no matter how you applied the key.
>
> I doubt it.
I don't doubt their abilities at all. You don't need to know the
encryption algorithm to crack someone elses communications. NSA does it
all the time. These methods you mentioned are a piece of cake for them
to crack. Its when you use very large keys and then double or triple
encrypt is when they run into trouble... even worse is when you don't
see a beginning or end of transmission of such said encrypted text.
When you can't spot the beginning and all you see is a continous stream
of garbage text going on for 24 hours a day is extremetly difficult to
decrypt... and they are capable of decrypting it.
--
V
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Chad Everett)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,alt.linux,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 5 May 2001 16:52:36 -0500
On Sat, 5 May 2001 19:54:17 +0200, Ayende Rahien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>"JVercherIII" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:ADVI6.297$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> Civility people! I use both Linux and Windows, and both have their places
>> (IMHO). I make a living right now writing VB programs so I'm kind of
>living
>> off the Microsoft gravy train. That being said, they do some things which
>> are very unpleasing. My main complaint with Microsoft is that they stifle
>> innovation. They never have come up with an original idea.
>
>Bullshit, and a big one.
>
Man, you'd better brush up on your history.
>To name a few of the top of my head:
>COM
>COM+
These are not original ideas, they came out of OMG and CORBA
>IE (No other browser can come even close, Mozilla can't render yahoo.com
>properly, and crash when you try to send a bug report)
>
Talk about big BullCraps:
Are you trying to tell us that IE was an original idea?
------------------------------
From: GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The Text of Craig Mundie's Speech
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 15:29:31 -0700
Weevil wrote:
>
> Mikkel Elmholdt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:9ctrmr$2iqt$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > "Interconnect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > news:9ctgi2$7fa$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > <snip>
> >
> > > That article made me sick! How greedy and rapacious can a company be.
> >
> > This kind of attitude never stops to amaze me. Why is it that some people
> > (you included) obviously regard making (lots of) money as close to a
> > cardinal sin? Microsoft is not doing anything that their competitors would
> > not love to do, if they had been just as good at producing marketing bull.
>
> Microsoft did not get here through marketing. Microsoft was handed their
> monopoly by IBM when IBM hired MS to provide an operating system for its
> upcoming PC. It is popular to claim that IBM's management was incredibly
> stupid in doing this, but the truth is that NO one knew that's what was
> happening, including Microsoft. MS had been around for years already when
> they lucked into this windfall. They were just another software company,
> competing with others and dominating nothing.
>
> Marketing also did not enable them to maintain their monopoly when superior
> competition arose. They kept their monopoly by their willingness to take
> ruthless, unethical, and (in most countries) illegal action against their
> competitors.
>
> I personally believe that marketing did enable them to increase their total
> number of customers, though. They really went all-out with their Win95
> media blitz. After that, people who hadn't thought about computers twice in
> their lifetimes were now shopping around for them.
>
> > But then every religion needs a Satan, and MS is obviously filling that
> role
> > in the Church of the Holy Penguin ....
>
> You haven't been around long, have you? This isn't a Linux phenomenon:
> it's a Microsoft phenomenon. MS attacks, viciously, anything (and anyone)
> they perceive to be a threat, however slight, to their monopoly. For some
> reason, so do some of their users. This produces a very predictable
> reaction: anti-Microsoft sentiment among the users of whatever MS has
> targeted.
>
> Flash back to the mid-80s, when the dominant OS was Microsoft's text-only,
> single-tasking, memory-limited DOS. A few flashy and attractive
> alternatives were cropping up, the biggest among them being the Macintosh.
> Others were the Amiga and the Atari ST.
>
> My preference was for the Amiga. It was truly multi-tasking, had a colorful
> GUI as well as a command line interface, built in sound chip and graphic
> accelerator, etc, etc. It was a multimedia system before the word existed,
> and the list of advantages it had over the primitive DOS machines would have
> filled volumes.
>
> The non-internet Usenet equivalent of the time was BBS "echo" areas.
> Shortly after I got my Amiga, I joined a few Amiga echoes, expecting to find
> other Amiga owners and lots of helpful tips, interesting stories, that sort
> of thing. What I found instead was pretty much what exists here in COLA --
> a few DOS users who tirelessly attacked the Amiga, insulted its users, and
> praised DOS, along with a few Amiga users who defended the Amiga and, one by
> one, took to attacking DOS.
>
> Back to the present:
>
> This is a Microsoft thing. Not a Linux thing, not a Macintosh thing, not a
> FreeBSD thing. You don't find Mac users in COLA bashing Linux, nor do you
> find Linux users in Mac groups bashing Apple. The same goes for OS/2,
> FreeBSD, and every other system you can name...except Microsoft. Microsoft
> users invade every non-MS newsgroup and attack relentlessly.
>
> The reverse is not true. Unless it has changed recently (I haven't
> checked), you do NOT find Linux users attacking MS in the MS newsgroups. I
> used to check for that on a semi-regular basis, and while it did
> occasionally happen, it was pretty rare. There were never any Linux/Mac/OS2
> users who just hung out daily in the MS groups bashing Windows at every
> opportunity.
>
> It's a Microsoft thing. It has been ever since they got their monopoly.
>
> --
> Weevil
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "The obvious mathematical breakthrough [for breaking encryption schemes]
> would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers."
> -- Bill Gates
I couldn't agree more. I worked thru those years and watched it all
happen.
--
V
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,alt.linux,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT
Date: Sun, 6 May 2001 01:10:25 +0200
"Edward Rosten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:9d1ot0$rhs$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > COM is not an extension to OOP. There's no such thing as "extending"
> > OOP. Either it is, or it isn't.
> >
> > For instance, COM is perfectly useable from C without a single object in
> > sight. Component based programming and Object based programming are
> > related, but not even close to being the same thing.
>
>
> You also don't seem to fully understand Object Orientation. It is
> perfectly possible to write object orietated code in C (take for example
> the Xt toolikt and derivitaves), it's just that C doesn't provide handy
> things like classes built in that C++ provides.
>
> So claiming that COM is usable from C says nothing about its
> objectorientatedness.
You can write OO-like code, but OO require encapsulation, polymorphism, and
couple of other buzzwords.
C doesn't support any of the above very well.
Yes, you *can* do it in C, C++ first compiler was a C preproccessor, but
it's a PITA to do it in C.
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,alt.linux,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT
Date: Sun, 6 May 2001 01:17:11 +0200
"Chris Ahlstrom" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Ayende Rahien wrote:
> >
> > "JVercherIII" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > news:ADVI6.297$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > Civility people! I use both Linux and Windows, and both have their
places
> > > (IMHO). I make a living right now writing VB programs so I'm kind of
> > living
> > > off the Microsoft gravy train. That being said, they do some things
which
> > > are very unpleasing. My main complaint with Microsoft is that they
stifle
> > > innovation. They never have come up with an original idea.
> >
> > Bullshit, and a big one.
> >
> > To name a few of the top of my head:
> > COM
> > COM+
> > MTS
> > IE (No other browser can come even close, Mozilla can't render yahoo.com
> > properly, and crash when you try to send a bug report)
> >
> > Just to note:
> > COM was copied by many applications. Mozilla's XPCOM, Bonobo & RNA are
few
> > examples.
>
> COM descended from Microsoft DDE, didn't it? Anyway, you might
> consider COM to be copied from CORBA. Or you might say they
> all arose from the zeitgeist of the times.
According to Erik, COM predate CORBA.
> > No one has been successful in copying IE so far, sadly.
>
> Thank Jesus! It's a real HTML breaker, and has led to
> circus plug-ins like Macromedia Flash and Shockwave, as
> well as the ability to hijack a workstation through HTML
> or VBScript.
Nothing render pages better than it.
NS has plugins as well. And you didn't even needed VBScript to hijack a
workstation, all you needed is a JPEG.
> > COM+ is also uncopied to my knowledge.
>
> Frankly, why would anyone copy a Microsoft product? At best,
> it would merely lead to being bought out... oh.
MTS, which you neglected to mention, was copied by Sun, IBM, BEA, and 25
other big companies.
It's called EJB.
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,alt.linux,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT
Date: Sun, 6 May 2001 01:21:11 +0200
"donc" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Oh sure. And everybody knows that NCSA Mosaic was inspired by IE. Why,
> if it weren't for Microsoft's innovation there wouldn't even an
> internet today. But perhaps their biggest contributions have been in
> the areas of reliability and openess.
I'm not talking about first generation, but we *could* get into NS stealing
the code.
I'm talking about IE4 & 5, just check the feature list of IE compare to
anything else.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Chad Everett)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,alt.linux,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 5 May 2001 16:56:47 -0500
On Sat, 5 May 2001 13:52:28 -0500, Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>CORBA came after COM. COM originated at MS in 1987, but wasn't actually put
Please cite a source for this 1987 date. OMG started approx. 1989. You're
COM origination date is fictitious.
>into a product until OLE 1, which MS released in April of 1992 in the form
>of Windows 3.1.
>
------------------------------
From: GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Windos is *unfriendly*
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 15:33:38 -0700
Pete Goodwin wrote:
>
> In article <9ctqoc$2hu3$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> > Hmmm - according to the "Porter Principle" we obviously have:
> >
> > 1) When someone complains that Linux is hard to setup and use, then the
> > following apply:
> > - He is stupid and ought to stay away from computers
> > - He is probably paid by Microsoft
> > - He should RTFM, and Get A Life, and <whatever>
> >
> > 2) When someone complains that Windows is hard to setup and use, then the
> > following apply:
> > - He is making an educated and intelligent assessment
> > - He is finally seeing the light
> >
> > Perhaps a bit unbalanced, don't you think Terry? Ever occurred to you that
> > this Motorcycle guy perhaps needed to RTFM on general PC setup and such?
> > (using months to network two WinPCs - really impressive!)
>
> What did you expect? This is a linux advocacy group where everything
> linux is seen through rose tinted glasses. Mind you, judging by the way
> the commercial companies trying to make a go of linux, maybe its brown
> tinted glasses.
>
> --
> Pete
Well Pete, I don't know what you'd do, but Wife and I are going to
remove Win98Se off of the HP Pavillion and try RedHat 7.1. I can't see
buying a new computer just to get XP when the current machines only
problem is the Win98SE. There's nothing wrong with the hardware so why
through it out for XP? We don't need it for demanding games, just
business software. Win98SE has been nothing but a major headache in
getting things done.
--
V
------------------------------
From: Donn Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux advocacy or Windows bashing?
Date: 5 May 2001 17:28:46 -0500
Poor Microsoft. So unpopular. So many vendors not writing drivers for
Windows. Why does everyone in here always pick on the underdog? Dammit,
someone please donate some money to Bill Gates before he goes broke! You
know what I think would cheer up Microsoft? Why don't we encourage producers of
printers, scanners, and digital cameras to make HW that will work only under
Windows 98! Wouldn't that be great? I've got a ton of such HW, and I'm glad
that I can be of help cheering up poor, broken Bill Gates and his company
that everyone hates and that produces an OS not installed on practically
every computer coming off of the assembly line.
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------------------------------
From: "Adam Warner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: The long slow slide to Microsoft.NOT
Date: Sun, 6 May 2001 10:34:04 +1200
Mike,
"Mike" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:k2WI6.24470$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> "Adam Warner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> ...
> > This is that crux of what you should attempt to deny:
> >
> > 1. Microsoft's code has not had extensive community peer review because
an
> > aspect of their development policy is keeping their source code secret
> (i.e.
> > security through obscurity).
>
> Okay, but what about Sun, HP, IBM, SGI, DEC, and Apple? All of those
> companies have kept their operating systems private, and yet you don't
> attack them.
>
> If I understand correctly, you're trying to argue that only Linux/FreeBSD
> could possibly be secure, but then you single out Microsoft as the only
> counterexample. That doesn't make a very convincing proof - at least, not
to
> a skeptic.
You've attempted to take one aspect of my argument out of context. And your
response shows a lack of understanding of that argument.
If Microsoft wants to fully open up its source to all and sundry through
some kind of "community" license then great. If it wants to be a closed
source security through obscurity company while satisfying its public
relations departments by distributing the code just wide enough to make it
easier for malicious people to obtain the source then that's where the
problem could arise.
Microsoft doesn't know what it believes any more. And we can't expect
customers to be anything but confused. It's hard to believe they have any
faith in security through obscurity and we know they have no faith in the
Open Source development process.
Oh, and some of your examples:
Sun: Heard of the community source licensing agreement?
http://www.sun.com/981208/scsl/principles.html
Apple:
http://publicsource.apple.com/
http://publicsource.apple.com/apsl/
If Microsoft goes as far as Sun in releasing their source code I'd be
genuinely delighted. But their statements are basically a PR stunt and it
won't happen at the moment.
And I was not saying security through obscurity couldn't be relatively
secure, just that basing your development upon obscurity principles and then
letting the possibility of the code getting into malicious hands would be
dangerous.
Does Microsoft believe in security through obscurity any more, or have they
shifted the entire argument to one between partially-open source and open
source?
Regards,
Adam
------------------------------
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