sphbecker:
"I'm not saying your wrong, but you say it as if its a fact, and its not"
You are correct. I misstated my belief as fact. I stand corrected.
"people don't voluntarily spend their life reading Linux's source code looking for problems."
People might not spend their life reading Linux's source code. But i'd argue that just because open source code is out in the public it DOES get looked at and scrutinized by more people than proprietary code.
I agree with you that bugs in proprietary systems are hidden. This however is nothing more than security by sobscurity.
"Even when flaws are discovered and reported, the limited resources of the open source distributors make it difficult to rapidly design and distribute a patch."
I think you might want to do a bit more research on this, I don't believe its true. My distribution had a patch within hours after the vulnerability was reported and so did many other distros.
"Finally, as you pointed out, there is a lot of 3rd party software included with Linux, IE a lot of software that the distributor is not responsible for fixing, thus causing more delays in the time it may take for a problem to be patched. "
I think if you'd dig a little deeper you'd be surprised at how fast security bugs in open source software are fixed AND distributed.
dkg_ctc:
"First off, there's no proof that it's "infinetely [sic] easier to spot bugs and vulnerabilities""
How can you make this statement. It is certainly infinetely easier to spot security vunlnerabilities and bugs in software when i can look at the source as opposed to spot such in software who's code is proprietary and closed.
As i wrote above i misstated my belief that the open source process makes it more secure as fact. You are correct. It has not yet been proven (at least not to everyone's satisfaction.
"Therefore, Linux distributions shouldn't be held to security. Gotcha. "
Unfortunately I didnt say that.
Also I didnt' give it as an "excuse". Its only a logical reason for why one may find more bugs in a Linux distribution than with win2k3.
"Maybe you should start making Linux distros own up to their security vulnerabilities."
They do own up to them. I didn't say they don't exist. I was simply giving an explanation for why you may see more security announcements in a Linux distro than with Win2k3.
If code is out in the open, and hundreds of 3rd party software is included i'd EXPECT there to be tons of bugs to be found, woulnd't you?
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