On Sun, 8 May 2005, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
On Sun, May 08, 2005 at 04:20:22PM +0300, Josh Zlatin-Amishav wrote:On Sun, 8 May 2005, Dan Kaspi wrote:
When listing the main advantages of Linux , the most important one I had thought of was security ; when you access the internet from a Linux machine, chances that you get a virus or spyware or someone will intrude your machine are smaller ; He answered that , when thinking in the long term (2-3 years) , as more people will use linux as a desktop, this can be easiy changed; moreover, he claimed that since Linux is an open source, maybe it is even easier to develop viruses/spyware to it. In this point I did not know what to answer him. I am not a security expert; it could be that he is right in this point.
Hi Dan, Your friend is correct, it may be in fact easier to develop malware for OSS. Yet the same problem (access to the source code) makes it harder to hide "bad" code.
But also gives incentives to vendors to fix problems and not hide them. So far this has worked very well.
(Naturally, being free software is not a magic bullet or anything)
You are also not dependant on one source to provide fixes to the problematic code.
Actually: I get all of my software from Debian. I get all of my fixes from Debian. On windows I see people with software from multiple vendors. Even free software on windows isn't usially custumized by a ditributor like in Linux.
Hi Tzafrir,
I meant that you are not soley dependant on say using your example Debian, or the Debian package maintainer for the code fix. While that is usually a
quick, reliable and easy method to receive code fixes for all packages installed
on your box, there are some cases (for instance when a package is no longer maintaned)
when the fact that you are not locked into one mainainer is an advantage.
-- - Josh
I can easily update all of my software with the latest security updates. Can you say the same about any non-free installation?
================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
