[SWLUG] Wow, seen this on Slashdot?

[peter]

Adam Rykala wrote:

>After all the hoohaa on Sun's CDDL announcement, now this
>
>"Microsoft bigwig Nick McGrath claims that Linux security is highly 
>exaggerated, and that the open source development model is 'fundamentally 
>flawed.' The gist of his argument appears to be his claim of lack of 
>accountability among distributors, coupled with generic statements short on 
>facts. 'Who is accountable for the security of the Linux kernel? Does Red 
>Hat, for example, take responsibility? It cannot, as it does not produce the 
>Linux kernel. It produces one distribution of Linux.' He goes on to say that 
>'Linux is not ready for mission-critical computing. There are fundamental 
>things missing,' pointing out the lack of a development environment and no 
>single 'sign-on system' giving reference to Microsoft's foundering .Net 
>passport program." I guess Linux can only aspire to the greatness of Windows 
>when it has such secure applications as Outlook and Internet Explorer. 
>Historically those have been proven to be of a caliber all their own"
>
>Lack of a development environment? Wow, there's some real good crack available 
>in Redmond it seems... ;-)
>
>a
>
>  
>
I see where you're coming from Adam; and agree with most of most of what 
you say.  However, I do have to say also that MS have come up with a 
really impressive development environment in .NET.  Couple that with 
Visual Studio and you have a combination capable of creating secure, 
n-Tier, distributed applications with a facility that I haven't yet 
found with any Open Source product.

What's more, with mono, these applications can be cross-platform.

The only competition that I'm aware of is Java (J2EE) - and at least 
half the F/OSS community appear to have taken an oath never to allow 
anything  connected with Java ever to darken their HDD segments.

If anyone knows of any competing environments, I'd be very happy to hear 
about it - especially since I'm likely to be writing a paper on the 
subject next autumn.

Sorry, I've started rambling.  If anyone decides they'd like to discuss 
this I'll try to make myself clearer.

Cheers

Peter