Bug hunters, software firms in uneasy alliance

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Open V Proprietary

This article highlights some of the major differences between proprietary and Open Source products. Truly Open Source entities (such as the Linux OS) do not belong to anyone, they belong to everyone who contributes. Because a proprietary products is the intellectual property of a commercial busines, the larger these businesses/companies are, the more they will have a hidden agenda for the management of discovered flaws.

Number one is 'consumer perception'. It is not very efficient to spend millions of $$$ on campaigns whose goal is to convice the consumer that the company cares about security, if there is a weekly rash of new exploits. Once knowledge of a new exploit is inthe public domain, excuses and procrastination about its repair will further undermine consumer perception. It is a matter of fact that the later in the day that a bug is discovered, the more expensive it is to fix. In the case of most of these products (particulalrly Windows) EVERY bug is expensive to fix, especially where those bugs are emergent properties of a flawed design coupled with the problems that arise from the patchcode already plastered on to that original codebase. Of course there will be foot dragging and resentment directed at those who bring the flaws to light. There may be reasons why bugs are left unfixed, perhaps they impact areas due to be stripped out, or overhauled.

On the other hand one of the reasons why Linux might still be a little 'clunky' and gappy in its full support, is that while huge concerns like Novell and IBM are pumping millions of $$$ worth of coding effort into it, Linux is still, for the most part, maintained and fixed by volunteers. And there is nothing on this earth as fixed and focussed as a geek engaged on their favourite product. There is no clock watrching, no ciggy break every 10 minutes, no sneaking off early, when someone is putting in the effort for no other reason than they want to, which is the underlaying priciple of Open Source. And if a flaw is revealed, with an Open Source application, there is no single company to be perceived as "guilty", there is no single company to impose its agenda of covering up or denying or foot dragging. What hapens is that the volunteers rally and the flaw is FIXED, and fast.

The big corporations can only DREAM of such a dedicated workforce, working in their own time, completely disconnected from office hours or even time of day.

Open Source is demonstrating that the closed, proprietary model, which has as its objective the leverage of cash from an end users wallet, is not the only model that will fly. the clever companies are tentatively getting on board, the dinosaurs, the monopolies who have thus far had a license to cream the consumer without restriction, well, we'll see, won't we?

Posted by: whisperycat   Posted on: 09/06/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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