Microsoft reward snags suspected Sasser author

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BAD example.

Dan O'Dowd is a man facing hard times. He is misrepresenting facts so that he can show his company's own product to be better than his primary competition which is Linux in embedded defense systems.

His outrageous statements were heard throughout the OSS community and most ignored it. Groklaw did a article on it too with responses from men as important if not more so than Mr. O'Dowd.

[link]http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040411073918151&query=Green+Hills[\link]

A tiny bit of the responses:

"Mr. O'Dowd makes the common mistake of confusing obscurity with security,' said Ready. 'Open Source is actually more secure than closed source proprietary software because the oversight of technology content is broader and deeper. Instead of just one company monitoring its own contributions ? or potentially hiding security holes and exploits ? a worldwide community of interested parties actually oversees Linux to make it strong and secure. That's why the NSA ? the most security-conscious organization in the world ? chose to standardize on Linux, and even supplies its own version of secure Linux."
-- Jim Ready, CEO of MontaVista

"The shrill broadside of FUD by Dan O?Dowd against the use of Linux in defense systems is in my view just a reflection of the pain that vendors of proprietary systems with closed interfaces are experiencing as the embedded world moves towards Linux. Linux is rapidly becoming the open multi-vendor standard across the embedded industry including the defense market. The fact is that embedded Linux is an unstoppable force -- the largest of the vendors of proprietary RTOS's, Wind River, has already switched from Linux bashing to embracing Linux.

The release is full of inaccurate statements and wild generalizations. Mr. O?Dowd would have us believe that every foreign developer working with Linux is a spy or terrorist, contributing subversive software to the Linux sources, and that their contributions are automatically included in Linux by Linus Torvalds and the Linux kernel team without any scrutiny. Further he implies that all the professionals in the military and defense industry would blindly use it for mission-critical programs without addressing security concerns! His reference to Ken Thompson?s backdoor in Unix ignores the difference between a binary versus source."
-- Dr. Inder Singh, CEO of Lynuxworks

Your example is about as bad as they will get. It's like Bill Gates saying Linux sucks and Windows rules and basing it on how much of the market he owns.

Posted by: doe_z   Posted on: 05/09/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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