Ballmer Says Commercial Software is Better Because Someone's Rear End is on the Line

[freegeeks]

Originally posted by: charrison

Originally posted by: freegeeks

Originally posted by: charrison

With all due respect, that's another straw man. I do think open source does security better -- much, much better. Ballmer's FUD not withstanding, I believe its record speaks for itself. That does NOT mean or even suggest that I claim open source is "exploit-free".

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I somewhat agree with this, but most open source products are much less feature rich, an therefor less complex. The lower complexity means fewer bugs. Freebsd, openbsd and apache are shining examples of what open source can achieve. Freebsd and openbsd big feature is security and they do a good job of deliverying that. Apache has proven itself to be a secure server and ISS a pile of crap.
Linux has decent security, but it is becoming less secure as its code size and complexity rises.

At the end of the day, your systems are only as secure as the admin makes them. With a good admin, any system is vulerable.

true but it takes much more time to make a Win server secure. You have to keep up with the weekly updates ...

nobody denies that Xp en W2k are decent desktop systems. The server side is a different story.
just look at the performance and flexibility of Linux, freebsd, Openbsd.

there is plenty support available for Linux on a commercial level (Redhat, Suse, third parties all offer support contracts).

With any OS you have work to do in keeping the system secure. Subscribing to vender mailing list and applying patches is not that big of deal. The fact support contracts are available for redhat shows that they both require work.

The main problem with windows as a server is that many people, since windows is easy to use think that anyone can maintain the system. This just leads to inexperienced people not doing a good job.

I don't agree with the support thing. Redhat and other offer support contracts because
a)it's the only way they can make money
b)big companies refuse to use a certain soft without support. This has more to do with IT managers who don't know sh*t about what they are doing. Where I work we are lobbying to replace some of our Sun big iron boxes with Linux. Management block this because they are CLUELESS. For them Linux = Free --> liability. Sun = Expensive --> better support