Ubuntu Security: Holes Found, Holes Fixed

[Basil Chupin]

Oh my God! There are security holes in Ubuntu 10.04 
<http://www.zdnet.com/news/holes-found-in-linux-ubuntu-kernel/6199627>! 
The sky is falling! Bill Gates is the maker of the one true operating 
system; forgive us Bill for we have worshiped at the feet of false 
Penguin idols. Oh please, give me a break!

Linux, like all other operating systems and software, has security 
holes. Always has, always will. No one ever said Linux was perfect. It's 
not. It never will be.

What makes Ubuntu and Linux better than most of their competitors aren't 
that they are flawless. It's that when bugs are found, they fixed as 
fast as possible and then the fixes are pushed out to users 
/immediately/. There is no monthly Patch Tuesday 
<http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/ms-patch-tuesday-heads-up-critical-flaws-in-windows-office/8288>. 
If there's a significant problem, its tracked down and fixed. Period. 
End of statement.

That is after all, the whole point of open source. This specific process 
is called Linus' Law 
<http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html> 
by its author, Eric S. Raymond in his seminal description of open-source 
software development, The Cathedral and the Bazaar 
<http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/index.html>. 
Formally, this "law" is that "Given a large enough beta-tester and 
co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly 
and the fix will be obvious to someone," but if you know it, you 
probably know it as: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."

It also helps that Linux is inherently more secure than Windows. Linux 
is based on the design idea that it's working on a multi-user, networked 
systems. From its very start, it was built to deal with a potentially 
hostile world. Windows wasn't.

[More]

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/ubuntu-security-holes-found-holes-fixed/8402

-- 
Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/sounder/attachments/20110305/c5065d16/attachment.html>