[Promotion] key features

[Martijn Klingens]

On Monday 23 January 2006 20:36, Mr Bulldog wrote:
> what i mean to say about, choosign between different all the different
> features, is what do mostly people want, say if we did a survey, and people
> said that safety from viruses etc. would be a key priority, we would put
> this a head as one of the key features of a open desktop.

We should never use this argument, it's a very dangerous attitude to say that 
Unix is more secure than some other commercial operating system. It has some 
properties that help, but the main reason why so far there are few exploits 
for our desktops is that we are simply too small in number, not because we 
are more secure.

Don't give people a false sense of security. It can easily backfire. (And from 
a professional point of view, I actually *hope* it will backfire if we make 
such stupid false promises that we can't keep anyway.)

> It is just prioritising the key features we want to sell, people don't want
> to know about every small detial hung up on poster.

Sure. Pick any argument you like, but make sure it's true. Which isn't the 
case for security. http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=1052 was a recent 
interesting read on the SANS ISC diary, one of the most respected security 
blogs out there.

-- 
Martijn