[Promotion] key features

[Santiago Roza]

On 1/23/06, Martijn Klingens <klingens at kde.org> wrote:


> 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.

but there are strong arguments to say unix-like systems are more secure:
http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html#security
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_vs._closed_source#Security

and from an article about the recent cert controversy:
http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/01/05/1627242
("You can easily spot the most vulnerable operating system in wide use
today by taking a look at the Technical Cyber Security Alerts issued
by US-CERT last year. Here's the bottom line:
    * 22 Technical Cyber Security Alerts were issued in 2005
    * 11 of those alerts were for Windows platforms ...
    * None were for Linux ")


> 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.

this argument has been countered many many times.  if it was true, why
the apache web server, which is much more popular than microsoft's
iis, has had less attacks?
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1866,00.asp?rsDis=Apache_Avoids_Most_Security_Woes-Page001-9078


> Sure. Pick any argument you like, but make sure it's true. Which isn't the
> case for security.

that's just an opinion, but there are other opinions that say the
exact opposite.

and the fact is that there are no viruses or spyware for (let's say)
linux, and i don't see why we shouldn't promote that.


--
Santiago Roza
Departamento I+D - Thymbra
santiago.roza at thymbra.com