[Promotion] key features

[Santiago Roza]

On 1/25/06, Martijn Klingens <klingens at kde.org> wrote:



> Well, if you ignore it the whole promise of security falls apart and turns
> into a _false_ promise.

i never said we should promise "security" in abstract.  i said "more
secure"... or "no viruses or spyware" to be more precise.



> Linux and the Free desktop are more secure *IF* (and ONLY if)
> - the user patches in time and is careful when dealing with untrusted
>     information

that factor is common to all operating systems, which means it's not a
factor when making comparisons between them.



> - we remain small enough to not make our platform attractive for malware
>    authors to commercially exploit

again, i'm not sure that's the reason (and many others seem to agree with me).



> Well, the latter actually
> is, and our very mission statement is to make it become true, since we WANT
> to become big players on the desktop market.

well... our mission is to grow and become significant, not to become
the dominant desktop by tomorrow.

but even if your reasoning was a fact ("we're secure just because
we're small"), if we grew to 10-20% (which would be a lot!), we'd be
still be non-attractive.



> If people notice that we don't deliver the
> "promised" security they will not simply feel disappointed, they will feel
> betrayed.

yeah, they'll feel betrayed and not "buy" as anymore, just like they
do with microsoft after their constant promises of better security  :)

anyway, i don't think we'd be lying in the first place, so i don't
think that would happen.



> However, if you are running Win XP or 2003 with
> drivers from responsible manufacturers fact of the matter is that the Windows
> kernel is an impressively stable beast.

depends on what you install... don't give me theoretical scenarios
with pristine xp boxes please  :)

a *real-life xp* computer with all the crap people installs (and/or
let running in background) is *very* unstable.

we're talking about firewall +antivirus +antispyware +buggy webshots
desktop +buggy download accelerator plus +adware divx codecs +adware
p2p client +buggy msn messenger 7 +buggy windows media player
+whatever, including some extra spyware.

maybe your xp partition (or mine) work fine, because we don't install
the same crap... but we're not the typical user.

and i know it is like that, because (like many others here, i guess) i
am the support guy for my girlfriend / sister / coworkers / friends /
etc, so i see real-life xp computers all the time... and believe me,
they're *not* stable.

ok blame it on the apps (not the os), but i don't mind: most linux
software isn't like that, so it doesn't happen on linux; it's a
typical windows problem.



> Since we can already know that that situation won't last,
> think about the effect that our security-myth will have on people switching
> to our platform in 3 or 4 years time.

well... i heard that argument like 10 years before, when i didn't even
use linux: "it won't last, it won't last, they'll be infested with
viruses in a couple years"... but those predictions didn't come true
so far.

and i don't see them happening in the short-mid term, so i don't see
why we should cripple our promoted advantages because of a neverending
fear that's been with us for a decade, but never happened.



> If MS delivers only 10% of what it promises for Vista
> and security in general ... people
> will simply move back to Vista and we lose.

that *will* happen, deal with it: people will buy vista, and a lot...
man we're talking about a desktop with pretty 3d effects  :)

now seriously, vista is 6 months due... do you really expect us to
take serious market share from them in that time span?

we're talking about a long term process here: you better not believe
the free desktop will have 50% market share in 6 months, because it
won't (no matter how much we'd like that to happen).

free software wasn't born yesterday: it has grown a lot... but in 20
years not 2.  we have a mighty task here; it's an interesting task but
it'll last more than a couple years.



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