begin oe_protect.scr
Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> Flaw finders lay siege to Microsoft Office
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| For most of the summer, Microsoft's Office product teams have had little
>| time for development. Responding to a steady influx of flaws in the
>| company's Office productivity suite has occupied many of
>| Microsoft's programmers since late 2005.
> `----
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/22/bug_hunters_crawl_over_ms_office/
>
> This extensive 3-page article makes a compelling case for the use of
> OpenOffice. While both suites have flaws (MS Office compromises the whole
> O/S), it's evident that MS Office is forever fixing (expect more of the
> same), rather than evolving (cruft, useless features, UI, and icon sets
> aside).
I think that this is the point where the traditional software creation
and maintenance method breaks. Open-source methods, with the huge
resources they bring to bear on such problems, are far more capable at
a) writing maintainable code in the first-place;
b) tracking down root causes of problems when detected;
c) getting good quality work-arounds in place immediately
d) getting good quality fixes in place very rapidly.
I've not looked for some time, but my recollection is that Open-source
security problems are typically fixed in 24 hours; according to the
above article, Microsoft take, typically, 4 months. Considering that MS
have /already/ put all of their available resources onto these problems,
and are still unable to improve their fix rate, then I conclude that
they will not be able to compete with open-source in this environment.
I think that the lock-in model is dead.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
Q: What's yellow, and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice?
A: Zorn's Lemon.
|
|
