Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

The ACM has Josh Coates of The Internet Archive asking if you are an Open Source bigot.

Frankly, I *am* an open source bigot. Mostly, though, it comes from the overall frustration with dealing with the Microsoft M.O. Does Windows have better development tools? Sure. Can Windows run an application as fast as a Linux machine? Sure. But frankly, I would say to put a Windows machine in the same class as Linux on security is disingenous.

Yes, there are security problems with Open Source software every day. The REAL difference, however, is when you set up Apache, for example, you only enable the features you need for your installation. While that *is* possible with IIS, it is very difficult to do. An exploit for, say, mod_perl only affects a limited number of Apache servers. An IIS exploit affects, well, every IIS server out there. The same is generally true across the board.

Now, BSD's are GREAT for security. However, I think there is a case to be made that (a) that security comes from a lack of installs in the real world -- it isn't a good target -- and (b) it comes at the expense of software selection. Yes, a large chunk of Linux software is available for BSD, and if it were me, I would recommend that everyones First-On-The-Network box for their installation be an OpenBSD box on PPCs or Alphas running Apache, simply because it is the best way to minimize your exposure.

While, the Slashdot "M$ must dies!" zealots are there, I think what he is missing is most of those people are 15 year old boys, and no, they are not going to chill out to credit the movement. Its not like that many real developers or admins want to deal with Slashdot anymore. And really, what CEO or CIO goes out and reads Slashdot for information he is going to use to make a decision with anyway? Frankly, I would even say RMS does a disservice to the movement with his extremist positions sometimes.

There is nothing wrong with platform religion. It's been around and been the source of shouting from teenagers since the days of the C=64 and Atari 800, and it is not going to stop any time soon.

As a final note, much of Open Source's benefits aren't just "It's better," but are "It's better for the money." PostgreSQL and MySQL aren't as good as Oracle or Informix. They just aren't. What they ARE, though, is good enough for 75% of software projects out there, and a helluva lot cheaper. There is also the matter of modularity. Open Source solutions can usually be interchanged with other implementations. Microsoft, on the other hand, is very much about locking you into their complete "stack". IBM is certainly guilty of this too. Really, Sun is the only company out there that makes a point of NOT trying to lock you into their "final solution."

At any rate, aside from maybe RMS, there are almost no credible people out there calling for a "coder master race", and I think Josh needs to stop reading Slashdot if he is looking for serious discussions about software. That's like reading the National Review hoping for intelligent discussions about policy.