Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 13th Feb 2006 17:53 UTC, submitted by James
"Last month, I looked at how long it took Microsoft to issue security updates for known software flaws in the Windows software that powers most of today's computers. Last week, I conducted the same analysis on free software produced by the Mozilla Foundation, perhaps best known for its Firefox Web browser. Over the past year, Mozilla averaged about 21 days before it issued fixes for flaws in Firefox, compared with the 135 days it took for Microsoft to address problems."
Thread beginning with comment 95479
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:
2005-07-12
It really shouldn't matter. MSIE is essentially a rendering engine with bits of UI code on top, and that type of application isn't all that complex if it is designed and implemented in a modular manner.
Given Microsoft's actions and comments w.r.t. "SMB/CIFS and the EU" and other matters, however, it does seem like they have a cultural tendency to develop code organically without much regard for modular design (or formally-defined interfaces), and that type of approach would make bug isolation, fixing, and testing more difficult even *if* MSIE were a standalone application.
Microsoft made its own bed in this instance, I think. Let them lie in it. It would make far more sense to create a separate (and far more limited) browser decoding engine for use with system help files and the like -- instead, MS chose to take a route which was politically expedient but which resulted in far more complexity. In their case, this seems to be fairly par for the course, but it also explains why so many of us tend to view their product designs with disdain.