Ars reports: “The Standish group recently completed an extensive study that examines factors influencing open-source adoption. Based on five years of research and analysis, the report provides intriguing insights into open-source adoption levels and the way that open source is reshaping the software industry. Individuals who participated in the Standish survey identified several key drivers for open source adoption, including lower costs, better security and reliability, and faster development speed.” Sadly, the report itself is not available to the public (you can purchase it for USD 1000), so I can’t give you a more detailed analysis than whatever Ars has to say. Which is too bad, since I love diving into the statistical side of such a study.
So I’m supposed to trust some obscure research group whose website doesn’t even render correctly in IE or Firefox? And you have to register just to look at their sample ‘research’? What is this world coming to?
It rendered fine for me in Firefox, and to be honest, I think it rendered properly for you too. It was just that there was hardly any content on the site, that would make anyone think their browser was not working !
The ARS report… well, I read that article, I am not prepared to pay $1000 for 12 pages… EVER. The ARS article told me what I was expecting to read, management think RedHat is more secure than Windows, whoopdeedoo, it took them long enough.
What is puzzling though, is, why the 30% who think Windows is more secure still have a job ?
LOOL! That cracked me up! Awesome just awesome! I use Windows XP x64 to be precise but I agree with you 100%
The good thing about you raver is that at least you don’t try to hide the fact that you are a fanboy:)
I haven’t bothered yet to open the link
but from experience, there are security issues with both Linux and Windows.
Linux is full of local privileges escalation bugs.
Windows also has some vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely. Another issue with windows is that a lot of popular applications like Windows Media player have some bugs (buffer overruns) that can be exploited to crash applications and cause data loss.
This is true in linux too, with remote code execution in VLC, MPlayer, etc.
http://secunia.com/advisories/29878/
http://secunia.com/advisories/29503/
http://secunia.com/advisories/29122/
MPlayer “sdpplin_parse()” Integer Overflow Vulnerability 2008-03-26
MPlayer Multiple Vulnerabilities 2008-02-05
MPlayer CDDB Parsing Buffer Overflows 2007-06-06
MPlayer Two Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities 2007-03-13
MPlayer RTSP Stream Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2007-03-01
MPlayer FFmpeg Multiple Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities 2006-09-29
MPlayer AVI “indx” Chunk and ASF Handling Vulnerabilities 2006-03-29
MPlayer ASF File Parsing Integer Overflow Vulnerabilities 2006-02-07
mplayer “strf” Header Memory Corruption Vulnerability 2005-08-26
MPlayer RTSP and MMST Streams Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities 2005-04-20
MPlayer Multiple Vulnerabilities 2004-12-17
MPlayer GUI Filename Handling Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2004-06-29
MPlayer and xine-lib RTSP Handling Vulnerabilities 2004-04-30
MPlayer HTTP Location Header Parsing Heap Overflow Vulnerability 2004-03-31
MPlayer ASX Streaming Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2003-09-26
http://secunia.com/search/?search=mplayer
and more linux’s media players
Edited 2008-04-28 09:15 UTC
Can you please send me the vulnerabilities list for totem-gstreamer?
lol,
you do realize some of us use both xine-lib and gstreamer on the same linux installation.
I, for example, use rhythmbox (gstreamer) and totem-xine.
RedHat is less-filling, lower-fat, and greener. However, if you experience an exception lasting longer than 4 hours, you should take your computer to the ER.
For $1000, I’ll send you the stats to confirm the above!
Until there’s actual data published, this report is worse than useless.
Something usefull for RHEL users :
http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/02/26/risk-report-three-years-of…
That’s really in the spirit of free information