In an article for Businessweek entitled Insecurity In Open Source, Ben Chelf, Chief Technology Officer of Coverity, a privately held company based in San Francisco that analyzes source code to pinpoint software defects and security vulnerabilities, claims that while Linux security and bug-fixing may be better than Microsoft’s, it doesn’t hold a candle to the best closed-source programs.
That isn’t to say that it can’t, but that Linux programmers have set their sights too low, at least in some cases:
The irony is that our research shows that on average, open-source software is of higher quality than proprietary software. Indeed, open-source projects tend to clump together in the higher-quality range. Proprietary software applications scatter across the quality continuum, but the best ones tend to be considerably better than open source, and customers don’t choose software based on industry averages.
Because of the higher average quality of open-source software revealed by our research, we strongly believe it can cross the chasm into mainstream use. It offers too many advantages for both developers and consumers.
But in order for open-source software to become more prevalent in mission-critical applications, the open-source community must put more emphasis on industry best practices. We challenge this community to take a closer look at how the best proprietary software gets built and learn from that. Software quality and security are the most important factors in the choices that developers and companies make— not open-source vs. proprietary.
Here, here!
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