Open Source is 'Not Reliable or Dependable'

Exter-C writes "News.com is reporting that Jonathan Murray, the vice president and chief technology officer of Microsoft Europe has made claims that 'some people want to use community-based software, and they get value out of sharing with other people in the community. Other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model.'"

*boggle*

[Akardam]

Microsoft is one to make claims of reliability and dependability.

Re:*boggle*

[Dr. Evil]

We can rely that there will be security updates and we can depend upon them utterly.

So it's a reliable and dependable model.

Re:*boggle*

[theNetImp]

We can also rely on there being security holes that will allow all kinds of nasty worms and viruses into my system. So in that sense M$ is quite reliable. ;-)

Re:*boggle*

[Pantero Blanco]

"We can rely that there will be security updates and we can depend upon them utterly."

More like "we can rely that there will eventually be security updates for most security holes and that we can usually depend upon them". It often takes Microsoft a ridiculous amount of time to fix flaws.

Re:*boggle*

[niiler]

Hmmm...Since I moved to using completely free/libre open source software 4 years ago, the number of system crashes I've experienced can be counted on one hand, I have not needed to waste resources with a virus checker, and yet I've somehow still managed. I've not experienced this "unreliability" that is mentioned for nearly four years. But this is just my personal experience.

I'm sure that users of many non-free, proprietary software systems experience similar reliability. However, most of my friends an

Re:*boggle*

[mausmalone]

Since switching to Win XP from Windows 2000 during RC1, I've experienced a few crashes due to some bad ram, but beyond that it's been steady as a rock. Also, I haven't needed to waste resources with a virus checker because I know how not to get viruses. A good firewall goes a long way.

Here's the question you have to ask yourself, though... will your friends and relatives who don't use OSS and who have crashes & viruses actually do better with OSS and a fresh install of Linux? Or would their problems be fixed with a fresh install of Windows, a good firewall, and the abolition of Internet Explorer?

I think that if most Windows users just used to use Windows in a safe way (and read the fucking dialog boxes that came up instead of reflexively clicking "OK" to everything), a lot of the "unreliable" and "virus-laden" views of it would start to dissipate.

While I know that Linux and OSS can be very secure and stable, Windows can be also. If people put the time into Windows that Linux-users put into Linux/OSS (by way of customization, and finding apps and drivers), they'd have a much more reliable machine (than their current Windows install ... I have no desire to compare Windows and Linux). The biggest unreliability with Windows is the stupid things that users do.

Re:*boggle*

[rthille]

You recommend abolishing IE, but what other commercial web browser is there for Windows? I guess there is Opera, though I don't think it has much mind-share...

Re:*boggle*

[ncc74656]

You recommend abolishing IE, but what other commercial web browser is there for Windows?

Why does your browser have to be a closed-source product? Last time I checked, Firefox runs pretty nicely on Windows. If anything, open-source apps running on Windows can serve as a bridge to eventually running open-source apps on something other than Windows. If a file created under (for instance) OpenOffice on Windows opens without issue under OpenOffice on Linux, that's one less impediment to eventually switching away from Windows.

Re:*boggle*

[cyber-vandal]

From the article: "Open source is unreliable" so you can't trust Firefox or OpenOffice.

Re:*boggle*

[ahodgson]

But the article says open source is not reliable. Ergo, no firefox.

Re:*boggle*

[Moofie]

"The biggest unreliability with Windows is the stupid things that users do."

The biggest unreliability with Windows is the reliance on users not doing stupid things in order to stay reliable.

That's a dumb thing to rely on. ASSUME the user is going to do unwise things, and design around that assumption.

Re:*boggle*

[gutnor]

For most users out there, that the OS still function nicely is the least of their concern.
They can always load any 'repair' CD and get a more or less fresh OS again.

However, there is no repair CD to retrieve 5 year of vacation pictures.

The problem with security is that the social engineering is by far the most effective threat and basically that means that whatever the system, hackers will always be able to do what the user can do with his computer.

The only system that is ultimatly safe for a non "computer

Re:*boggle*

[InsaneGeek]

Perms don't solve a thing, I've been harping on this point for quite a while now. If my dissertation I've been working on for a number of years suddenly goes, the fact that my /etc/hosts file is still there doesn't mean anything, only my files are important to me. This is the part everybody misses, and actually every OS has (windows had a much better file permissions model than linux has had for years, but for a while now most Linux filesystems have some form of extended ACL's) the only problem is that p

Re:*boggle*

[Bush Pig]

Offsite backup.

Re:*boggle*

[vux984]

Here's the question you have to ask yourself, though... will your friends and relatives who don't use OSS and who have crashes & viruses actually do better with OSS and a fresh install of Linux? Or would their problems be fixed with a fresh install of Windows, a good firewall, and the abolition of Internet Explorer?

That would help. However, sooner or later they are going to open an attachment, or download something dumb off the web or via p2p. A good firewall (2 way) will help, and abolishing IE will he

Re:*boggle*

[Cal Paterson]

Since switching to Win XP from Windows 2000 during RC1, I've experienced a few crashes due to some bad ram, but beyond that it's been steady as a rock. Also, I haven't needed to waste resources with a virus checker because I know how not to get viruses. A good firewall goes a long way.

Right, you've not had any problems with MS software. Now think that perhaps computers are used as more than as desktop machines. Now think that perhaps MS sucks at that.

While I know that Linux and OSS can be very secure

Re:*boggle*

[Mistshadow2k4]

"The biggest unreliability with Windows is the stupid things that users do."

Knowing how ignorant of computers the average user is, I would have believed you, but there are two reasons I don't. One is experience with Windows myself. No matter how well you secure it -- limited user privileges, behind a router, use ZA, Avast!, WinPatrol and PeerGuardian -- something will happen to it. And limited user privileges is not the answer to security problems anyway. There are too many programs that require admin ac

Re:*boggle*

[killjoe]

The problem is that people who run windows run the whole MS "stack". They run IE, office, outlook etc. In fact most corporations will not even allow you to load non MS software on your machine.

Just today you had the zero day word virus going around for example.

If you loaded linux (or switched to a mac) you would be much better off because your entire stack gets to be different.

Re:*boggle*

[orasio]

While I know that Linux and OSS can be very secure and stable, Windows can be also. If people put the time into Windows that Linux-users put into Linux/OSS (by way of customization, and finding apps and drivers), they'd have a much more reliable machine (than their current Windows install ... I have no desire to compare Windows and Linux). The biggest unreliability with Windows is the stupid things that users do.


I used mswindows for years. from 3.0 to 2000, and now I even use winXP at work.
Other than that,

An anoying AC asks for references.

[twitter]

The vast majority of internet-facing computers that function as zombies are in that state thanks to user intervention. I dare you to prove otherwise. Because if that wasn't the case then every single "Windoze" computer on the internet would be a zombie, and that is not the case, now is it?

Well, the majority of M$ computers ARE infected. It does not take long and it requires no "stupid" action by the user. Indeed, no action is required other than plugging the thing in. Study after study has shown this, but here are two for you:

• 2002, BBC, most read english language news site, tells users to "avoid Internet Explorer" based on drive by exploits. [slashdot.org]
• 2004, Botnet responsible for 80% of world's spam [slashdot.org]
• The Internet Storm Center, 2004 [slashdot.org], 20 minute half life.
• Avantgarde Study, 2004 [slashdot.org], 4 minute minimum time.
• A 2005 study of zombies [slashdot.org], a total underestimation but one that shows large numbers.

Things have gotten worse not better and the numbers match personal experience all of us have. I've seen people bringing broken computers into stores. I've seen broken computers in banks, you know, the ones so far gone nothing can be done. While a user can help the process by going to net nasty sites, it's still not the user's fault. Their computer should not fail them that way.

Re:*boggle*

[Colonel Angus]

Ah, yes. Perfect timing as I spent the better part of the morning fixing up about a dozen machines that had a certain application break as the result of a Windows update.

Thanks for that reliability and dependability.

No Kidding

[Greyfox]

I maintain a program that runs builds on pretty much all the commercial UNIX and Windows platforms ever. I have a minion who devotes a couple of hours a day to unsticking and requesting reboots on Windows systems that have gone down during the night. The Win64 machines are particularly bad -- one or two of our 6 machine clusters BSOD daily. It's random as to which one goes, but we've run memory testing on all those machines and they check out fine.

UNIX machines, including 32 and 64 bit versions of Linux go down infrequently enough that I investigate personally when it happens. We've had two hardware-related cases of UNIX machines becoming unresponsive to telnet and ssh requests in the past 6 months or so.

Reliability. Hah. Like how Outlook likes to remind me 7 hours after a meeting that I'm 7 hours late for the meeting. It couldn't be bothered to let me know before the meeting, mind you. That would be too convenient.

Microsoft has no clue what reliablity means. Some marketroid in Microsoft shouldn't be shooting his mouth off about how reliable their software is, when he's obviously never used reliable software. I'd like to address the following personally to the pencil pusher Jonathan Murray: "Shut the fuck up and go back to trying to convince companies to drink your company's poison kool aid. I dream of the day when your products are so marginalized that I never have to use them ever again."

Automatize please

[Opportunist]

Could we simply auto-tag all stories containing "Jonathan Murray said" as "fud"? It would save a lot of work and I doubt we'll get too many false positives.

Re:Automatize please

[Opportunist]

Really?

I think it's scary.

Nice FUDdy title

[xtracto]

how did slashdot editors managed to understand "ther people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model.'"" to "OpenSource is unreliable".

Hey, sometimes Open Source does it right, someties people preffer other ways. If THERE ARE companies that sell CLOSED software and services and their services al GREAT, yes this is FUD, but this time it is the editors the ones that are throwing it.

BURN KARMA BUUUUURN!!

Re:Nice FUDdy title

[advocate_one]

how did slashdot editors managed to understand "ther people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model.'"" to "OpenSource is unreliable".

follow the link... and read the title of the linked article... oh ye of little faith... ;)

Re:Nice FUDdy title

[advocate_one]

That's still no excuse for FUD from either CNET or Slashdot, advocate_one. At no point in time did Microsoft ever say the exact words "not reliable or dependable" when it came to open source.

it was here:

"Some people want to use community-based software, and they get value out of sharing with other people in the community. Other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model. And again, at the end of the day, you make the choice based on what has the highest va

Re:Nice FUDdy title

[advocate_one]

oh by the way, that was a really dirty trick stripping the anti-spam feature from my address and making it into a mailto link... thanks numb nuts...

RTFT

[mechanosm]

That's the title of the article at news.com.com.com.com. Perhaps you can address your question to the editors there.

Re:Nice FUDdy title

[Pantero Blanco]

Read the full quote from the article. Murray did indeed say that "commercial" software was more reliable than OSS (which doesn't make sense, since software can be both). According to him, the reason people use OSS is because it gives them a nice warm feeling from sharing.

He's presenting a false choice, trying to convince people that they can't have both dependability and openness at the same time. That is FUD.

Re:Nice FUDdy title

[ozmanjusri]

He's presenting a false choice, trying to convince people that they can't have both dependability and openness at the same time. That is FUD.

What's even more interesting is that most of us in the know choose FOSS because it is more dependable.

There is often a tradeoff, but I've always seen it as FOSS being reliable and solid, but sometimes short on features compared to commercial software, which has lots of glitz and flashy GUIs, but is more likely to break.

I wonder if this is some sort of preemptive

Re:Nice FUDdy title

[kfg]

. . .how did slashdot editors managed to understand "ther people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model.'"" to "OpenSource is unreliable".

Because they understand that that's the way the statement was meant to be understood?

Either that or they just cut and pasted.

KFG

Re:Nice FUDdy title

[rs232]

`how did slashdot editors managed to understand "ther people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model.'"" to "OpenSource is unreliable"'

Because in an interview with the BBC a Microsoft 'technology` officer stated:

01. Some people go with commercial software because it is reliable and dependable.

02. Some people go with Open Source software because of its collaborative nature.

By linking the two statements in the same sentence, he misleadingly implied

The subtle FUD, however...

[Arker]

Yes, the basic gist of what he said is enough to send coffee and coke up millions of readers noses worldwide... but look carefully at that statement. There's some more subtle twisting there, that might just slip by under your radar, especially if you're busy trying to breathe or looking for something to clean up the keyboard.

He contrasts free software, not with *proprietary* software, but with *commercial* software. This is also completely off the mark - most free software *is* commercial after all. What Mi

More self-serving propaganda-- is this news??

[postbigbang]

And really now, what did you expect him to say? Our model sucks, and please, let me now genuflect in the hotbed of OSS dev?

It's like asking Steve Ballmer to take estrogen.

There are inherent problems with closed source!

[postbigbang]

Let's review:

1) collaborative third party development and evolution is impossible with closed source, except by a proprietary gatekeeper of some type
2) visible source is easier to fix than invisible source
3) it's impossible to judge application quality and security without seeing source; otherwise it's hearsay
4) open source survives the ills of its progenitors
5) it's still ok to charge for software, even open source, IMHO
6) trade secrets can be encumbered by closed source, and so can lots of copyrights and patents not owned or licensed by its developers
7) you don't learn by reading closed source code (an oxymoron), however, you can learn by reading open source code
8) closed source doesn't actually suck, but it can be used to hide, obfuscate, cajole, and frustrate both developers and users

OS/2 was a technical success and market failure, and took eons to get bug fixes finished. The same can be said for BeOs. Simply building a better mouse trap and thinking that people will flock to you is one of those sweet lies that duped engineers believe. It's simply not so.

And now Apple probably sucks because their microkernel and some of their codebase is now closed. For that, we'll all suffer.

LMAO

[telbij]

LMAO

What more can you do in the face of such irony?

Not dependable?

[DaveM753]

I would have replied to this sooner, but Windows keeps crashing.

*shrug*

[stlhawkeye]

I don't think it's any more reliable or dependable than any other development paradigm. The difference is that instead of paying somebody for unreliable and undependable software, I can get it for free from open source. Firefox crashes more often, on every environment on which I run it (4 different OS's) than any other application I have. The difference is, I didn't have to pay for it.

Re:*shrug*

[Arker]

Another difference is that you can, if you wish, actually help make it stable!

Well, in firefox's case that would probably mean forking it since the development team has a chronic case of featuritis, but again, you can do that if it's important enough to you.

There are some definite advantages in terms of reliability and security to the free software model, but that doesn't mean all free software is going to be more reliable or more secure than all proprietary software - far from it. Free software, however, does allow users to become involved and part of the process, rather than condemning them to exist only as passive 'consumers.' And it does respond to their needs, rather than to the desires of the marketing department.

IE is much better coded than firefox - and firefox therefore crashes more often. Yet, despite that advantage, IE is much less *secure.* And that's what you get when marketing determines the program specifications...

Re:Argument for Opera

[MooUK]

Opera also has a hell of a lot of features, and more keep coming. Does a web browser NEED a bittorrent client? No.

Re:*shrug*

[Arker]

It's not unstable as in crashes for no reason - it once was, but it's pretty stable now, in general. You can make it go boom pretty easy feeding it garbage data though, and if you're out bouncing around on the wild wild web instead of just working on a fairly small set of more or less well-coded pages, you'll see it go boom now and then.

IE, on the other hand, is really very well coded. You can feed it random garbage almost indefinitely and it stands up fine - really an acid test for good coding. Unfortunate

Re:*shrug*

[mspohr]

More FUD.

It's not about "free beer".

The devemopment model of FOSS has been shown time and again to produce better quality software that is more reliable and is updated more quickly than closed source.

Microsoft is the prime example of a closed source company that produces buggy software and is slow to fix the bug. In contrast, look at the Apache or Mozilla software which is more reliable and more responsive than the Microsoft competing products.

BTW, I don't know what you are doing to your systems, but

SourceSafe vs CVS

[Rik Sweeney]

I bet to differ Microsoft. Why would I use SourceSafe, which is slow (checking out takes a very long time), unreliable (corrupts itself regularly) and costs money when I can use CVS which is fast, reliable and is free?

Re:SourceSafe vs CVS

[Opportunist]

Because you can DEPEND on it trashing your files RELIABLY.

Re:SourceSafe vs CVS

[hyfe]

Comparing SourceSafe with CVS is like comparing MS Office with Emacs ...

.. it's inheretly flawed because anybody remotely sane will recognize that SVN and VIM are superiour products.

Re:SourceSafe vs CVS

[mshiltonj]

re parent post:

s/cvs/Subversion/ig

Re:SourceSafe vs CVS

[955301]

Just a few questions.

First about "I tried to install CVS or subversion". So, which one was it?

Second, you seem to value speed on something you do once - installation and setup - over the steady-state use of the source control tool - keeping your data integrity intact.

For Subversion, the explorer client is TortoiseSVN.

I've used Source Safe, Clear Case, Starteam, CVS and Subversion, RCCS, and a few others I've forgotten. By far, Subversion has been the best. Starteam was close, but it required a Microsoft setup back when I used it.

I do not agree that Subversion is difficult to set up.

Re:SourceSafe vs CVS

[advocate_one]

come on please... I work with sourcesafe repositories at work (I suffer for my sins in a windows only (currently, but they're shifting) development house) and we're always swearing at the damned thing... but the suits won't let us suck our data out of sourcesafe and stick it into SVN or CVS cos they've been brainwashed by the salesdroids that you can only use visual studio with sourcesafe... (something about tight integration and Microsoft knowing what they're doing with the data)...

personally I think sour

move along...

[muszek]

MS claims that F/OSS sucks. Where's the news? Why does everything those fuckheads say have to make it to news sites? It's just the same as mainstream media and politicians - those morons don't have anything to say that's worth listening to, yet they're taking up to 90% of daily news.

Strange...

[biglig2]

...I mean, why are they so freaked out by Google? Since their entire infrastructure is based around software that isn't reliable or dependable, they can't possibly grow to any size.

I guess you could also say...

[TheDarkener]

"Cars are not reliable or dependable"

"Airplanes tend to crash into buildings"

"Musicians do drugs"
 
.... How could this article be defined as anything but FUD? Stereotyping an entire class of software as 'unreliable' is just dumb. Go FUD, go!! Let's keep trying to fool the fools, that'll keep them buying our stuff for longer.

NEWSFLASH!

[rolfwind]

Microsoft Executive will try to talk you into buying commercial software! GASP!

Well... actually, he said "commercial", so perhaps he's suggesting Mac OSX:) Perhaps he can clarify if he's trolling for his own company's software or if he means all commercial software. In which case he's not a marketing troll, but an idiot using a blanket statement who clearly doesn't care about the issue as he should be aware that Microsoft has used Open Source components in it's own OS - (TCP/IP stack?) - whereas they could have used a "superior" commercial solution.

Trollgasm!

[MaestroSartori]

The guy says nothing about open source, he talks about relying on community support or going with commercial support. What's the point of posting this article other than a million angry responses from people who just read the title?

Well, no, he doesn't...

[DragonWriter]

...say anything about support, he talks about "community-based software" (not "community support") versus the "commercial software model" (not "commercial support"). Now, its quite possible he is trying to conflate things and leverage the very real benefits to many companies of purchasing commercial support (which you can get for many open source software packages) and portray it as a benefit of the software development model, as part of Microsoft's ongoing effort to spread FUD about OSS that competes with

Linux?

[RT Alec]

Why is this tagged "Linux"? Shouldn't it be tagged "IT"?

He's with Microsoft

[Billosaur]

...so he certainly knows about things that are not reliable or dependable.

MicroJerk!

[digitaldc]

First Microsoft flirts with Open Source [slashdot.org] saying it's 'maturing and more commercial,' and now they say it is not 'reliable or dependable.'

I think they are just badmouthing them because Open Source won't let Microsoft go all the way on the first date.

MS is the last place to hear such a thing from!

[mytec]

Hearing this out of MS reminds me of the quote: "We're seeing crazy uptime numbers now, like three months, six months. I fully expect we'll see a year of uptime when Windows Server 2003 is finished," said Jeff Stucky*. So uptimes, for MS's latest and greatest, that are far short of what *nix administrators experience, are a demonstration of MS's commercial stability? Does the other side of the pond experience MS in a different way?

That said, there are plenty of 3rd party applications that run well and are commercial. It's just Windows itself that doesn't run well. Some development groups are more focused on quality than others on both sides of the fence. I run a large number of commercial applications on Windows that run very well. I couldn't ask for more reliability or dependability. I could of Windows and that is the point.

*http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/04/25/ballmer _ushers_in_windows/

Re:MS is the last place to hear such a thing from!

[whitehatlurker]

Here's a link to the original MicroSoft story [archive.org] for the Stucky comment.

After the crazy uptimes comment it goes on ... "Our confidence in Windows Server 2003," says Stucky, "is higher than in any previous operating system."

What in the "commercial model" does this?

[DragonWriter]

Other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model.

Certainly, there is commercial, proprietary software that is reliable and dependable. And certainly there is open-source software that isn't. OTOH, there are plenty of cases where the reverse is true, and I, for one, see little in the "commercial" software model, contrasted with the OSS model, that leads to "reliability and dependability" systematically.

Would have posted on this thread earlier

[monopole]

But our windows based server went down in flames crippling the office for two days. Fixed everything with Knoppix.

Thank god for reliable, dependable commercial software!

Where would you live?

[DumbSwede]

So to make an analogy, I should prefer buildings that are built that allow no inspections while being built or even after construction is completed, to buildings that are free to be inspected. Which would you trust to live in?

I have to agree in general

[erroneus]

Because, after all, what is "reliable" or "dependable"? By whose standards?

I just loaded FC5 on a machine cleanly. I then had it do a yum update. Once completed, firefox was unable to start as a regular user. (Root could start it.) Turns out that somehow the ${HOME}/.mozilla directory was chown root.root for some reason. I changed it and all was well again.

So yeah, it's "imperfect."

But GOOD-FREAKING-GOD! This is Microsoft claiming this? As if they set the standard for reliability and dependability? All this while their EULA states that their software is not guaranteed to be suitable for any purpose at all. That just OOZES customer-service, reliability and dependability.

Ridiculous...

Re:I have to agree in general

[Kjella]

All this while their EULA states that their software is not guaranteed to be suitable for any purpose at all. That just OOZES customer-service, reliability and dependability.

No, that just oozes of the US legal climate. I don't think I've seen any piece of software which doesn't contain a huge blob of pure CYA.

look at the adds in the linked article...

[advocate_one]

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need I say any more? ;)

Re:look at the adds in the linked article...

[whitehatlurker]

Yeah, okay I'll look ... WOW! Star Trek stuff on sale [com.com].
What is ADD again?

Subtext

[hey!]

You have to read the marketing subtext. "reliability" doesn't mean the software is reliable -- at least not in the sense that it consitently behaves the way you'd like it to. It means that it is less risky for you, personally.

It's the difference between having your Linux based mail servers slammed with malware and having your exchange servers slammed with malware. In the first case you made a individual decision, so you're repsonsible. In the second case you made the same decision as practically every

Microsoft made unreliable systems once

[nurhussein]

Way back in the day... of Windows 95/98/Me, when you had to reboot your box at least once a day/week, when it would lockup for no reason...remember back then when Windows was an unreliable and undependable POS (note to MS apologists : yes, I know Windows doesn't crash that much nowadays etc., but do remember those ancient times when it did).

You know why that was? That's right. It's because Windows was open source back then. It had to be. Because there's NO WAY it could be otherwise if they used a "commercial software model".

gcc

[TheGratefulNet]

gcc always comes to mind. its free, its opensource and SO much of the world depends on it!

unreliable? works as well (if not better) than many commercial compilers.

Hmmm

[linvir]

While I'm not an IT expert, so I can't say anything particularly clever, there is one difference even a lowly dickhead such as myself can see.

When someone stops supporting an Open Source product, it's still available to be updated by the community. When Microsoft decides that it's time for you to buy the latest version of their OS, you have NO FUCKING CHOICE. That's not dependability.

Re:BULLSHIT

[linvir]

Just because Microsoft stops officially supporting a product does not mean everyone has to run out and get the latest version

WRONG. You're one person. Arguments based on "you're full of shit because your point doesn't apply to me" tend not to work. There is a wider world of people out there who need security updates and other patches. Most important of all of these are the business and school networks, Microsoft's real source of money. They have to stay up to date, or they get owned.

Now, the real issue is whether or not the updates are the source of the exploits. If MS didn't reveal the flaws, maybe there wouldn't be so many exploits for the unpatched systems. You might have had an interesting post if you'd gone with this, instead of two long paragraphs of narcissistic swearing. Do you understand that, dickhead? I don't give one rat's ass how you use your computer, I'm using my vague knowledge of IT in general. Let me clue you in on something: YOU ARE NOT THE YARDSTICK BY WHICH THE REST OF THE WORLD IS TO BE MEASURED.

'Not Reliable or Dependable'

[Vandilizer]

This is why only commercial software like windows Vista will ship on time, on schedule, and on budget. With no bug and all the feature one could dream of.

Ok I am going to stop now. While one could argue this when only looking at a model it certainly dose not hold up better then the commercial model, at lest the one Microsoft uses.

While it is true that you do not have some one to bitch to when something goes wrong with the system is that any better then having a company ignore you complaints, or just listen

That's Funny

[Goo.cc]

Because after reading the EULA for Windows XP, I would say that Microsoft software is reliable or dependable either.

He'd change his tune

[JohnnyGTO]

if he was using my wife's "Mobile Winblows" based vx6700 phone. POS is slow, the phone portion freezes up at the most inopportune times, it doesn't work (and the word work is a stretch) with anything but windows programs and did I mention it was a sluggish bloated pig ? Is that the type of corporate software he is referring to?

Riiiight...

[Anml4ixoye]

That's why Microsoft just released an open source website called CodePlex [codeplex.com].

Your fault RTFM

[spyrochaete]

The company I work at has been struggling with VOIP for years now. They tried a Bell solution but it was far too expensive. They bought a huge 3COM solution but could never get it working correctly. Now they're jumping through hoops trying to get Cisco to work but it's taking about 1000% as long as they planned. When I mentioned Asterix to the head of IS, she said it wasn't even an option because "no company can be held accountable for failure".

Saying that commercial software is better than open sour

I want flexibility

[dtfinch]

Proprietary software is rigid, and doesn't lend itself easily to odd (mis?)uses and configurations. Microsoft is lazy and unresponsive to the market, by their own inaction allowing self-serve and share alike open source to successfully compete with them them in their own markets with only a tiny fraction of the funding. If Microsoft listened and responded to customer demands instead of pissing them off at every chance, and locking down their products to reduce their usefulness, they'd have nothing to worry

Windows is both

[Himring]

It is reliable. You can rely on it to propogate viruses, spyware and carry holes that create DDoS across the globe due to it being reliably easy to setup and then not patch. After all, its many iterations are more hole-ridden than any other OS.

It is reliably the most ubiquitous OS out there. You can reliably buy software for it that will do just about anything you want to do with a computer. Then again, you'll pay for it as it has created a market wherein both the maker (microsoft) and third party de

from TA, again

[mapkinase]

They meet in underground forums with names like DarkMarket.org and theftservices.com

Imagine an open business of "godfather" being named like "olives of ", but "Cosa Nostra". This never happened, did it?

Even the existence of darkmarket and theftservices is a joke and slap in the face of the common sense. Catch the person who registered those website and execute him publicly in front of Googleland.

In other words...

[oGMo]

...some people like Russian Roulette.

Reliable vs. dependable

[Smurf]

Can someone please explain me the difference between "reliable" and "dependable"? It's a honest question, as I'm not a native English speaker.

I already looked in the dictionaries included with Tiger. They appear as synonyms in the thesaurus and dependable is defined as "trustworthy and reliable". (And furthermore trustworthy is defined as "able to be relied on as honest and truthful"!)

So that's why!

[scronline]

When I bought this company it was a strictly Windows shop. I would have to do some form of repair to a server atleast once a week. After switching to Linux I do my security updates and that's pretty much it. 3 years of trouble free operations vs. less than 1 week. I think my track record is going against that.

I won't even get into logging issues that leave ALOT to be desired in the MS camp. Not that MS software doesn't have it's uses, I just find it funny that they can say something like this when all

An incomplete view...

[Malor]

Many of the Open Source projects are extremely robust and reliable. Samba, Apache, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Postfix... all examples of very high quality software, at least as good as most commercial software, if not better. The basic system utilities are often overlooked when thinking about open source reliability, but packages like vim and bash and perl are all extremely powerful and incredibly robust. Most stuff that's actually gotten to the point of being a defacto part of Unix is so reliable that you could

FUD from both sides

[Ryan Amos]

Yeah, this is total open source FUD, but it's not as much nonsense as slashdotters make it out to be.

The big difference between Open Source and proprietary software is accountability. If you have a problem, who do you turn to? A vendor who you paid a lot of money to for support, or a mailing list that may or may not get back to you? Most businesses won't accept that kind of uncertainty.

Now, this is not as important for a lot of small/home businesses without an IT department. But once you get into the "medium" size businesses, fuzzy support options are unacceptable, and your IT management has two choices: Hire a bunch of expert Linux gurus to set up a great FOSS environment, or hire a bunch of MCSE monkeys at half the cost and spend the rest on software and support.

You know the software company is gonna be there in 5 years, and have documented knowledge of your environment, where your IT guru sysadmins may have moved on to other jobs. The training is standardized, so you can expect anyone you hire with an MCSE to be moderately familiar with the environment. It's probably ultimately easier on IT management to go the proprietary software route, because if there is an emergency, there is always a company who can be held directly accountable.

There is no cut and dry rule for whether or not you should use Open Source. But if your IT operations are not part of your core business, it may ultimately be easier to just pay for support. The reliability of Open Source largely depends on the skill of your administrators, and good admins cost more money than MCSEs and can be hard to replace because sysadmin skillsets vary widely.

The headline is right

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Open source, in general (although there are exceptions), isn't reliable or dependable. In fact, I find it utterly amazing that a multi-billion dollar company, which has been specializing in software for more than a decade, can't compete on quality against a rag-tag team of squabbling volunteer code monkeys who can barely manage a release schedule.

Yes, Microsoft software is that bad.

Yea, and green bikes are faster.

[the_REAL_sam]

"Open Source" means that the source code is visible to the public.

Even licen$ed $oftware could be open source.

It is really quite silly to base generalizations on software's reliability upon whether or not its source code is visible. It's tantamount to saying "green bikes are faster."

On the other hand, the reason open source software is desirable is that it fosters trust on the part of the user. When I say trust I mean that the user can look into the source code of the software, and verify that it:
opens no backdoors,
installs no rootkits,
does not locally snoop,
does not locally spy, spam or advertise,
or leech system resources,
or delete the user's files,
or mess with security levels,
or alter files that it doesn't own,
or send out a flood of packets /ddos,
or hack remote systems by means of worm or proxy,
or open a local port,
or port scan and relay,
or be a blockscanner,
or a wardialer,
or do any of those other nasty things that we've seen and/or heard of.

in other words, open source software helps the user to verify that the executable software it compiles will not hack remote systems, and will not hack the local machine, either.

that's not to say i know anybody that sits down and reads the open source, any more than i know anybody that reads the full license agreement before clicking "i agree". but "trust", that's the theory.

there's also the creative commons aspect of it, as in "the software engineer you help train to day might be the one you hire tomorrow." if the guts of the software are visible then others can learn and share, and build upon each other, providing the best overall source code.

i've heard arguments that such a thing opens the door to piracy or software plagerism, risking profit loss. Well. Consider how many HUMAN hours went into writing and re-writing the same code based on some business man's notion of profit. Jesus Christ said that the love of money is the root of all evil.

Re:Marketing tripe

[xtracto]

Of course people want dependable, that's why they're looking for something not laden with spyware, viruses, etc.

Sorry, you did not got FP.

I really hate the slashdotters that have this logic "ClosedSource -> Malware" or "ClosedSource->Bad", there are tons of applications that are closed source and DO NOT have any kind of crapware on them, a lot of them are even FREE.

Just because the author of a program do not want to give you his lunch for free does makes him baaaad, anti OpenSource or whatever, come on, get a grip!

Re:Marketing tripe

[Opportunist]

Erh... this isn't about "OS->good, CS->malware", this is about "MS->malware". And I can't say that I won't sign that claim. We've seen it too many times to simply brush it off as an "OSer bashing MS".

We've seen Windows bundled with spyware, we've seen Windows phone home, we've seen rather suspicious loopholes (ok, let's be neutral here and say they don't have bad intentions but are just inapt).

Closed source is not necessarily bad. But this wasn't against closed source, this was directed at Microsof

Re:Marketing tripe

[jb.hl.com]

We've seen Windows bundled with spyware

Elaborate, please.

Re:Marketing tripe

[Opportunist]

http://www.securityspace.com/en/smysecure/catid.ht ml?id=12009 [securityspace.com]

First example I could find, older versions didn't even ask before installing.

Re:Marketing tripe

[jb.hl.com]

That's funny, because my copy of IE6 doesn't have Alexa on it. I'm fairly sure that was put there by an OEM, just how a (hypothetical) Linux-shipping OEM could (hypothetically) bundle malware with copies of Mandrake or something.

Re:Marketing tripe

[Opportunist]

Depending on whether you consider the registration "feature" of XP spyware, you may be right, by the letter, but not the spirit.

When someone talks about "Windows" he means "everything". Of course, you could claim that Windows is just the system. No Mediaplayer, no Internet Explorer, no Notepad, maybe not even the GUI (even though courts currently... let's not go there).

But Windows is the package. "It all". We're not talking about sec experts or IT pros here, imagine the average Joe out there. He installs "W

Re:Marketing tripe

[deadlinegrunt]

"I really hate the slashdotters that have this logic "ClosedSource -> Malware" or "ClosedSource->Bad", there are tons of applications that are closed source and DO NOT have any kind of crapware on them, a lot of them are even FREE."

You bring up a very interesting point I have come to realize lately. When fixing my brothers laptop (and by virtue of that act, my parents computers as well) an interesting situation came up. I'll try to keep this to the bare minimum so as not to stray to diatribe length.

Well of course

[sterno]

It would be rather a strange thing for a company totally dependent on the sales of proprietary closed source software to go out and talk up how wonderful open source is. It would be similarly looney to expect say, RMS, to talk about the advantages of closed source software. News for Nerds: Stuff that's obvious.

Re:Uhh huh...

[LWATCDR]

The sad thing is that a lot of people see this and thinks that it proves that OSS is always going to be more reliable than closed.
Take a look at AIX, VMS, Z/OS, and Solaris. All of them are very reliable as well as closed source.
OSS can be just as reliable as closed source software. Windows isn't a great example of a secure or reliable OS.

Uptime

[RT Alec]

Your post reminded me of a conversation I had with a client a week ago. I had just helped him get a project set up on a series of 7 Windows servers (I will avoid delving into the details of licensing complexity, remote access, et al). IMHO, the infrastructure was needlessly complex and certainly more expensive than necessary-- and this was due primarily to going "the Microsoft way".

I am used to BSD systems (Open, Free) and some Linux, and my client is almost exclusively Mac. I host a few other web sites f

Re:Oh, come on!

[the eric conspiracy]

This whole friggin site is "-1: Flamebait".

Re:Oh, come on!

[geobeck]

Your sig line makes your response even more amusing. :D

Re:I have only this to say...

[igaborf]

It's not necessarily a good thing, although this is RHEL 3, which has many security fixes backported into the 2.4.21 kernel. (The 2.6 series is not necessarily inherently more secure.) Plus, the system in question doesn't have untrusted local users, which means that local privilege-escalation vulnerabilities, among the most common kernel-based security flaws, are not a concern.

But really, the point was not to show best practices, it was to show that such a system is reliable, no matter what the Microsoft ma