Reflections on GatesBlather (Score 1)

So Bill Gates says, basically, "Love Bug was caused by a lack of innovation, split MicroSoft apart and you'll stifle innovation, therefore splitting MicroSoft up will cause more Love Bugs".

Huh?

Those of us who work with security and have done application work before, are doing a massive double-take on this syllogism (or at least its premises), since it seems 180 degrees opposite to reality: it was, after all the innovation of MicroSoft application developers that made Outlook so vulnerable to a VBS-based worm, and of course it was the innovation of the worm creator which caused all of this trouble in the first place. Lack of innovation isn't the problem here -- we already have innovation up to our eyeballs. Arguably, innovation caused, more than prevented Love Bug.

What's needed is not more innovation but accountability. Innovation without accountability is just reckless. Virus creators keep doing what they are doing because they don't have any accountability (or at least perceive this to be the case). Similarly, MicroSoft in its monopolistic perch apparently never perceived that they would be held accountable for their predatory, playground-bully practices. But now, thanks to the Justice Department et al they are. Accountability at last. Accountability for their sloppy software design decisions is yet to come.

So, as Our Friend Bill continues to push his "don't let the government stifle our innovation!" PR campaign, hopefully in the weeks and months ahead we'll all keep in mind how innovative the Love Bug worm was, and this will be a constant reminder that, as usual, Bill is only telling half of the story.

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