Comment Re:I don't know what to make of this (Score 1) 218
Replace 'Linux' with 'Apache', etc. to taste:
The danger is that the Windows code is basically closed source. The hacker has access to back doors/bugs that we don't know about and can't fix, and if he changed it, we can't know about that either. Microsoft may not have the resources to audit their entire code, but I would guess that every line of Linux source gets scrutinised by someone somewhere every few weeks or so at least.
Linux has no back doors and bugs are fixed as they are discovered, because everyone can alter it. As for malicious alterations, code is checked by the maintainers as it goes in, and even if someone hacked linux.kernel.org and we all got bad code for a few days, someone would notice quickly, because we can all read it, and the problem would be corrected.
The danger is that the Windows code is basically closed source. The hacker has access to back doors/bugs that we don't know about and can't fix, and if he changed it, we can't know about that either. Microsoft may not have the resources to audit their entire code, but I would guess that every line of Linux source gets scrutinised by someone somewhere every few weeks or so at least.
Linux has no back doors and bugs are fixed as they are discovered, because everyone can alter it. As for malicious alterations, code is checked by the maintainers as it goes in, and even if someone hacked linux.kernel.org and we all got bad code for a few days, someone would notice quickly, because we can all read it, and the problem would be corrected.
