[Am-info] query about MS "Innovations"

[Sujal Shah]

On Mon, 2002-04-08 at 13:56, Joe Moore wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 05, 2002 at 06:27:05PM -0500, Felmon Davis wrote:
> > 
> > Perhaps your last question was overlooked? It's a worrisome thought: 
> > why exactly wouldn't 'open source' _also_ produce a 'mono-culture'?
> 

Yeah, what he (Joe) said. :-) 

I agree exactly with what he said, FWIW.

Sujal

> It does.  Or rather, it can.
> Open source is completely orthogonal to a monoculture.  However, freely
> modifyable source (aka Free Software) makes it possible to create enough
> diversity to make the binosphere (my word) a safer place.
> 
> To see the difference, examine Microsoft's "Shared Source" license.  Certain
> large, influential companies are able to examine (but not modify) the 
> Windows source code.  This does nothing to eliminate the software monoculture,
> even though the source is "open".
> 
> On the other hand, consider the Apache project.  Because users aren't 
> generally dependant on a specific set of compilation options (For example,
> some may not need the server-side imagemap extension) there is diversity
> in what actually gets installed on a system.  Even though it's all based on
> the same software.  In addition, what compiler you use to build it may make
> a difference to what vulnerabilities exist.  For example, a bounds-checking
> compiler may create a less-vulnerable executable than a standard C compiler,
> and gcc v2.7.2 will create a different executable (stack in different place,
> etc) than even gcc 2.95.
> 
> All these contribute to diversity even without changing the source code.
> 
> --Joe
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