[lug] Firewalls

[Michael J. Pedersen]

On Tue, Aug 01, 2000 at 10:31:38AM -0600, David Morris wrote:
> Is it simply a matter of open source code?  Does the visibility of
> LINUX code decrease security because anyone can search through it for
> holes, or does it increase security by allowing anyone to go in and
> fix those holes as fast as possible?

Wow, you might as well ask which editor is better, emacs or vi :)

Seriously, both of them have their good points. To my mind, there is one
point, though, that makes the open source equivalents better than their closed
source counterparts: If I can identify a problem, I can at least attempt to
fix it myself, whilst waiting on the "official" fix. Different companies have
different response times to security problems, but the open source versions
tend t obe less than a month (under worst case scenarios) for a fix, while
closed source tend to take more than 3 (for best case scenarios).

All in all, that benefit makes the open source better for me. YMMV.

-----
Michael J. Pedersen
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