Product vs. project in open source


Open source is a good thing. Open source is a particularly good thing for security. I've written about this before (notably in Disbelieving the many eyes hypothesis and The commonwealth of open source), and I'm going to keep writing about it. In this article, however, I want to talk a little more about a feature of open source that is arguably both a possible disadvantage and a benefit: the difference between a project and a product. I'll come down firmly on one side (spoiler alert: for organisations, it's "product"), but I'd like to start with a little disclaimer. I am employed by Red Hat, and we are a company that makes money from supporting open source. I believe this is a good thing, and I approve of the model that we use, but I wanted to flag any potential bias early in the article.
The main reason that open source is good for security is that you can see what's going on when there's a problem, and you have a chance to fix it. Or, more realistically, unless you're a security professional with particular expertise in the open source project in which the problem arises, somebody else has a chance to fix it. We hope that there are sufficient security folks with the required expertise to fix security problems and vulnerabilities in software projects about which we care.
-

- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version- 4171 reads
PDF version
More in Tux Machines
- Highlights
- Front Page
- Latest Headlines
- Archive
- Recent comments
- All-Time Popular Stories
- Hot Topics
- New Members
digiKam 7.7.0 is released
After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release.
|
Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand
|
Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech
The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world.
Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility.
|
today's howtos
|








.svg_.png)
Content (where original) is available under CC-BY-SA, copyrighted by original author/s.

Recent comments
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago