Re: [PLUG] W2K source "leaked"? (fwd)

[gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2004 at 01:07:33AM -0500, Paul wrote:
> What's the worst that might happen?  A bunch of hackers might improve to 
> code?  SCO would see two lines of code that seem familiar and sue M$?

I think the obvious concern is that authors of malicious software
would use this to generate a swarm of new viruses and bugs in much
shorter order than they would have been able to if they had to
effectively do a clean room reverse engineering.

Remember that the increased reliability and quick reaction to
problems that we see in open source is a result of its having been
open for a very long time (the entire lifetime of the software in
many cases). Switching in short order from closed source, where
bugs that weren't noticed internally may slip through for years,
to open source, with a thousand malicious eyes (a small percentage
of the total eyes, obviously) looking at the source looking precisely
for bugs could spell trouble.

-- 
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net

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