Davey Winder
Friday, 15 August 2008 04:49
Business IT -
Open Source
Page 1 of 2
Linus Torvalds is a Finnish born software engineer best known for two things: kick starting the development of the Linux kernel, and owning the Linux trademark. Actually, make that three things. Torvalds has recently become very well known for speaking his mind...
Maybe it is something in the water, or perhaps he has just got fed up
with doing the diplomatic thing as the public
face of the Linux project. Certainly his email rant exactly one month
ago took many observers by surprise.
Contributing to a discussion taking place on one
Linux developer newsgroup, Torvalds seemed to pretty much lose it when
one developer suggested he might like to publicly explain why he was
'covering up' the security impact of Linux bugs.
Of course, much of what Torvalds had to say was hard to argue with. His
position being that the only place where it is appropriate to report security
bugs should be within the Linux kernel changelogs is one which, to be
frank, many developers will agree with.
After all, disclosure when bugs have been fixed is a pretty standard
security approach. Torvalds went on to comment that there was no way he
could be personally convinced that it would be a "good idea to say 'Hey
script kiddies, try this' unless it's already very public indeed."
Torvalds referred to the security circus as being part of the problem,
glorifying and encouraging the wrong behaviour. "I don't think some
spectacular security hole should be glorified or cared about as being
any more "special" than a random spectacular crash due to bad locking"
he exclaimed.
Then things started to get a little bit screwy.
Claiming that security people are "often the black-and-white kind of
people that I can't stand" Torvalds then turned his attention to the
OpenBSD crowd which he called "a bunch of masturbating monkeys."
He explained that he meant they focus on security to the point where
nothing else matters. "To me, security is important" Torvalds insisted
"But it's no less important than everything *else* that is also
important!"
OK, that's the masturbating monkeys taken care of, but where do the whores and idiots come in? Find out on page 2...
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