FW: [LINK] Open source just as insecure as Windows

[Roger Clarke]

Karl Auer <kauer@biplane.com.au>
>All the more important, then, to present balanced and 
>well-researched work.  ...

A couple of things need to be balanced in this discussion:

(1)  Karen's been attacked rather more aggressively than is reasonable.
      You have to look at the body of a person's work rather than a
      single article, and of all of the people working in the IT segments
      of the mainstream media, she's definitely one of the best at getting
      social and non-big-business economic perspectives aired.

(2)  The specific article reported on one aspect, from one direction.
      That upset the open source advocates, because it seemed to be
      putting the newspaper's imprimatur on the views in the article.
      Like some other people, I was disappointed about that.

      But I *don't agree with the full extent of Karl's demands for balance
      in one article.  This is the news, not commentary, and not op-ed.

      There are ways in which articles can acknowledge that there are
      multiple perspectives, and I think it's important that a piece like
      this contain such language.  I have in mind things like 'In a way that
      runs counter to some of the arguments of the open source community ..'
      and '<Interviewee> acknowledges that this argument doesn't please
      everyone ...'.  (I suspect Karen's got about 25 variants of this up
      her sleeve).

So I think we should all back off a bit, and focus on:
(1)  reasonable expectations of IT news reporting;  and
(2)  appropriate processes to improve quality, including security, of
      software packages generally.

-- 
Roger Clarke              http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/

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Visiting Professor, Uni of Hong Kong, Dept of Comp Sci and Info Sys
Visiting Fellow, Australian National University, Dept of Comp Sci