Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 13 Aug 2000 00:21:12 -0400 (EDT)
From:      John <papalia@UDel.Edu>
To:        Christian Jacken <christian@jacken.net>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: How safe is FreeBSD?
Message-ID:  <Pine.SOL.4.05.10008130017110.2323-100000@copland.udel.edu>
In-Reply-To: <NDBBJMNNEPKCHPDOJAEBAEJJEEAA.christian@jacken.net>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> sometimes Microsoft supporters get me in serious trouble when it comes to
> the questions "how should we trust our main operations to an operating
> system made a buch of open source programmers" and "you say that Microsoft
> or NSI possibly have a backdoor to Windows2000, but how can we be sure that
> there is no backdoor in Red Hat or FreeBSD"?

no matter what responses you get, ultimately there really is no great
answer...

The 'quick and easy' response to their statement would be: "there's no
guarantees in life about anything, however at least with an Open Source OS
you have the choice and chance to see if there is a backdoor, and there
are hundreds, if not thousands, of people out there actually looking for
them and 'keeping score'.  Microsoft or similar entities never even offer
you the opportunity to see the code, so you are lacking the ability to
prove your fears right or wrong."

Hope that makes sense and helps a little bit...

You might want to move this to -advocacy instead, since it seems more
appropriate to there..

--john



To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.SOL.4.05.10008130017110.2323-100000>