The thing is now a days people keep touting the proprietary word as being a bad thing. In reality it isn't. Bare with me here. Proprietary and closed software development can work just as well as open source as long as its done right. The security holes in Microsoft's code it not due to it being closed but due to the nature of how Microsoft deals with security. As I've stated before security is like insurance. It's not a visible function of a product, be it a car, a house, or an OS. Security up to this point in time hasn't been a major selling point for any OS. It's generally the features and the eye candy that draws the crowd. Look at Panther. Is Apple touting Security as its main feature? Nope. Expose is the draw. Look at Linux. Security does play some part but more so the price of the OS. Licensing costs are zip. Microsoft knows this and caters to this attitude. Again: Microsoft is a marketing company that just happens to make software.
Things are changing at Microsoft. Security has become priority one there but a simple fact of life applies to Microsoft's predicament. You can't make an aircraft carrier do a 180* turn in 30 seconds. Similarly a transition at Microsoft to consider security first is not going to happen overnight and is not going to happen in XP. XP's development occurred in the very mist of this "security first" transition and because of this toting security and XP in the same sentence is going to end up being laughable at best.
They are doing their best with an upcoming Service Pack release for XP but reality check time. This is not going to fix the various problems that are plaguing XP. (Note SP2 will begin to implement the idea of security at the perimeter. Whether or not that idea will work only time and a virus trial by fire will tell.)
No its Longhorn is where the real test is going to show how well Microsoft is handling this transition. There are a number of reasons Microsoft is now estimating (Note the estimate word.) that Longhorn won't be out until 2006. Some of the minor ones are backwards software compatibility.
Some of the more major ones are security. Microsoft has stated they are writing Longhorn from scratch. I'm guessing that a certain percent of XP's code base will be recycled in Longhorn. I'm betting that Microsoft is going over the parts that are being recycled with a fine-toothed comb, which is probably the reason for the delay. They don't want existing holes in XP to transition over to Longhorn.
So where does this lead us? Basically back to the beginning. Open source advocates tote open source because Microsoft gets a bad rep. In reality closed source development works as long as its done right. Having 1,000 to 1,000,000 developers really doesn't matter in the long run. The goal of most companies is to have an acceptable margin of error in the code. As long as it runs, doesn't crash, and is acceptably secure most companies are happy.
Also I would put forth a possible suggestion. Feel free to correct me if I'm off on this since my hands on for software development is somewhat limited. (Took a few classes in college but never could get use to sitting there for hours on end.) While open source in and of itself isn't a bad thing, probably more good then anything else, what happens if all OS's were based on open source code? Innovation can only go so far if you are bound to a sandbox. Lets say Windows used BSD's kernel for Longhorn. They dropped the entire NT platform right now. Obviously you can build, append, and make changes to that kernel but since that underlying code it basically the same, OS development could be hampered in the event that say Microsoft wanted to write their kernel from scratch while still using open source. *shrugs* Maybe not. I don't know.
My brain has officially turned to mush. I just spent the last 3 hours trying to track down a missing laptop that was sent to us, that never showed up, that we can't verify, that we don't know who's it is who's packing slip that has the laptops serial number is needed to check which of the 3 laptops of that model is truly missing and once that is done we need to get a UPS tracking number all the while dealing with an administrative assistant that is based out of Chicago for a manager who is based here in Minneapolis who ordered the laptops and is getting pissy with me that one of those orders was lost so she contacts my manager but I had the good sense to contact him before she did and gave him the real line of what is going on and and and. *brain explodes* I hate corp politics. Sorry. This was off topic but I had to rant.
