RE: tunnel vs open a hole

[David Lang <david.lang () digitalinsight com>]

you can purchase support for most, if not all open-source software if that
is the real problem.

unfortunantly it's not. opensource software does tend to have things fixed
faster when problems are discovered, but I think it was the recent
sendmail holes taht had been in the code for 8 years without being
discovered. more eyes doesn't eliminate all bugs. (this isn't to say
commercial software is any better, win95 had a bug in it that wasn't
discovered for 4 years that prevented it from running for more then 50
days)

another problem with open-source software is that since people tend to do
the work that's fun, minor things like documenting how to use the software
tends to lag significantly.

when a company looks at useing opensource software they need to include
the cost of these things in the balance.

I still believe that in most cases opensource is still better, but it's
not free.

David Lang

On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, Bowden, Kevin wrote:

> Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 10:24:57 -0400
> From: "Bowden, Kevin" <bowden_kw () naptheon com>
> To: firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com
> Subject: RE: [fw-wiz] tunnel vs open a hole
>
> Well, one reason at least, is management's hesitation / refusal to trust
> enterprise solutions to an ethereal support system.  They want to be able to
> have someone pick up a phone when something breaks so they can get the
> problem fixed ASAP.  While this is no guarantee of a fix, at least they can
> upwardly report "Our technical guys are on the phone with the vendor."  That
> is a bit more substantial than "they dropped a post in a usenet group and
> are waiting for someone to reply."
>
> Kevin W. Bowden, CISSP
> Senior Firewall Administrator
> Northrop Grumman Information Technology
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marcus J. Ranum [mailto:mjr () ranum com]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 10:06 AM
> To: Sloane, David; firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com
> Subject: RE: [fw-wiz] tunnel vs open a hole
>
> Sloane, David wrote:
> > I was just about to ignore this ever-expanding thread when this post from
> > Mr. Ranum caught my attention.  Every aspect of the problem is addressed by
> > open-source software development.
>
> Spoken like a true believer...
> _BUT_ -- if open source is the solution, why do we still have the problem?
>
> mjr.
>
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