Re: MJR on Linux/OSS

["Marcus J. Ranum" <mjr () ranum com>]

Devdas Bhagat wrote:
> http://www.ranum.com/editorials/divide-conquer/
>
> Summary: Diversity in interfaces is bad. Microsoft's consistent interface 
> is good.

Devdas -
your "summary" so profoundly mis-characterizes my rant
that I'm not even sure it's a good idea to respond to it
because it risks muddying the waters further. :(   All I can
do is urge people to read my article (if they care) and come
to their own conclusions.

A few comments, however. The article is not intended as
a discussion of the merits or relative non-merits of a
"monoculture". It's solely intended as a few rather
nasty observations on the lack of discipline inherent
in the Open Source movement and why I think that
version fragmentation in open source O/S distributions
is going to do profound damage to their ability to
compete effectively for customers and midshare
against the Windows juggernaut. In other words, the
article is about business dynamics, not security
dynamics.

> The trouble with a single dominant monoculture is that it does increase
> the damage caused by a single hole. See blaster, and the long thread
> which was spawned by *that* on this list.

I think the whole concept of "monoculture" in software is,
at this time, ridiculous. In offer my comments on that topic
in another discussion here:
http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/monoculture-hype/
so please don't expect me to offer a nod to the notion of
"monoculture."    Although, I will say that the Linux/Open
Source community appear to be dead set on proving the
notion that, as variability in systems increases, system
administration costs go off the chart. How many distros
do you run simultaneously? Are you a glutton for
punishment?

> Oh, and Marcus: DLL hell ;)

To which I can only respond:
99.9% market share

You appear to have not even actually read my article. Or else
your passion and preconceptions have caused you to extract
something from it that simply isn't there. I am not saying
Windows is good. I am not saying Open Source is bad. I am
saying that "if your premise is that you're offering an alternative
to Windows, this is NOT the way to go about doing it."
May I suggest that you go back and re-read my article in
that light?

mjr. 

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