Economics of Software Vulnerabilities

[ljknews at mac.com (ljknews)]

At 8:55 AM -0400 3/20/07, Michael S Hines wrote:
> I'm not sure what your sources are but from what I'm hearing and reading the
> problem is that there are many missing drivers for what have become standard
> peripherals that people are used to - and some of the vendors are reluctant
> to develop new drivers (the driver technology changed in Vista - so all
> drivers have to be reworked).
>
> MP3 players, ePhones, PDA's, etc. have become standard components in many
> places...  and they don't work with Vista - yet (if ever).

That is because the features provided by many add-on products depended on
the longstanding loose state of security on Microsoft Windows.

> It's the feature thing.... not that users are shunning security.
>
> And, at least to me, it is an indication that M$ did not understand the
> marketplace or rushed the (incomplete) product to market.  There's more than
> one way to foul up a new product launch.

The previous Microsoft mode had been to favor anything that would ease
feature implementation over anything that would provide security.
-- 
Larry Kilgallen