[PD] [OT] bugbear ?

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Marc Lavallée wrote:

> Le 9 Juin 2003 04:37, Edward George a écrit :
> > Hmm, as an aside - the more people that are convinced about 
> > installing linux the more linux becomes a target for exploits.
> > There is a price to pay for becoming popular.
> Popularity is a non-issue with free software, it's a side-effect,

Something being a side-effect doesn't make it immune to the laws of
causality. Side-effects can have consequences too, and virus-writers don't
care whether popularity was a goal or not: the more a piece of software is
popular, the more it's an attractive target.

> and there's enough diversity in the Gnu/Linux world to offer
> resistance.

Well, even in diversified niches, you usually have three (or even just
two) major players which together are used in well over 50% of
installations. You can bet that webbrowsers "Konqueror", "Mozilla",
"Netscape4" together have over 95% of the niche; for webservers, "Apache"
alone is most probably well over 80%; for mail clients, I don't know, but
"KMail", "Evolution" and "Pine" must be a big percentage together.

> "The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve 
>  nor will he ever receive either."  (Benjamin Franklin)

Many of your quotes are real good but you had to stumble upon the most
quoted (and thus, the most misquoted) quote of the whole internet.

	"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
	temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
          -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

which has a different meaning.

Browsing the internet you can find it attributed to Jefferson (a
contemporary) and Montesquieu as well (who was one of their sources of
inspiration at least). It's difficult to really tell the truth about a
quote that popular.

	"Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first
	misquoter of it." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1876

________________________________________________________________
Mathieu Bouchard                       http://artengine.ca/matju