A new debate is raging in the open-source community after a speech delivered by Dan O'Dowd, CEO of Green Hills Software, branded Linux insecure for defence applications. His argument primarily revolved around the open nature of the Linux community, where programmers from around the world contribute to code used in the operating system; this code could easily mask malicious trojans and back-doors that could compromise an entire country's defences..
However, he was not taking a stab at Linux or open-source software per se, but rather at a competitor - MontaVista Software, who are outsourcing defence application development to China and Russia.
"MontaVista is outsourcing their development to Russia and China. That's not wrong if you're building toaster ovens," O'Dowd said in an interview. "If you're building national security applications, that's a different story. Nobody's even checking if there's anybody putting anything [dangerous] into Linux."
In response, MontaVista CEO Jim Ready said Linux constituted a threat to vendors of proprietary software, because of its robustness, cost-effectiveness and its security.
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