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General discussion

Gates on Linux (Q & A on Windows & Linux security and price)

Dec 3, 2003 5:47PM PST
Do you think of Linux when you sleep, and say, 'Oh God, Linux again!'

Gates: Well, in every period of Microsoft?s history there?s been something. There was OS/2. For a while, that was a pretty serious problem. The largest consumer company in the world told us their army was marching and was going to destroy us. It was a competitive battle. And there have been others.

So it is a competition; it?s a product which you?re challenging.

Gates: Sure.

How do you respond to the assertion that Linux and Unix are more secure?

Gates: If you look at security, there are three things to consider. One is the number of critical security updates. We are significantly better than Linux or Unix on that. The second would be how quickly you make these updates available. We are significantly better than Unix or Linux on that. And significantly better than we were. But the third thing is propagation. If you have a virus or worm that is scanning to go find somebody else to hop to, and you don?t stop propagation, then popularity is your enemy. So this is a bigger problem for us than for other platforms. No one else stops propagation, but we have to. It?s our fault -- a faux pas -- that we didn?t make it clear to customers how to prevent propagation. And that is something that we are going to provide to customers. We are going to give them free tools to do that.

Part 1 - http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=1850_0_4_0_C
Part 2 - http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=1870_0_1_0_C
Part 3 - will post later this week.

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