The rivalry between Microsoft Windows and Linux comes down to the basic question of whom customers should trust, according to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Ballmer on Tuesday acknowledged Microsoft turned its focus to matters such as patch management "probably later than we should have," but claimed that Microsoft has made dramatic strides in its Trustworthy Computing efforts, while users can question the quality of Linux security patches. Ballmer made his comments during an executive interview before about 3,000 IT managers at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo.
What sets Windows apart from Linux in terms of development, security and patching, Ballmer said, is that Microsoft has an infrastructure that takes responsibility for Windows. "There's no roadmap for Linux. Nobody is held accountable for security problems with Linux." Noting that Microsoft has professional developers working with a common methodology, he said, "Should there be a reason to believe that code that comes from a variety of people, unknown from around the world, should be somehow of higher quality than that from people who get paid to do it professionally? "There's no reason to believe it would be of higher quality. I'm not necessarily claiming it should be of worse quality, but why should code submitted randomly by some hacker in China and distributed by some open source project, why is that, by definition, better?"
News source: Yahoo News!
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