[Linux-aus] Open Source Monoculture

[Arjen Lentz]

Hi Brad,

On Tue, 2004-02-17 at 18:16, Brad Hards wrote:
> The failures tend to come from explosive growth in pest populations (eg 
> locusts) or from natural disasters (fire, flood, hail). An agricultural 
> polyculture (characterised by mixed trees, various crops in different stages 
> of development, animals, people, small plots - as you see in subsistence 
> living and more modern permaculture environments) tends to have moderating 
> influences for those things, and catastrophic failures are rarer.

Indeed. I don't think we're disagreeing even on that ;-)


> In regard to jdub's original questions, I think that FOSS deployments in the 
> server arena are tending to "a number of minor variations on a single theme". 
> Those minor variations may not be enough to provide the resilence we need to 
> a truly major failure (case: breakins on a number of our major sites - Debian 
> and Savannah). The desktop variation is greater, but there are still a number 
> of key shared vulnerabilities (eg a buffer overflow on libxml2 or libxslt 
> would be bad for both Gnome and KDE). In terms of total vulnerability, any 
> variation is likely to help though.

Indeed. That's why I also suggested (but haven't received any feedback
on) my suggestion that closed source implementation of open standards
could play a part, too.


Regards,
Arjen.
-- 
Arjen Lentz, Technical Writer, Trainer
Brisbane, QLD Australia
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com

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