[ISN] Linux report stirs hornets nest

[InfoSec News]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22460

By Guy Matthews
11 April 2005

HELL HATH NO fury like a Linux devotee scorned. An analyst, just doing 
her job by writing about open source software, has been the victim of 
a furious barrage of criticism, much of it personal, from elements 
within the Linux community.

Yankee Group software analyst Laura DiDio put out a report last week 
daring to suggest, based on extensive research, that Microsoft Windows 
Server 2003 may be as good as, if not in some respects better than, 
Linux in terms of quality, performance and reliability.

A virtual techie "fatwa" seems to have been the result. Her views have 
been repeatedly savaged by Linux apologists, accusing her of bias in 
favour of Microsoft. DiDio has hit back denying any such leanings, but 
the self-appointed Ayatollahs of open source have paid no heed.

Instead DiDio has had to put up with being branded DiDiot on open 
source forums, and has even been telephoned at home after 11pm by 
people she has described as 'nut jobs' and "an extremist fringe of 
Linux loonies".

DiDio says the Yankee Group end user study her analysis was based on 
is strictly independent, and not something she has any personal 
influence over.

This is not the first evidence suggesting a strong streak of 
unreasonable insanity in the Linux community. Last year security 
analyst firm Mi2g claimed Linux was getting hacked more frequently 
than Windows, the resulting brouhaha leading it to declare on its web 
site that "any empirical evidence pointing to a high level of online 
Linux breaches is immediately shot down by religious zealots as if a 
church had been desecrated".

Let's hope the BBC doesn't televise an opera about it, or we're all in 
trouble.