[PLUG] Is closed source more secure?

[Mayuresh]

There is this news article in some newspapers today:

"India to develop its own OS"

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/hardware/India-to-develop-its-own-futuristic-computer-operating-system/articleshow/6719490.cms

According to the article, security is the main concern to go for such an
OS. One of the quoted lines from a top official goes: "source code is with
you and then nobody knows what's that" indicating that they will build a
closed source system and believe that it will be more secure ...

Well, one can do that, though firstly this sounds a misconception that
OSS systems are less secure because their source code is known. That might
have been the case in early stages of development of an open source OS.
On the contrary, over long time, since more and more eyeballs catch the
vulnerabilities, OSS systems become more secure.


Why should one do an OS development from scratch? Why not just participate
in spotting security vulnerabilities and contribute to fixing them in any
existing open source platforms?

Mayuresh.