[PLUG] Is closed source more secure?

[Shridhar Daithankar]

On Sunday 10 October 2010 11:38:34 Mayuresh wrote:
> 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 ...

I doubt. There might be some private modifications to linux/bsd that they 
don't want to release and as far as security goes, it does not really help to 
publish the exact source code that is used for creating the binary distro.

Use of open source code does not necessarily mean trumpeting it to the world.

> 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?

Who knows, that might be the case, except releasing the modifications back to 
community. That could be debated but still complies with the license, if not 
spirit.

-- 
Regards
 Shridhar