Re: [seul-edu] Help, I need backup

[Jonathan Byron <geodigest@telocity.com>]

Although not every crypto/security person would agree with me, it could be 
argued that Microsoft, by dominating the marketplace, has built the largest, 
most loyal following of crackers and cybervandals with the greatest 
expertise. Servers with less market share get less attention and present a 
smaller target profile - security through obscurity.  On a more serious note, 
unix/linux was designed as a multi-user system from the start, so security 
has always been a consideration.

At the local Linux Users Group meeting this week, one person that does 
corporate programming/sysadmin reported that the rather large company he 
worked for was thinking about dumping microsoft due to the new licensing 
structure that MS will be putting in place soon.  They could save over $2 
million on software alone if they made the switch. I think it was the .NET 
licensing that was objectionable - anyone else hear rumblings about this??

 You may also want to check out sites like sans.org and counterpane labs; I 
don't know that they take a position on this OS vs. that, but I recall  some 
comments about the inherent vulnerabilities of MS products. Don't know if 
this was desktop only, or applied to servers as well. 


Jonathan 

On Friday 11 May 2001 08:53 pm, you wrote:
> I am the only webmaster in my county that uses open-source software. A few
> months ago I put Zope on our school's server and it has worked great. Last
> week some hacker took down several Microsoft powered sites around the
> county. Now the county IT director wants to take control of all web servers
> (including) mine and install IIS on everything.
>
> Our schools IT director has set up a meeting between me and him this
> Wednesday so I can explain the benefits of what I have set up. This may be
> my only chance to fight for open-source at the county level. How have your
> dealt with situations like this before? What figures, documents, reports,
> etc. should I have ready to present?
>
> Thanks for any insight.
>
> jmellen
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Jason Mellen
> Palm Bay High School
> Webmaster / TSA Reporter / Television Producer

-- 
Jonathan Byron, PhD
Assistant Professor, Geography
Jacksonville University
Jacksonville, FL 

jbyron@ju.edu
geodigest@telocity.com

http://64.128.176.121:8080/geodigest