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If the government uses open source software, then the government is at risk because the security flaws are exposed publicly. The use of proprietary software protects the government from security attacks because its code is hidden and not released to the public.

The most overlooked open source security vulnerabilities, according to Palamida researchers, occur in Apache Geronimo, JBoss Application Server, Libtiff, Net-SNMP and ZLIB. "The most popular projects appear in every test. This always surprises companies. There is from three to 10 times the use of open source code [in software enterprise uses] than companies realize," said Theresa Bui-Friday, cofounder of Palamida.

I saw an article the other day, repeating the mistaken view that there was Minix code in an early version of Linux. I knew that was not true, because for one thing Linus told us it was not true years ago. And Andrew Tanenbaum confirmed that Linus didn't use any Minix code, as did Eric Raymond.

Put away the pitchforks, penguin fans, we're not hating on Linux or dropping a deuce on open-source software in general (you're welcome for the visual). What we're referring to is an actual distro called "Damn Vulnerable Linux," which is not like any other Linux distro you've seen before.

We've all heard the the cliche that more eyes lead to more secure code when it comes to open source -- but is it true?

Open source is great. Code is knowledge and knowledge should not be hidden forever. ASAP it should become public for all to use and benefit from. In the past the flow of information was slow, but nowadays is fast, and the faster we share and need information, the greater the need society has for all code, which is knowledge, to become public, with no strings attached.

There’s a lot of discussion today about a 0day Local Linux Root exploit. http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=6820 For readers who aren’t security-savvy, that means that a user logged into a Linux system, with shell access, can bypass system security mechanisms and elevate his access to be equivalent to the system administrator (or ‘root’ user).

Let’s face it: we all have biases. I readily admit that I have a very clear bias in favor of Free Software. There is no human being that is truly objective and neutral. However, in the modern world of technology blogging, these biases are often cleverly hidden. “Studies” are released without revealing the true motivations behind those that conducted the study.