freebsd - Re: recommended Virus Scanner?

[Alvin Oga <aoga@ns.Linux-Consulting.com>]

On Thu, 27 Nov 2003, Tom wrote:

> I have a friend who is 1000 times smarter about Unix than me, and he has 
> told me the whole history of Sendmail exploits, Bind exploits, and 
> horriblly crufty design decisions and gaffs and el crapo code all 
> throughout the history of Unix.  His personal opinion is that Linux is a 
> mere distraction written by amateurs; FreeBSD is closer to the ideal.

a question you can ask him:  and anybody else that likes to poke holes
at all the exploits and heavy scrutiny by the thousands(?) it has
withstood and stil being used
	( always a fun subject )

a) what version of sendmail does freebsd use compared to "linux"
b) what version of bind does freebsd use compared to what amateursuse
c) what version of bash does freebsd use compared to what amateurs use
... on and on ..

if freebsd code is patched and fixed, than after the "same patches/fixes"
applied to "linux" would make it a fair comparason ??

and others might prefer openbsd over freebsd too :-)

otherwise, its comparing a "virgin" code compared to "well-armored" code

and yes, maybe freebsd is better than linux in some aspects and vice versa


> 
> I'm not advocating his belief, it's just that (1) the history of Unix as 
> a cracker proof platform is not true;

nobody said that ... and nobody that knows anything useful will say that

> (2) most of the professional Unix 
> community views Linux as a largely amateurish attempt relative to their 
> "heavy duty code",

thats okay ... everybody is entitled to their opionion ...

and taking it one step further, "C" was created at around the same time
or just a year/two before the rest of the "exploitable" code

and who/where/what is the "professional unix community" ???
	- ibm's aix ??
	- HP hpux ?
	- sun's solaris ?
	- sco's "caldera" ?
	- novell's  suse ?
	- redhat's "linux"
	- apple's freebsd/darwin ?
	- on and on ..

	- various other flavors of linux distro that uses the same
	  version of gpl'd code ?

i bet all those "professional people" have some flavor of these "amateur
code" running their mail and web servers and other side business ??

> and (3) we're all human.

yupp ...  and some like to be play monkey-c-monkey-do too :-)
	or see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, say-n-evil,
 
> However, I think your professionalism and exhaustiveness in answering my 
> questions is absolutely admirable, absolutely the correct way to be, and 
> absolutely the best philsophy we can have to "do the best we can."

thats all one can do ... do the best one can do .. 

c ya
alvin