> so.. when some MS product crashes, and your own software
> _depends_ on being stable.. what do you do at that
> point in all honesty? You can't do anything except report
> it to MS who may decide that its a low priority bug..

I can't, can I? It *is* possible to debug MS software and
even OSen, you know. They do supply the symbols. If we're
talking about the infamous BSOD caused by some system call
somewhere, I can locate the system call that caused the
exception and try to code around the problem.

You assume that every open-source developer is capably of
hacking system libraries to fix obscure bugs nobody else
has picked up. At the same time you assume all closed-source
developers can't do anything except call the vendor when
their software throws a BSOD. I believe neither case is true.

> In the opensource model.. you can fix this yourself, and
> immediately you benefit the entire community (generally
> without them even knowing! - but they can if they want
> to -->

There's a whole MS-developer community out there that
comes up with solutions to problems MS missed every day.
You don't have to rewrite every system library that has
a bug because nobody bothered to test it with more unusual
devices to solve most everyday developer problems.

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/127/17278#17278