I'd say that NT was definitely a giant security hole, but it seems that Windows 2000 is a clear improvement - if only because Microsoft ripped off so much code from BSD Unix. With Windows 2000, MS has moved away from proprietary b.s. such as LAN Manager and netbios and actually joined open standards - And please don't interpret this sentence as an absolute statement.

And to give the devil his due, Windows 2000 seems at the moment to be the only successful commercial NOS implementation that includes a powerful LDAP server. At this point, Windows 2000 owes a lot to UNIX under the hood. The more Windows 2000 and its successor copy, borrow and/or steal the successful features of UNIX and thus become more like UNIX in terms of reliability, performance and security, the more the Linux/UNIX/BSD vs. Microsoft argument becomes academic.

However, one fact will always be certain: the greatest innovations will come from developers who use the Open Source platforms. In that respect, Linux/BSD will have a bright future while Microsoft will have a future only so long as it is successful in playing a sustained game of catch-up. If I were a third-party developer, I would be crazy to develop anything on the MS server platforms, knowing that they could break my applications at any time by arbitrarily screwing around with the APIs.

Regards.

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