Charles writes:
> Microsoft is in for some serious competition.
> With source code, it will be possible for
> "everyone" with a better idea to enhance
> the Netscape browser.

And "everyone" will be able to find all the security holes in the
product now.  If Communicator 5.0 source is given out, there is a
very good chance that new and critical security holes will be
discovered that might affect every prior release of the software
as well, causing the security of the net to fall apart overnight.

And "everyone" will be able to find all the security holes in the
product now.  If Communicator 5.0 source is given out, there is a
very good chance that new and critical security holes will be
discovered that might affect every prior release of the software
as well, causing the security of the net to fall apart overnight.

[Brian Manley]  Although this may expose some security holes,
I think this will only lead to a more secure product.  One needs
to only look at the freeware Unix community to see how quickly
things get fixed.

Just too see, I went to the CERT site (http://www.cert.org/) and
looked at the archived security alerts.  As suspected, the majority
of alerts list freeware software as having a patch available. However,
the majority of commercial software listed only that the vendor
had a "patch in progress". I admit I didn't look at *every* alert, but
the trend is pretty obvious.

As another example, some of you have been complaining about
VT sessions sending passwords as plain text or some such.  If this were
free software and not subject to the resource/politics/know-how
problems of a commercial vendor, the "flaw" would have been
fixed ages ago.

Anyway, I don't see how the release of the source code could be a bad
thing. If it leads to stronger software, and faster patches ( and puts MS
on the run for awhile ;-) ), I say go for it!

Just my two cents.
Brian Manley