[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood for this link. ]
“The open source approach to software–‘contrary to expectation
and tradition’–provides some measure of insurance against security
vulnerabilities, says advocate and developer Peter Harrison.“He cited the example of the Interbase database management
product, originally developed by Ashton-Tate, which was taken over
by Borland. As part of plans to spin Interbase support off into a
separate services company in 2000, the product’s source code was
opened.“A vulnerability was almost immediately found, and proved to
have been introduced with version 4 of the product, in 1995. This
suggests the fault was present for five years in the closed source
product, but once the code was opened it was found and fixed within
six months…”