Re: OpenSSL development (Heartbleed)

[Alan Browne <alan.browne@FreelunchVideotron.ca>]

On 2014.04.19, 12:46 , Georg Bauhaus wrote:
> On 19/04/14 18:21, Alan Browne wrote:
>> Linux is a pretty reliable and solid OS.  Having "one Master"
>> (Torvalds seems to still be the kernel merge master) and funding
>> obviously helps.
>
> What is the evidence of "obvious" here? I'm not denying
> that something may be the case. However, using "obvious" is either
> political rhetoric, or else one of the lesser habits of mathematical
> style:
>
> Some masters drive things against walls. Costly. Others succeed in
> getting really good things done. Why is that? What is "obvious" here?
>
>
> (You may have heard of the continuing failures to build BER airport.
> In spite of good ideas, good engineers, etc., something is wrong
> somewhere. Obvious?)

I'm sorry if I'm not up to your strict standard of language use - what I 
wanted to point out is that Linux (kernel) has many maintainers but a 
narrow choke point to release in the form of Mr. Torvalds (and/or his 
team).

That - for the time being - helps drive reliability.  It does not imply 
that that model will work for all endeavours, or that it can be copied 
as is.  What it does imply is that a single-point-of-care-and-release 
would make for the possibility of stricter control over what can be 
released - following appropriate change control, requirements 
definition, testing and so on.

-- 
"Big data can reduce anything to a single number,
  but you shouldn’t be fooled by the appearance of exactitude."
      -Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis, NYT, 2014.04.07