Microsoft chief software architect Bill Gates took a swipe at rival operating systems on Monday, as he reiterated the importance of security for Windows and in particular for the upcoming Longhorn version.
As the latest mass-mailing worm spread across the Internet on Monday, hitting Windows PCs with a program designed to attack the servers of Unix vendor SCO Group on Feb. 1, Gates stressed the importance of security to his company's products, but said that companies such as SCO were courting danger by sitting back. "A high-volume system like (Windows) that has been thoroughly tested will be by far the most secure," Gates told the audience at the Developing Software for the future Microsoft Platform conference at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre here.
"To say a system is secure because no one is attacking it is very dangerous," said Gates, referring to operating systems that have a smaller share of the desktop market, such as Apple's Mac OS and the open-source software Linux. Noting the large number of major virus epidemics during the past two years, Gates said that in some ways "hackers are good for maturation" of the platform, because they have forced the company to develop new inspection techniques for the code.
News source: C|Net News.com
