So says Oracle Security chief Ann Davidson. Speaking at the WWW2006 conference in Edinburgh, she derides the software industry for a culture of “patch, patch, patch”, and takes on the hacker industry over the questionable tactic of holding vendors hostage when vulnerabilities have been found.
It’s a good message, but she should skip trotting out the tired old shibboleths about planes and bridges. After all, as anyone in the aircraft industry will tell you, you can’t fly a modern plane without software. It’s just built to a different standard, such as not designed to be updated by end users, for instance.Â
Or, perhaps Ann should give up flying altogether.
