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.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
