Torvalds explained his position in an e-mail exchange with Network World this week. He also expanded on critical comments he made last month that caused a stir in the IT industry. Last month Torvalds stated in an online posting that "one reason I refuse to bother with the whole security circus is that I think it glorifies -- and thus encourages -- the wrong behavior. It makes 'heroes' out of security people, as if the people who don't just fix normal bugs aren't as important. In fact, all the boring normal bugs are way more important, just because there's a lot more of them."


When it comes to the Mac, security warnings seem to be much ado about little if nothing. In January, Infoworld said that the Mac OS X is safer today -- but not necessarily more secure for the long term -- than Windows. Malware researchers and industry analysts warn that as the sheer number of Apple end-point devices in use worldwide rise, so will the security concerns tied to the company’s products. Seven months later, even though Mac sales have continued to rise, there's been no discernible increase on Mac security problems.

In August 2007, at the Black Hat Briefings conference, security researcher Charles Miller spelled out a wide variety of security problems in the Mac OS X operating system and Apple’s Safari browser. Despite this -- all this -- in a July Macsimum poll, we asked if you had noticed an increase in malware, viruses, etc., on your Mac? Ninety-percent percent of those who responded said “no,” and three percent said “yes.”

I've been a Mac user for almost 20 years. I've NEVER had any problems. That's not to say that I won't this afternoon or tomorrow or next week. And that's not to say that any computer/Internet user should be flippant about security measures.

But many times security "experts" and those who make security products seem akin to Chicken Little warning us that the sky is falling when it's not. I happen to agree with Torvalds that labeling bug fixes as "security" fixes is only (or at least often) useful for PR. The real metric is the level of productivity or down-time (thus lack of productivity) from bugs whether they be security of stability issues.

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