The usually simmering open source vs. closed source debate boiled over recently following the leak of Windows source code on the Internet. And it boiled over here too.

Some 95 percent of the response to my column on the Windows source code leak and what it might indicate about the value of closed-source code as a security technique said that I didn't get the point: Since open source is open, it gets a better code review. Anyone can get the source, look at it and find problems in it.

Inherent in this argument is the assumption that closed-source projects don't get code reviews, or at least that they get inferior ones. I'm not so sure this is true. In fact, there's no reason to believe that closed-source companies can't do a good code review, and not a lot of reason to assume that open-source projects are getting all the code review that people think they get.

By Larry Seltzer at eWeek.

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