Open-source Vs closed-source

Bugs are common in all softwares be it open source or closed source, but how fast it is discovered and fixed really matters.
If you discover a bug in some software you use, it's
better not to complain privately to the vendor. Scream loudly about it
in every Web forum you can access because

Last year, Microsoft issued about 55 critical
patches for Windows XP. According to the Washington Post, it reacts
very significantly quicker on public complaints. On average, MS took
134 days to patch privately-reported vulnerabilities whereas it
responded inside 46 days for publicly-reported bugs.

Oracle
(which works off open-source platforms) issued over 80 patches in 2005.
That suggests that, even if open-source has more bugs, those bugs are
also addressed efficiently. Apple has taken much more time than either
Oracle or MS in addressing known issues in the QuickTime player.

MS took just 10 days to patch a very serious flaw in
the Windows Meta File (WMF) that was flagged in late December. That's
commendably quick by corporate standards. But it's glacially slow in
the context of the Web. By the time the official MS patch arrived,
independent security consultants had written "hot-fixes"; the crackers
had written new malware and antivirus vendors had updated signatures to
deal with new malware.

The amazing thing is that WMF flaw has been there
for at least five years. It's embedded in every MS operating system
since Win2000. Several other flaws and vulnerabilities in WMF have been
picked up earlier. Steve Gibson (writer of the popular SpinRite and
Shields up! utilities) suggested that it was a backdoor written into
the system by MS.

Read full article here...