From a new white paper by Dan O'Dowd, Green Hills Software founder and CEO, which you can download here.

Someone commented privately on my last article, saying that I made specious technical arguments. I'd like to say that I'm not making any technical arguments about this stuff; there are plenty of others doing that who are much more technically competent than I am. The only comments I am trying to make relate to the use of language, and particular vantage points depending on which country one lives in.

So for example, from the above paper:

"When war breaks out, all of the vulnerable [Linux] systems and all of the [Linux] systems that were compromised while they were temporarily vulnerable will go out of service or be commandeered by the enemy. We will be defenseless."

Note the above quote: "When war break out...", not "if war breaks out...". Scary stuff, if you live in the US. Then:

"What we need for critical defense systems is software that is secure all of the time: systems that never need to be patched. We need operating systems that are proven secure by mathematically sound methods such as the Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 7 (See Part I of this series of white papers). Our systems must never be vulnerable. Just one moment of vulnerability, before a patch can be applied, is enough time for a patient attacker, waiting for the moment to strike, to get inside a system and install a permanent back door that will survive the patch that removes the vulnerability. Our defense systems need an operating system like Green Hills Software's INTEGRITY real-time operating system whose security can be mathematically ensured at all times without any need for patches."

Today is the first time in my life I have know about this idea, that there exists software which never needs to be patched. It's very impressive to say the least.

Let's take a look this from another point of view, outside the US. This is from my blog a couple of days ago, in case you missed it:

...from an interview of Jon "maddog" Hall in Spain:

Hay algo importante: Mientras un país dependa de otro en algo tan crítico como los sistemas operativos, ese país no tendrá una seguridad completa y total, porque (Dios no lo quiera) si EEUU entrase en guerra con España, no sé si los generales se pondrían contentos al tener que usar un software diseñado y producido por el enemigo, el cual puede incluso tener acceso a importante información gracias a ello. Se trata de una situación extremadamente comprometida.

This is something important: While a country is dependant on another one in something as critical as operating systems, that country will not have a complete and total security, because (God forbid!) if the U.S.A. had a war with Spain, I do not know if the generals would be happy if they had to use software designed and produced by the enemy, and which thanks to that might even give them access to important information. That would be a dangerous situation.

Since I first started noticing about this last year, I am seeing more discussion about it. If you're interested in this subject, please also read Unrestricted Warfare, which shows yet another point of view.

I see an interesting polarization taking place. In fact, all of these observations made by totally different people and expressing totally different points of view could be correct...within the context of their countries' situation. Any movement towards or away from Linux will hardly be monolithic even within a given country; but keep watching to see if officially the US moves away from Linux while other countries continue to embrace it, and how the words portray the logic of the decisions.