Santa Cruz, CA — (press release excerpt) — the Spring 2002 Linux Developer Survey released today by market research firm Evans Data Corp. (EDC) says that over three quarters of polled Linux developers report no incidence of outside intrusion, and even fewer report any viral attacks whatsoever. While security remains one of the IT industry's top concerns, the new survey of more than 400 Linux developers confirms that Linux systems are relatively immune from attacks from outsiders.

According to CERT, a center for Internet security expertise operated by Carnegie Mellon University, the total number of computer attacks has almost doubled every year since 1988. However, the rarity of security breaches in the Linux environment is illustrated by the fact that 78% of respondents to the survey have never experienced an unwanted intrusion and 94% have operated virus-free.

The developers polled in the survey attribute the low incidence of attacks to the Open Source Software (OSS) environment. According to the Evans Data Spring 2002 Linux Developers Survey, more than 84% of Linux developers believe that Linux is inherently more secure than software not created in an OSS environment. Asked to compare Linux's security to the most popular operating systems, developers ranked Linux's security roughly comparable in security to Solaris and AIX, two very secure operating systems long trusted by large enterprises, and above any of the Windows platforms by a significant margin.

In other findings, the survey suggests that the penetration of Linux in large organizations continues to grow and that the Web-services applications model is spreading to the Linux community. The number of respondents at firms with over 10,000 rose to 17.6%, where it was only 10.2% six months ago. More than 70% of respondents intend to develop Web-services enabled applications in the next two years.

The Linux Developer Survey is published every six months in the spring and fall and is focused exclusively on developers creating Linux applications.

 
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