One thing that jumped out at me early in the reading was the references to 'complexity', which I took to mean the Cyclomatic Complexity metric of the software. Applied to a large application, like an OS, the total complexity score will be ridiculously high and becomes a meaningless number. The complexity metric is a rather useful statistic when applied to the module level and much evidence indicates a strong correlation between complexity and defect rate in software. From what I understand of it, it is a score that measures the number of potential execution paths through a particular piece of software, this measure also indicating the number of unique test cases to fully prove a routine. The article raises the interesting point, claiming that Microsoft has deliberately added complexity to further their own market share.

I also found it interesting to use the example of the importance of biodiversity. In my opinion, one of the biggest strengths of the Linux platform is the diversity that exists amongst the different distributions and even the individual machines. I do believe that this is one of the (many) impediments to writing malware that targets a Linux system. Using biology as an analogy, one could also consider the concept of 'administrative privilege'. Both Windows and Linux have this concept, but I think that it has been well demonstrated that this system in Linux is superior, a superior immune system if you will making it is less susceptible to "disease."

A third thing that I found interesting is that is mentions that the majority of the malware infections do not occur on the well managed systems, but rather by the inexperienced. It does seem today that most of the malware is found and spread in "social" places, much like proverbial "social diseases." As Linux becomes more main stream and with some distributions appearing to cater to or even have a goal of bringing Linux to these masses, it will be interesting to see if it becomes more susceptible to these infections. I have also noticed, more often than I would like to see, that pleas for help from admitted Newbies, that they acerbated their own problems by running as root, effectively bypassing the effective permissions system and reverting to the "administrator is a user" model fundamental to the Windows mindset.

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