“SAP SE is trying to marshal business technology’s biggest suppliers to gather hacker-fighting intelligence following a spate of security problems with open-source software,” Aaron Ricadela reports for Bloomberg News. “The biggest maker of business applications has contacted companies including Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. about sharing information on analyses of the weaknesses in open-source code, which is generally free to run and available for the user community to improve, according to Gordon Muehl, chief technology officer for security at Walldorf, Germany-based SAP.”
“More cooperation among the business-software makers could help stanch security flaws found in the open-source programs, which increasingly touch online services and devices used by billions of people,” Ricadela reports. “Muehl plans to address managers from International Business Machines Corp., Microsoft and about 20 other companies about his proposal in March. He spoke with Apple Chief Information Officer Niall O’Connor about it in October.”
Ricadela reports, “Muehl’s idea is to have many companies scan for problems in the open-source programs they all use, then share findings about which components are clean and which need improvements.”
Read more in the full article here.
Not the worst idea. It would probably benefit Microsoft more than Apple, but I’m sure Apple would benefit too.
Odd that the idea came from SAP though.
SAP is the king of expensive, crappy software.
I have a buddy who is on the opposite side of the political spectrum from me. We disagree on almost everything. However, there is one thing that we both wholeheartedly agree on: SAP sucks!
So they haven’t changed. When the company I was working for decided to switch over, we outfitted a special room for those of us (all) who had to spend 12-14 hour shifts 6 days a week entering every bit of data about our company. It quickly became known as “The Room of Pain”. When Ocean Spray (a customer) adopted SAP, no one in the industry heard from them for 6 months.