Two researchers surprised the public in a convention of security during the last month of its finding a version of Microsoft Windows is more secure than Linux, an operating system competitor.

Download a copy of Windows vs. Linux study in PDF (265K).

This week, researchers released their finished report, and they contain more of a surprise: Microsoft was funded by the project long.

Researchers at the Florida Institute of Technology and Boston-based Security Innovation Inc., and defend their conclusions valid. They say they have “full control over all editorial research and analysis” on the project. His report details of its methods, and they invite other experts to examine and duplicate their work.

But their disclosure of the project, source of financing this week is agitation new debate on what has otherwise been encouraging messages for Microsoft in a field in which they fight. Researchers have been presented during last month’s RSA Conference, which attracts some of the biggest names in computer security.

“It was proof that Microsoft was better, and now the evidence unclean,” said Counterpane Internet Security founder Bruce Schneier, a long RSA Conference speaker. “The results may well, but now nobody is going to mind, because they all see, this is a prejudice that has not been revealed.”

But one of the researchers, Herbert Thompson of Security Innovation, said he and his colleagues have examined the final report, which has not gone presentation, the proper place for advertising. In addition, he said, the report presenting the detailed project research methods should be any concern about the possible prejudices.

“We knew that some of the criticism, which are collected in the report Microsoft is funding,” said Thompson. As a result, he said: “Our own method claim, it is very open and transparent. We wanted the recipe for humans, they could go further and recalculation of figures themselves. ”

The 37-page final report, published Tuesday, it is expressly Redmond on the role of the company: “This study and our analysis, under a research contract from Microsoft,” he says on the fourth page.

But during his presentation on February 16 on the RSA Conference, Thompson and Richard Ford Fellow researchers at the Florida Institute of Technology does not mention that one of the subjects of their research was part of a project financing.

Thompson said yesterday that it had decided it would be better to wait until the release of the final report on that disclosure. In part, he says, the idea was to avoid some of the divisiveness, which are often characterized by Windows vs. Linux debate.

The presentation of the RSA Conference “does not seem like the ideal place for the conduct of religious war,” said Thompson.