No bashing on this but a serious question: If wu-ftpd is open source why wasn't the bug discovered earlier? Or is it a commericial product?
This is an important and very good question. It really highlights an argument made by one of the chief Open Source advocates: Eric S. Raymond. He wrote a paper called "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," in which he compared projects which used a top-down approach, vs. projects which use a more chaotic approach. He argues that the "Bazaar" approach gains the benefits of less bugs, and quicker bug fixes.
wu-ftpd is developed in more of a "Cathedral" style, as far as I know.