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Free software scares normal people

(danieldelaney.net)
917 points cryptophreak | 6 comments | 30 Oct 25 15:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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mna_ ◴[31 Oct 25 09:13 UTC] No.45769903[source]▶
For me, it's the fact that I'm running code written by some random people. The code could be malicious. I don't know unless I audit it myself and I have no time for that. Remember the XZ Utils backdoor thing from a few months ago? Well how many backdoors are there in other FOSS stuff?
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1. mbork_pl ◴[31 Oct 25 09:17 UTC] No.45769928[source]▶
How is that specific to FOSS?
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2. a96 ◴[31 Oct 25 09:37 UTC] No.45770045[source]▶
It's one of the main features, just incoherently rambled and backwards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition#T...

> The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Free software can be audited for backdoors. Closed can not. Their backdoors will stay there indefinitely.

replies(2): >>45770115 #>>45770779 #
3. fragmede ◴[31 Oct 25 09:46 UTC] No.45770115[source]▶
disassembler and decompilers exist.
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4. goodpoint ◴[31 Oct 25 10:08 UTC] No.45770269{3}[source]▶
This statement is ridiculous.
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5. fragmede ◴[31 Oct 25 10:12 UTC] No.45770297{4}[source]▶
A music CD installing a stealthed persistent kernel-level rootkit on your Windows PC would also be ridiculous, yet that's exactly what Sony BMG's rootkit in 2005 did. And guess how it was found?
6. int_19h ◴[31 Oct 25 11:18 UTC] No.45770779[source]▶
Access to source code does not translate to "written by some random people". Many F/OSS projects have a tight circle of contributors, sometimes even outright closed as for e.g. SQLite.

That aside, OP was complaining about software written by "random people". Thing is, people working in companies that write proprietary software are equally "random" in that sense. We know that some of them are North Korean agents, for example.