Hello everyone, and sorry for my bad english. So lets start with a usual topic about Open Source, and that is “everybody can see the code of a OpenSource programm to see if it is malware”. And my question is: how people that cannot read a single line of a programming language manage to do that? I mean, they can just trust in everybody that say which software is secure or not. If the software is a virus or malware, or poses security risks, people won’t know that unless they’re programmers, and so the same thing happens to these kinds of people as used to happen with proprietary software: they have to rely on those who “know” to find out if something. I find this quite problematic because, as I said, anyone who doesn’t understand the code wouldn’t be able to verify whether such a program is secure or not, and would have to place their trust in third parties. That aside, it’s also worth noting that most software has hundreds, if not thousands, of lines of code, which would make it take longer to parse all that code—and even more tedious than reading a typical “EULA.” Can you think of any way to fix this?
There are many science articles that I personally do not understand, most of them in fact. But I trust that as long as the methodology and findings can be studied, people who are specialized in that area will point out mistakes and try to disprove and improve each other. We don’t talk about phlogiston anymore, because science did its thing. I see free software in a similar way. As long as the source is free to study, and people are interested in finding errors, those errors can be fixed. Trusting software becomes more about trusting a community. It’s not perfect, but what is.