@ashwinvis @strypey It's better not to need trust. With Windows, you have to trust that the closed code is doing what you want. With linux, you can't inspect all the code and you have to trust that others are auditing competently.
@strypey @ashwinvis Recall that #openSSL had a quite serious bug around ~10 yrs ago. After it was discovered, it was realized that no one spotted the bug for several years.
@aktivismoEstasMiaLuo OpenSSL was a very different case to the Linux kernel, which has dozens of paid devs plus volunteers. It's worth noting that if OpenSSL was proprietary, the bug would probably not have been found at all, and would still be unpatched.
@strypey @aktivismoEstasMiaLuo @ashwinvis
The problem with OpenSSL was the same as GnuPG or many other popular open-source software. Everyone is using them and everyone expects they will be maintained and developed in accordance to best practices but... nobody supports them.
This applies equally to large companies who monetize every dollar from open-source but donate nothing, just as well as regular users who *could* easily donate $1 per month but won't because they expect "someone else"...
@kravietz yup, it's the Snowdrift Dilemma:
https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/snowdrift-dilemma
But there's software this definitely doesn't apply to, eg the Linux kernel.
@strypey @aktivismoEstasMiaLuo @ashwinvis
Because as I maintain a few open-source projects - including one that has been running since 90's (pam_tacplus) it's fine when you're actually using your project in your daily job and focused on it. But then you move on, and it's really a big pain in the ass when you get tons of issue reports and feature requests, and essentially everyone expects something from you - and you see they come from "respected IT companies" but won't bother to donate $5 :)
