@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
From personal experience I can however tell that if you're working for a large company their procurement process is usually so fucked up that it's easier to get $100k for some crap commercial half-baked product than $10 per month to donate to an open-source project... This is stupid and short-sighted.
@kravietz @ashwinvis @strypey A big part of that is accountability. Managers want to offload accountability which is why they love to buy COTS (since a company stands behind it, it gives the illusion of having a warranty even though it doesn't). But w/ #freesoftware managers are afraid they can't point the finger when something goes wrong.
@aktivismoEstasMiaLuo @ashwinvis @strypey
Oh yes, exactly. I had seen many these large companies essentially have a policy of "we don't onboard software unless it comes with a support contract" which was essentially rationalized as "we have someone we can sue" by their lawyers. As you correctly noted, they don't 😂
