@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.

@ashwinvis

@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.

@aktivismoEstasMiaLuo @ashwinvis

@strypey @aktivismoEstasMiaLuo @ashwinvis

Based on my personal long-time experience whenever I see a project I really like and depend on, even being early stage or crappy feature-wise, I start throwing my money on it immediately. Be it $10 per month, be it $1 per month, or even by submitting PR or any other way of helping them. I consider this proper from moral point of view but when I need to explain it to my more utilitarian friends it's just helps them not abandon the project...