Not discrediting Open Source Software, but nothing is 100% safe.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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Did you fabricate that CPU? Did you write that compiler? You gotta trust someone at some point. You can either trust someone because you give them money and it's theoretically not in their interest to screw you (lol) or because they make an effort to be transparent and others (maybe you, maybe not) can verify their claims about what the software is.
It usually boils down to this, something can be strictly better but not perfect.
The ability to audit the code is usually strictly better than closed source. Though I'm sure an argument could be made about exposing the code base to bad actors I generally think it's a worthy trade off.
"Trust has no place in computing" is a concept that we are still quite distant from, in practical terms.
But yeah, definitely don't hand your personal information over to a corporation, even if they're offering to take a lot of your money, too!