In both of those cases, people either created forks or otherwise fixed the software. I recall several scripts people wrote to undo the Ubuntu mishap -- and I'm

In both of those cases, people either created forks or otherwise fixed the software. I recall several scripts people wrote to undo the Ubuntu mishap -- and I'm fairly sure someone made a fork of Ubuntu just to make a point. The point is not that a developer can't do something bad, the developer can't put you in a position where you can't do anything about it. That's what I mean by "take advantage". It's not really taking advantage of a person if they can fix it at any point. Aside: I don't think that security is a good argument for free software, because it's certainly possible to have secure proprietary software (in theory at least). But even if the software is secure, you can't prove that's the case or fix bugs by yourself or release the fixes to everyone.