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Well, secure for whom? If a developer does not reveal the source of a program, then surely a user of this program is not secure against that developer, who can
by hjek 8y ago
Well, secure for whom?
If a developer does not reveal the source of a program, then surely a user of this program is not secure against that developer, who can make that software do anything without easily being discovered.
Therefore if we are talking about security from the users perspective, transparent code is definitely not sufficient for security, but it is a precondition.
If you make the (IMO wrong) assumption that a developer on principle can never be a security threat to a user, then sure, you can claim that something non-free like iPhone is "secure". I guess it's secure in that Apple can be very secure you won't use it to run GPL'ed software?
- adiusmus 8y agoHaving the binary is enough if you know the architecture. But therein lies the problem with modern systems - you don’t always know the architecture or have enough access to explore. Intel ME is a great example.