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Users without the skills to verify the code isn't nefarious have to trust good samaritan developers instead.
by kawfey 8y ago
Users without the skills to verify the code isn't nefarious have to trust good samaritan developers instead.
- spion 8y agoNothing is 100% guaranteed, but with an open source project, given enough users, its far less likely for someone to be able to bury nefarious stuff without many eyes looking at it and at least one person sounding an alert.
- dymk 8y agoYeah but really this isn't true. Popular open source that has tens of thousands of eyes on it still gets compromised all the time (see: npm). Even the Linux kernel has had rogue git commits injected into it.
- calcifer 8y ago> the Linux kernel has had rogue git commits injected into it What? Who "injected" what and when?
- spacedog11 8y agoI'm also interested to know more about this.
- spion 8y agoThe probem with npm isn't that open source doesn't help, its that the eyes get spread out thin when you have thousands of modules - so nobody is looking at the changes that happen in their lots of small dependencies. Which is not to say that thats not a valid approach - but for it to work we need better tools to handle lots of git repos at once (for example, the ability to get notified about any new code on github that affects your project would be pretty cool, especially if its coming from people or organisations you haven't explicitly marked as trusted yet) I would like to see someone try and sneak rogue commits into Linux. It would be quite the feat.
- int_19h 8y agoUsers without skills can still hire a developer of their choice to do the verification, if they're really paranoid.
- aylmao 8y ago> Users without the skills to verify the code isn't nefarious have to trust good samaritan developers instead. I trust that amongst thousands of people with different incentives at least one will raise their voice if something is not right. At least more so than I trust a corporation with, in this case, the the wrong incentives to self-regulate to my expectations.
- TearsInTheRain 8y agoI've always wondered how much OS code gets audited or if everyone just assumes someone else will do it (bystander effect)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]