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Comment by cqqxo4zV46cp | Hacker News Reader

Yep, because open-source code never has issues.

So many idealists looking to make this a “closed-source bad!!!” thing and in the process muddying the waters enough to take attention away from remedies that might actually work.

All while they sit there getting paid $500k/yr to write closed-source software at FAANG or a startup, which to them is Technically Okay because they work on some sort of SaaS product, thereby alleviating them of the economic realities of Everything Being Open-Source.

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Who said anything about open source not having issues? I talked about trust. Open source can be trusted simply because the code is scrutinised by many if the software is that important. CS cannot be trusted by anyone, because you simply don’t know how they develop their software. Yes, I do work for a private company because otherwise I cannot pay the bills. Companies on the other hand do have the privilege to choose what kind of software they can use (unless the regulation says otherwise, which is in itself something to fix too, but I do lack knowledge in that field to suggest anything)

You have a weird definition of "trust." I keep asking this, but how would open sourcing the software prevent the global rollout? "Open source" doesn't mean "no auto-updates." Strictly, it doesn't even mean that you are legally allowed to modify the source code to make it not update automatically.

>Strictly, it doesn't even mean that you are legally allowed to modify the source code to make it not update automatically.

Most definitions of open-source (e.g. OSI) include rights to modification. Without modification and distribution rights, programs are normally referred to as source-available instead. This is a common complaint on this very forum when companies misleadingly market their SA code as OS.

Right, but being able to "trust" because it's "open source" makes me think trust comes from the ability of read the source code, not modify it.

That requires trusting that the available source is actually what's running on the machine, which is not much better than trusting that a closed-source program is correct. Open-source software is more trustworthy not only because it's inspectable, but also because you can decide to run precisely the code you see, so there's also accountability for the code that is run.

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