They talk about dams and bridges being the birth of the engineering profession. Software though isn’t some newbuild home or bridge foundation or aircraft turbine blade, where I have to have faith in a system that stops crooks from selling me a house that will fall down, a bridge that will collapse, or a jet engine that explodes.
In fact, given the source code, build system, and some documentation, I — little old me! — can find bugs, fix them, and ship a working build. So can thousands of other fellow consumers.
I would rather advocate for statutory openness and freedom than trying to force quality control on what’s left of the closed, proprietary status quo. It would be a utopia indeed if we could get out of this rut where I (and my community of consumer tinkerers) are forbidden from unlocking our iPhones and Subarus and LGTVs to their full potential.