Not discrediting Open Source Software, but nothing is 100% safe.
Luckily there are people who do know, and we verify things for our own security and for the community as part of keeping Open Source projects healthy.
Open source software is safe because somebody knows how to audit it.
And to a large extent, there is automatic software that can audit things like dependencies. This software is also largely open source because hey, nobody's perfect. But this only works when your source is available.
It's safe because there's always a loud nerd who will make sure everyone knows if it sucks. They will make it their life mission
Also because those people who can audit it don't have a financial incentive to hide any flaws they find
Though one of the major issues is that people get comfortable with that idea and assume for every open source project there is some other good Samaritan auditing it
The point is not that you can audit it yourself, it's that SOMEBODY can audit it and then tell everybody about it. Only a single person needs to find an exploit and tell the community about it for that exploit to get closed.
Exactly! I wait on someone who isn’t an idiot like me to say, “ok, so here’s what’s up guys.”
But eventually somebody will look and if they find something, they can just fork the code and remove anything malicious.
Anyways, open source to me is not about security, but about the public "owning" the code. If code is public all can benefit from it and we don't have to redo every single crappy little program until the end of time but can instead just use what is out there.
Especially if we are talking about software payed for by taxes. That stuff has to be out in the open (with exception for some high security stuff - I don't expect them to open source the software used in a damn tank, a rocket or a fighter jet)
Fun fact*: the software in the most advanced dildos come from old missile guidance systems the government isn't using anymore.
*not a fact, but hopefully fun.
You can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking your head up a cow's ass but I'd rather take the butcher's word for it.
There are people that do audit open source shit quite often. That is openly documented. I'll take their fully documented word for it. Proprietary shit does not have that benefit.
And even when problems are found, like the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL, they're way more likely to just be fixed and update rather than, oh I dunno, ignored and compromise everybody's security because fixing it would cost more and nobody knows about it anyway. Bodo Moller and Adam Langley fixed the heartbleed bug for free.
Closed-source software is inherently predatory.
It doesn't matter if you can read the code or not, the only options that respect your freedom are open source.
I had a discussion with a security guy about this.
For software with a small community, proprietary software is safer. For software with a large community, open source is safer.
Private companies are subject to internal politics, self-serving managers, prioritizing profit over security, etc. Open source projects need enough skilled people focused on the project to ensure security. So smaller companies are more likely to do a better job, and larger open source projects are likely to do a better job.
This is why you see highly specialized software has really enterprise-y companies running it. It just works better going private, as much as I hate to say it. More general software, especially utilities like OpenSSL, is much easier to build large communities and ensure quality.
With all due respect, I have to strongly disagree. I would hold that all OSS is fundamentally better regardless of community size.
Small companies go under with startling frequency, and even with an ironclad contract, there's often nothing you can do but take them to court when they've gone bankrupt. Unless you've specifically contracted for source access, you're completely SOL. Profitable niche companies lose interest too, and while you may not have the same problems if they sell out, you'll eventually have very similar problems that you can't do anything about.
Consider any of my dozens of little OSS libraries that a handful of people have used, on the other hand. Maybe I lost interest a while ago, but it's pretty well written still (can't have people judging my work) and when you realize it needs to do something, or be updated (since things like dependabot can automatically tell you long after I'm gone), you're free and licensed to go make all the changes you need to.
I think you see highly specialized software being run by enterprisey companies because that's just business, not because it's better. It's easiest to start in a niche and grow from there, but that holds true with open software and protocols too. Just look at the internet: used to share research projects between a handful of universities, and now has grown to petabytes of cat gifs. Or linux. Started out as a hobby operating system for a handful of unix geeks, and now runs 96.3 percent of the top 1 million web servers.
It always starts small and gets better if it's good enough. This goes for OSS and companies.
Do you know how to audit the code?
Yes?
no , but I know a bunch of passionate geek are doing it.
You shouldn't automatically trust open source code just because its open source. There have been cases where something on github contains actual malicious code, but those are typically not very well known or don't have very many eyes on it. But in general open source code has the potential to be more trustworthy especially if its very popular and has a lot of eyes on it.
A lot of bad takes in here.
Here are a few things that apparently need to be stated:
"given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" ...but sometimes there is a profound lack of eyeballs.
That's exactly the problem with many open source projects.
I recently experienced this first hand when submitting some pull requests to Jerboa and following the devs: As long as there is no money funding the project the devs are trying to support the project in their free time which means little to no time for quality control. Mistakes happen... most of them are uncritical but as long as there's little to no time and expertise to audit code meaningfully and systematically, there will be bugs and these bugs may be critical and security relevant.
"Transparent and accountable government is a waste of time because I personally don't have the time to audit every last descision."
OP, you are paranoid beyond belief.
Open source software is safe because so few people use it it's not worth a hacker's time to break into it (joking, but of course that doesn't apply to server software)
I really like the idea of open source software and use it as much as possible.
But another "problem" is that you don't know if the compiled program you use is actually based on the open source code or if the developer merged it with some shady code no one knows about. Sure, you can compile by yourself. But who does that 😉?
But another "problem" is that you don't know if the compiled program you use is actually based on the open source code or if the developer merged it with some shady code no one knows about.
Actually, there is a Debian project working on exactly that problem, called reproducible builds
You can check it using the checksum. But who does that?
In all seriousness I am running NixOS right now using flakes. The package manager compiles everything unless a trusted source already has it compiled, in which case the package manager checks the checksum to ensure you still get the same result and downloads that instead. It also aims to be fully reproducible and with flakes it automatically pins all dependency versions so next time you build your configurations, you get the same result. It is all really cool, but I still don't understand everything and I'm still learning it.
We trust open source apps because nobody would add malicious codes in his app and then release the source code to public. It doesn't matter if someone actually looks into it or not, but having the guts to publish the source codes alone brings a lot of trust on the developer. If the developer was shady, he would rather hide or try to hide the source code and make it harder for people to find it out.
safe**R** not safe. Seriously how is this a hard concept.
The difference is, though, if you care enough, you have the capability of finding out what's in the code, the only limiters at that point are yourself
In closed source, you just have to trust the publisher and developers
I don't really think auditing is a compelling argument for FOSS. You can hire accredited companies to audit and statically analyse closed source code, and one could argue that marketable software legally has to meet different (and stricter) criteria due to licensing (MIT, GPL, and BSD are AS IS licenses), that FOSS do not have to meet.
The most compelling argument for FOSS (for me) is that innovation is done in the open. When innovation is done in the open, more people can be compelled to learn to code, and redundant projects can be minimised (i.e. just contribute to an existing implementation, rather than inventing a new). It simply is the most efficient way to author software.
I'm probably wearing rose tinted glasses, but the garage and bedroom-coders of the past, whom developed on completely open systems moved the whole industry forward at a completely different pace than today.
Did you fabricate that CPU? Did you write that compiler? You gotta trust someone at some point. You can either trust someone because you give them money and it's theoretically not in their interest to screw you (lol) or because they make an effort to be transparent and others (maybe you, maybe not) can verify their claims about what the software is.
Well see, you just paste all the code into ChatGPT and say "hey can you audit this?"
I have some idea about auditing code. Will I always do it? No, but it's a peace of mind that others can do it without obstructions.
I would say the best with open source is that if the devs do not have time to look at your request then you can make a pr and if they won't approve it in time then you can fork it with the fix, that is what lemmy.world did for example. I have also needed to do just that for a few packages. Also if the docs are too simplified then you can just check out the code yourself. It have helped many times.
Open source is the future.