Quintus
@quintus
Open source software doesn’t exist By open source I mean you know for sure what the software is doing when you execute it Pretty much all software today is executed on a foundation of closed source firmware and hardware designs Even if you have an open application running on an open operating system using only open source libraries that still gets executed by some opaque low level software on hardware which no one checks actually executes the logic its supposed to
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Leeward Bound
@leewardbound
this is technically true at the core but it seems a lil jaded maybe and i dissent from your conclusion "open doesn't exist", so ill gently nitpick - "open" refers to the ability to verify independent parts; it's not dependent on the full stack being open - we can call this "fully open" - or the user actually verifying it themselves ("fully verified"). fully open is a good goal for ideologues but unrealistic for most people. you can run open software on an apple device, and still have the benefits of being able to audit the app itself. partially open is better than fully closed. most users never verify anything; the point of "open" isnt for the average user to verify it. but "open" exists and is important all on its own, and both materially and ideologically. "fully open" is even possible for some usecases today, it just comes with high costs (learning, time, or money), so most people choose to trust a few closed vendors along the way (for better or worse).
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Will Papper
@will
Reflections on Trusting Trust is my favorite writing on this: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_ReflectionsonTrustingTrust.pdf
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markus - ethOS - e/acc-d
@markus
Preach!
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