this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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Privacy
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No, of course I don't. I am not as paranoid as Richard Stallman, but I am also not as pronoid as the average human to just use proprietary software when there are similarly functioning open source software. With open source software, you can inspect the code and compile the code that you inspected. This is not true for something like iOS.
And of course, FOSS malware also exists (for example the recent xz data compression program). But guess what? You can find if it is really malware or not because you ultimately can inspect the code and compile the code you inspected. That is also why the malware in xz was found out. Who knows what there is in closed source software you can't inspect the code of. Do you perhaps believe in security through obscurity?
Using open source software is always an advantage. Praise for privacy software should be earned through the ability to verify them, and not granted by default.