Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Free software is not trusted software

[J.B. Nicholson]

Lyberta wrote:
> Today the Internet is filled with malware that is free software:
>
> https://lyberta.net/articles/tech/free_sw_untrusted.html

The article doesn't make it clear to me what is malware in any of the 
listed software. It seems to me that the saving grace of free software is 
that one can remove the malware, run and distribute the rest of the code, 
and retain full control over their computer. This takes effort but at least 
we're allowed to do it.

The article points out that auditing matters and I concur -- there's no 
substitute for auditing by someone one trusts. There's too much free 
software for anyone to do this alone but collectively we can get more of 
this done.

This is also why open source is not the enemy. Proprietary software is the 
enemy. In fact the FSF has long published this in their older article on 
how free software differs from open source:

From https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html
> We don't think of the Open Source movement as an enemy. The enemy is
> proprietary software.

Proprietary software denies one the freedom to do the vetting that needs to 
be done. Open source may make some indefensible claims about how effective 
the open source development methodology is at reducing bugs and improving 
software, but that's nowhere near distributing malware.