Open source and privacy/security --- Open source is often taken up by communities that want to have greater privacy or security. It follows the logic that the code is open and available to anyone to inspect - which allows transparency about how software works, where it stores data, which encryption it uses, etc, and allows anyone to tweak a piece of code for its own use. This certainly makes it more trusted than the commercial software - at least by those that are knowledgeable enough to understand this code and work on it. For all others - often the community of activists or journalists - it is the trust in those tech communities that understand the code that they have inspected it thoroughly and stand behind their claims that the software is secure or protects privacy. So, it is about trust and ability to verify that trust through code.

A drawback is, however, that the fact that just anyone can inspect the code any open source application doesn't mean that anyone in fact does it! So main applications that dominate the market are often well checked, but there are thousands of other open source apps that no one really checks through, or pieces of code that end up in other software as important component, which remain vulnerable. Most of the open source community that checks various applications does it voluntarily, and this introduces risks as well.

Thus, open source has both its benefits and its drawbacks. How to maintain benefits, and minimise the risks?

Source author: Vladimir Radunovic vladar@diplomacy.edu