I guess this question is centered around Linux. I am wanting to switch to Linux as my main operating system from windows. And just leave windows on some machine that's never on unless I'm playing a game. So I'm just wondering who exactly it is, that is reading all of this "open source" linux code, on all these hundreds of different distros. Who is reading it, and making sure that these companies (or groups, whoever) aren't just putting some means of spying in there? Richard Stalman has a video where he talks about Canonical doing it in ubuntu. They're not actually spying, but there was some kind of telemetry going on with the repository in Ubuntu. Can't remember the exact details.
Anyway, with the sheer number of distros out there, who is going to make sure that none of them are up to anything nefarious? I'm just wondering who exactly all these people are, that are reading the code and checking the changes in the code after every update. That's a lot of trust that we'd have to put into these people, and while I'm sure many of them are good, some may see dollar signs at some point. Or maybe they get pressured to just make a small change or leave open a back door. With windows we know its going on. But with Linux we have all these people telling us that is not happening.
I felt that this place is a much better place to ask than a Linux forum, as I find that they generally can't see beyond some kind of blind fanboyism that they have. Plus there are probably far less coders there, whereas here pretty much everyone is. So I thought maybe you guys might know something about who exactly reads all this code and checks it for evil deeds. I assume they don't have to read through every line of code that makes up the entire distro, each time there is an update. Or do they? Maybe you only have to check a certain, somewhat small area for the changes? But then what if they made changes that they didn't tell anyone about?
I just can't see this model being nearly as good as people think it is. That is, the model of open source, where programmers write it, and then an army of other programmers come along and read all of it, and report anything bad they find in the code. Such as something spying on you. Can someone please explain a bit about how this process works in reality? Seems too good to be true.
Anyway, with the sheer number of distros out there, who is going to make sure that none of them are up to anything nefarious? I'm just wondering who exactly all these people are, that are reading the code and checking the changes in the code after every update. That's a lot of trust that we'd have to put into these people, and while I'm sure many of them are good, some may see dollar signs at some point. Or maybe they get pressured to just make a small change or leave open a back door. With windows we know its going on. But with Linux we have all these people telling us that is not happening.
I felt that this place is a much better place to ask than a Linux forum, as I find that they generally can't see beyond some kind of blind fanboyism that they have. Plus there are probably far less coders there, whereas here pretty much everyone is. So I thought maybe you guys might know something about who exactly reads all this code and checks it for evil deeds. I assume they don't have to read through every line of code that makes up the entire distro, each time there is an update. Or do they? Maybe you only have to check a certain, somewhat small area for the changes? But then what if they made changes that they didn't tell anyone about?
I just can't see this model being nearly as good as people think it is. That is, the model of open source, where programmers write it, and then an army of other programmers come along and read all of it, and report anything bad they find in the code. Such as something spying on you. Can someone please explain a bit about how this process works in reality? Seems too good to be true.