People here’s take about why free software (“open source”) should be preferred, in my opinion (basically the OpenBSD’s opinion) is flawed.
You said “open source” is “good” because it permits having eyes on (“auditing”) and make sure there isn’t malware.
This is NOT the most important benefit. But it is flawed because, you guys don’t even have the knowledge to do coding. You guys are activist/“journalists” working for CIA. So you cannot audit the software yourselves.
Or “open source” but with a bad code style, how can you make sure the code doesn’t have backdoors? But I think hilarious journalists that is only smart enough to post fake news about how down is the Russia and China economy can’t even write bad code.
“open source” is good, firstly, because it permits auditing the source code and find the bugs, replace flawed/bad code with safer alternative (for example, the advantage of an open-source C software when porting to OpenBSD is they can replace every occurrence of strcat/strcpy with safer strlcat/strlcpy), sandbox it (on OpenBSD, with pledge and unveil), do privileges separation and revocation, etc.
And I think “you can make sure there isn’t malware/backdoors” is the second benefit, NEVER THE FIRST.
Conclusion: Do not blindly trust what is “open source” when you can’t even do code auditing.
Years ago Microsoft was going Linux bashing mode.
Linux is a cancer
Linux is unamerican
Linux is communism
And why ? Because of the GPL license.
Many years ago Microsoft already copy pasted BSD licensed code into their Windows 3.x TCP stack and they got away with that because the BSD license is not like the GPL license. Microsoft hated the GPL license and maybe they still do.
Is it important to talk about free software or open source software and be a purist about it ? Maybe.
Is it more important to get things done, and focus on coding, package maintenance, sharing knowledge ? Maybe.
I’m talking about what is the first, most important benefit of free software (or open source). The community claims the first and most important benefit is “to make sure there isn’t malware in the software”. In the post I told them why this is not the most important benefit and the most important benefit is to audit, fix bugs, harden it.