Banks have been federated long before we started using the term. They’re just a for profit system with a lot of proprietary code. I wonder what a FOSS banking system would look like.
No, not Bitcoin or crypto. Those are currencies but don’t provide financial services.
No, not Bitcoin or crypto. Those are currencies but don’t provide financial services.
They’re not even currencies. Most people buy them solely to hold onto them, not to spend.
In theory, you could have open source bank software. Security by obscurity isn’t security, after all. If the only thing keeping you safe is the code being closed source, you’re not actually safe. Attackers will find exploits even in closed source code (just look at how many Windows exploits there have been) and attackers may get access to source code anyway. However, I think you might have a tough time convincing the average person of this, based on how I’ve seen folks react to open source in the past.
Above all, the kinds of people who love FOSS and the kinds of people who want to run a bank are probably two completely separate circles. Heck, banks seem to regularly have terrible security, actively breaking best practices.
If someone develop a malware from open-source bank systems, then the economy will probably crumble in just few seconds (lol). I don’t think FOSS banking system will contribute to poorer countries where most of their transactions are done with cash. It always starts on tech literacy from FOSS enthusiasts.
There’s a whole field of financial services powered by FOSS, running on blockchains that support smart contracts, like Ethereum. It’s called DeFi (decentralized finance). You can lend money to earn interest, or take a collaterized loan, without having to trust a 3rd party intermediary. Transactions work according to rules defined in public, immutable open source code. Because everything is based on open protocols and code, anyone can create new services on top of pre-existing ones, combining them like unix utilities, except the input/output can be money instead of text. Any service can have multiple independent frontends, even self-hostable, just as anyone can create a new ActivityPub compatible software or a new Lemmy client. Yes crypto and DeFi are full of scams, just as the internet and e-mail are full of scams, but there are also awesome things built on top of these open protocols.
Banks have been federated long before we started using the term. They’re just a for profit system with a lot of proprietary code. I wonder what a FOSS banking system would look like. No, not Bitcoin or crypto. Those are currencies but don’t provide financial services.
They’re not even currencies. Most people buy them solely to hold onto them, not to spend.
In theory, you could have open source bank software. Security by obscurity isn’t security, after all. If the only thing keeping you safe is the code being closed source, you’re not actually safe. Attackers will find exploits even in closed source code (just look at how many Windows exploits there have been) and attackers may get access to source code anyway. However, I think you might have a tough time convincing the average person of this, based on how I’ve seen folks react to open source in the past.
Above all, the kinds of people who love FOSS and the kinds of people who want to run a bank are probably two completely separate circles. Heck, banks seem to regularly have terrible security, actively breaking best practices.
If someone develop a malware from open-source bank systems, then the economy will probably crumble in just few seconds (lol). I don’t think FOSS banking system will contribute to poorer countries where most of their transactions are done with cash. It always starts on tech literacy from FOSS enthusiasts.
There’s a whole field of financial services powered by FOSS, running on blockchains that support smart contracts, like Ethereum. It’s called DeFi (decentralized finance). You can lend money to earn interest, or take a collaterized loan, without having to trust a 3rd party intermediary. Transactions work according to rules defined in public, immutable open source code. Because everything is based on open protocols and code, anyone can create new services on top of pre-existing ones, combining them like unix utilities, except the input/output can be money instead of text. Any service can have multiple independent frontends, even self-hostable, just as anyone can create a new ActivityPub compatible software or a new Lemmy client. Yes crypto and DeFi are full of scams, just as the internet and e-mail are full of scams, but there are also awesome things built on top of these open protocols.