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What's safer than being able to inspect the code and see if it's legit? It's not like closed-source applications are safer, right SolarWinds?

pseymour said:

What's safer than being able to inspect the code and see if it's legit? It's not like closed-source applications are safer, right SolarWinds?

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How does a non coder, which the vast majority of us are, determine whether a code is legit or not?

glasskuter said:

Other than those 2 apps, no github for me.

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My impression is (and I may be fully wrong) that it only concerns codechanges in source codes published there.
Complete installable or portable programs, either zipped or .exe installs (like ExplorerPatcher or OpenShell) that were compiled by the developers and for convinience published on Github seem not (yet) to be concerned.

I mostly tend to check installfiles against correct hashes, but on Github not all programs have been signed there. PE. OpenShell latest version does not mention any hash-values...

HeavyHemi said:

How does a non coder, which the vast majority of us are, determine whether a code is legit or not?

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You wouldn't; you would have to rely on other people to examine it. The point is that it can be examined, not that everyone who downloads it will examine it. That's still safer than closed-source, obviously, where no one other than the entity developing it has seen the source.

pseymour said:

You wouldn't; you would have to rely on other people to examine it. The point is that it can be examined, not that everyone who downloads it will examine it. That's still safer than closed-source, obviously, where no one other than the entity developing it has seen the source.

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Which is pretty much the same for close source software which is also audited. I'm not arguing one is inherently more safe than the other. I'd also add that complexity is the death of security. Some OSS packages have thousands of modules.

Not all closed source software is audited, and open source software is also audited. And do you not think that closed-source software uses thousands of modules or components? Oddly enough, they lean on open source components as well.