And there are communities and repositories of open source apps that come with an implicit guarantee of security and safety.Īlmost every smartphone user experienced falling in love with an app only to learn later on that the developer or company behind it has abandoned it, either for good or for greener pastures. There will always be people curious or willing to look at apps, especially at suspicious-looking ones. The situation is easier with smaller apps like those you install on your phones.
But consider the possibility of how much longer those bugs would have been left undiscovered if the code were sealed shut by companies who prioritize saving face and profits over security and privacy.
Of course, this is not an absolute truth, as evidenced by some rather huge security flaws discovered in recent years involving open source software. There’s an oft quoted phrase in open source circles that goes “with many eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” That this means, at least in theory, is that with more people looking at a code, less bugs go through.
