this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
1670 points (88.1% liked)
Technology
59577 readers
3883 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Free software is not automatically private or secure, but it can be. Proprietary software can't.
Why can't proprietary software be private or secure? You cannot verify it for yourself, but nothing about the licensing model precludes it. In highly regulated industries (such as health care or banking), I would expect a very large investment by software vendors into security.
You can disassemble any kind of closed source software and fully analyze it.
But you can't legally modify it and distribute your modified version. You can't fix a vulnerability and share the patched version with others. Only the developer can, so you are at their mercy. If they add spyware into the program, users can't do anything about it.
I think it's a gray area in that if you merely instruct people on it or distribute it as a patcher that contains none of the original code or assets, few would take issue with it, and if they do, their legal position would be much shakier compared to fighting piracy.
That's true. Still it's more difficult for everyone.