“Trust” as in: trust it enough to run it on your machine.

(And assuming that you can’t understand code yourself)

  • stinky@redlemmy.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    15 days ago

    open source is safe.

    even non-technical people can learn how to look at issues on Github (or wherever the code is kept).

    it’s like restaurant reviews: if there are dozens of people saying they got malicious food, then you have reason to be careful, even if you don’t understand why the food is malicious.

    caveat: if the code is open source but no one has had time to review it, it’s potentially dangerous even if there are no issues yet. it takes time for people to review the code. and there should be multiple reviewers; there’s always the chance that a single malicious developer has created multiple github users. Time is on your side here.