[liberationtech] Cryptography super-group creates unbreakable encryption

[Julian Oliver]

..on Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 08:00:24PM -0800, Adam Fisk wrote:
> 
> I think the principle of that is great, but in practice we just can't
> all review all the code all the time. In practice we often end up
> trusting open source code that is far worse reviewed than much of the
> closed source code we trust. I'm not trying to attack open source --
> I've been writing open source code full time for the past 13 years --
> it's what I do. But I don't think we should be delusional about it.


I find this an unproductive black-and-white argument. Proprietary software does
not grant and encourage its own users even the /possibility/ to fully audit the
service whereas open source software does. 

It's a no brainer, quite frankly. 

We need to simply stop considering proprietary solutions at all (as it's clearly
ridiculous to have any case of trust built atop it) and make our starting point
the wide variety of open source software, some of which is poorly engineered and
some which is not.

The "what sucks the least" scale must begin with open source, not proprietary
offerings from for-profit companies with a centralised service.

Again, it's a no-brainer.

Cheers,

-- 
Julian Oliver
http://julianoliver.com
http://criticalengineering.org