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Yes I’ve been to Ohio. It’s as terrible as people say.
However the correct analogy is this:
“I distrust alliant credit union, but I trust a random internet stranger that in theory is doing their work in public”. That’s the right number of employees and the right scale.
Your analogy is basically accepting my point. In this case, I’m trusting a random internet stranger not to lie to me, and you’ve very clearly illustrated why that doesn’t work. Believing Ohio isn’t real would require a large conspiracy. Ublock introducing something naughty would require one man. I trust that one man, but there’s no reason to. If you think that’s absurd do some research about recent software package changes that introduced backdoors.
I trust a random internet stranger that in theory is doing their work in public
There’s no ‘in theory’ about it.
I’ve actually had an extension I was using be revealed as spyware (it was hoverzoom, I immediately switched to an alternative afterward).
I don’t read every line of every piece of software I use because that would be impossible, but I do actually look at some of it and modify it to suit my needs. It was because there are many thousands of people like me that do this that the problem in hoverzoom was caught. It’s been ten years, so I don’t have the best memory of the event, but I think it only took a few days to catch it as well, despite the fact that the offending code was left out of the GitHub repo and was only in the compiled extension.
The state of open source isn’t perfect (not everything has reproducible builds yet) but in general I ‘trust’ that every other programmer in existence isn’t in on a conspiracy to screw me over specifically.
Why would any of this be about you personally? I honestly can’t take you seriously when this is your view of security, and it’s made worse when you extend that to “we caught em once so the system works”.
Uh, hello? Do you want to think about why I wrote that? Do you need me to explain to you the idea that other users of the extension are mostly self interested but it is in their best interest to cooperate and share information if the extension is bad? That the greater the number of people with access to the source code the less likely it is that some subset of them could cooperate against some other subset? And therefore the more people looking at the source code there are, the less you have to trust any single person? You know, the same reason you won’t follow a single person into a dark alleyway but are comfortable standing in a crowded street? Because the first subset being “everyone”’ and the second one being “only you” is an extreme case that is basically impossible to happen, just like the Ohio conspiracy? Do you understand what a negative example is or are you gonna comment back “wow I can’t believe you think Ohio doesn’t exist and everyone in the world is out to get you, you must be a paranoid schizophrenic”?
I honestly can’t take you seriously when this is your view of security
This is the view of the majority of people that work in netsec. There’s a general sentiment that we should be reviewing code more, relying less on single-developer projects, and getting reproducible builds for everything, but nobody serious thinks that access to source code is a bad thing and usually it’s regarded as a positive.
So in that sense uBlock is kinda bad because Gorhill does the vast majority of the work, but it would be even worse if it was closed source on top of that.
"we caught em once so the system works”.
As opposed to your system where you throw your hands up and say “you’re screwed either way, nothing you do matters, just admit it and give up!”, which has famously done so much good in the world.
Yes I’ve been to Ohio. It’s as terrible as people say.
However the correct analogy is this: “I distrust alliant credit union, but I trust a random internet stranger that in theory is doing their work in public”. That’s the right number of employees and the right scale.
Your analogy is basically accepting my point. In this case, I’m trusting a random internet stranger not to lie to me, and you’ve very clearly illustrated why that doesn’t work. Believing Ohio isn’t real would require a large conspiracy. Ublock introducing something naughty would require one man. I trust that one man, but there’s no reason to. If you think that’s absurd do some research about recent software package changes that introduced backdoors.
There’s no ‘in theory’ about it.
I’ve actually had an extension I was using be revealed as spyware (it was hoverzoom, I immediately switched to an alternative afterward).
I don’t read every line of every piece of software I use because that would be impossible, but I do actually look at some of it and modify it to suit my needs. It was because there are many thousands of people like me that do this that the problem in hoverzoom was caught. It’s been ten years, so I don’t have the best memory of the event, but I think it only took a few days to catch it as well, despite the fact that the offending code was left out of the GitHub repo and was only in the compiled extension.
The state of open source isn’t perfect (not everything has reproducible builds yet) but in general I ‘trust’ that every other programmer in existence isn’t in on a conspiracy to screw me over specifically.
Why would any of this be about you personally? I honestly can’t take you seriously when this is your view of security, and it’s made worse when you extend that to “we caught em once so the system works”.
Uh, hello? Do you want to think about why I wrote that? Do you need me to explain to you the idea that other users of the extension are mostly self interested but it is in their best interest to cooperate and share information if the extension is bad? That the greater the number of people with access to the source code the less likely it is that some subset of them could cooperate against some other subset? And therefore the more people looking at the source code there are, the less you have to trust any single person? You know, the same reason you won’t follow a single person into a dark alleyway but are comfortable standing in a crowded street? Because the first subset being “everyone”’ and the second one being “only you” is an extreme case that is basically impossible to happen, just like the Ohio conspiracy? Do you understand what a negative example is or are you gonna comment back “wow I can’t believe you think Ohio doesn’t exist and everyone in the world is out to get you, you must be a paranoid schizophrenic”?
This is the view of the majority of people that work in netsec. There’s a general sentiment that we should be reviewing code more, relying less on single-developer projects, and getting reproducible builds for everything, but nobody serious thinks that access to source code is a bad thing and usually it’s regarded as a positive.
So in that sense uBlock is kinda bad because Gorhill does the vast majority of the work, but it would be even worse if it was closed source on top of that.
As opposed to your system where you throw your hands up and say “you’re screwed either way, nothing you do matters, just admit it and give up!”, which has famously done so much good in the world.