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A comment on I Love Arch, but GNU Guix Is My New Distro. Parent comment

Re:I Love Arch, but GNU Guix Is My New Distro by medo-bear on Saturday November 20, 2021 @02:30PM (#29291091)
but security is associated with free and open source software. i think this is a common position of a vast majority of security experts. to make your claim that FSF deceives or misleads people you need to do a LOT more. for example, can you provide an example where someone claims that GNU Guix is secure by design[0]

i think that taking a position that free software supports security and also that free software principles come before security considerations is not contradictory let alone deceptive

[0]EDIT: i just searched the RYF site and did not obtain a signle result for the term 'security'

https://ryf.fsf.org/search/node?keys=security

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I Love Arch, but GNU Guix Is My New Distro by alexvoda on Saturday November 20, 2021 @05:43PM (#29292485)
The factors that actually impact the upper boundary of achivable security are availability of source code (open or not) and reproducible builds. The 4 freedoms do not actually affect any aspect of security, they are orthogonal.

Also, just because the 2 factors above impact the upper boundary of achievable security does not mean an open source software is automatically more secure.

It is conceivable for 2 comparable pieces of software to exist one open source and the other closed source and for the closed source one to be more secure.

There are many reasons why open source software is in practice considered more secure, among others being faster availability of updates and the aforementioned higher upper ceiling of security.

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Re:I Love Arch, but GNU Guix Is My New Distro by medo-bear on Saturday November 20, 2021 @06:14PM (#29292652)
>does not mean an open source software is automatically more secure

well my point is that FSF never anywhere claimed otherwise. if they did THAT would be wrong and irresponsible

>It is conceivable for 2 comparable pieces of software to exist one open source and the other closed source and for the closed source one to be more secure.

sure. well a simple example is that security by obscurity is a valid concept in a right environment

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