Open Source Is About Trust

Eddy Nigg writes, "In highly sensitive operations such as banking, military or government - but also our certification authority** - source code of the operating system and programs which run on those servers and computers is essential. Because without being able to read, verify, control and modify the programs in its source form, one can’t know what’s under the hood. Not that we have to read now every line of source before running a program, but assuming that we are able doing that by having access to the source code in question, we have they ability to control it if needed. The likelihood, that the program in question does something bad is very small if accompanied with the source. And supposed there is a problem somewhere at sometime, a programmer can review, change and (re)compile the program if needed. Not so, if the source is “closed” and one has only the binary object code needed to run on the processor."