9 ms·

But who does inspect it, not me for sure. So, how safe actually is Linux? And how safe is any distribution?

• reidrac 13y ago
  The fact that it is available for everyone to inspect means it can be peer reviewed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review That doesn't mean you're supposed to review it or that it is reviewed at all, but it is a requirement for the open source development model. About the Linux kernel, see this example: http://kernelnewbies.org/UpstreamMerge http://kernelnewbies.org/UpstreamMerge From Quality control section: "Some of the world's best developers will be going over your source code with a fine comb. This may be embarrassing for a few days or weeks, but in the end the code tends to work better and be more easily maintained. In some cases the upstream developers have made network and storage drivers 30% faster, making the hardware more attractive to customers."
  • blots 13y ago
    It's definitely better then not open source, but still I'd love to know more about those "world's best" developers and who pays them. Open source is the necessary but not the sufficient condition. It needs to be reviewed by independent people, otherwise the open source part is useless.
    • rasur 13y ago
      It's also safe to say that the NSA are not completely stupid. Any nefarious code would unlikely be completely obvious, even to top developers.