Open source software is less to have spyware or viruses. That's because the software is in its preferred high-level form - the recipe is published. Proprietary software, in contrast, is delivered as a binary. To know whether bad stuff is in a binary program, a difficult decompilation and reverse engineering process is needed to get back to something like the preferred form. Like having to run spectroscopy to find out what is in a cake. In the open source case, you just bake your own cake. If you know the ingredients are plausible, and the structure of the recipe makes sense, then you can feel good about having a piece of cake. And even if you are not a baker, you may know some bakers that can give an opinion on the recipe . That doesn't mean there aren't bugs or bad oversights, but malicious behavior is harder to hide.
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2014 9:43 PM To: Friam Subject: [FRIAM] Source Forge, inter alia Sorry, everybody. I guess my question could be stated more broadly, with perhaps some saving of your time in the long run. How do I decide if a piece of software, available on the internet is safe or not? I guess one can look for reviews on "reputable" sites, but then how does one recognize a reviewing site as reputable. ? I suppose one could look at the webpage of the software maker and see if the software is being regularly updated, etc. What about the site on which the software is hosted? Does that give a clue Does Source Forge screen it's software? If so, I couldn't see any sign of that on the Source forge page. Perhaps if one of you would provide an answer to me on this general question, it would you all being bothered by particular versions of it later on. Thanks, Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
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