Nostr Web Client

This isn't "security by obscurity", it's "protecting trade secrets" as an alternative to using the court system to enforce patents and licenses. Lots of open-source libraries are protected by licenses, so you can't legally fork and build off of them for a paid product.

Luxferre 1y ago

But we can study these libraries and decide whether or not to trust them.

Those "trade secrets" often contain algorithms taken from FOSS or ripped from other companies' software.

I guess this issue will only be over once IT businesses will be obliged (by regulations or by natural selection — time will tell) to sell real work, not thin air in the shape of binary copies and license keys.

But the sad truth is, more and more companies just use this "trade secrets" excuse to conceal their own (or govt-issued, who knows) malware in their products. Oftentimes, they don't even try to hide this in their EULAs, which basically say "once you install this on your computer, it's no longer yours but ours".

Many Faildows users still don't realize how large of a technogenic catastrophe this could cause if M$ decides to flip the switch.

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ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 1y ago

not just microsoft but a whole heap of companies have embedded backdoors and kill switches in everything, they can easily fabricate a "cyber apocalypse" any time they want to

this is part of the reason why it's so important to understand that hiding source code is ALWAYS a red flag, no matter what, no matter what you think about market advantage, these dark places are almost always hiding something and if they aren't, someone will see the opportunity and plant something malicious in there

that's what the original easter egg was too... and the dude that did that did it in protest against the culture of the software company

maybe you don't have bad intentions but hiding your source also enables someone to piggyback on flaws you made in your code that determined hackers can exploit

so, yeah, nah... FOSS for anything that has value, or GTFO