Hello everyone, and sorry for my bad english. So lets start with a usual topic about Open Source, and that is "everybody can see the code of a OpenSource programm to see if it is malware". And my question is: how people that cannot read a single line of a programming language manage to do that? I mean, they can just trust in everybody that say which software is secure or not. If the software is a virus or malware, or poses security risks, people won't know that unless they're programmers, and so the same thing happens to these kinds of people as used to happen with proprietary software: they have to rely on those who “know” to find out if something. I find this quite problematic because, as I said, anyone who doesn't understand the code wouldn't be able to verify whether such a program is secure or not, and would have to place their trust in third parties. That aside, it's also worth noting that most software has hundreds, if not thousands, of lines of code, which would make it take longer to parse all that code—and even more tedious than reading a typical "EULA." Can you think of any way to fix this?
I guess the main thing is that it's not just one person saying "I looked at the code and didn't find any malware" - depending on the size of the project it could be millions of people saying that. Also, changes to programs generally have to be approved by the maintainer, so it can be pretty difficult to slip malicious changes in unnoticed.
The arrangement isn't perfect, but keep in mind that closed-source software also requires trust on the part of the users - It's just that in that case nobody can vet the code.