> If I don't know what it's doing, how can I trust it?
It's not enough to examine software: if you don't trust the company, then anything they say or promise is worthless. Automatic updates can change anything, including the TOS! This is the same company that sells a 1984-Telescreen (XBox) with an always-on camera and microphone. _NSA shouldn't be forgotten.
Oracle likes to tout Java as GPL, but what does that matter when we know the company can't be trusted? Who controls a software project is the key, not the licenses or corporate promises. There's no point in trusting iOS because we've examined it, we also have to trust Apple.
The source-code in OpenJDK can be inspected and OpenJDK itself can be forked if Oracle's stewardship goes awry, which is the whole freaking point of open-source, so I don't see how that can compare with Windows or iOS.
I don't like this argument. It's not necessarily you who has to audit your software. You can pay other people to do it. Big companies can pay for it. Your government's institutions can pay for it. If on the other hand the software is closed-source, then that's not an option. And especially for governments and for big companies Windows is a security liability.
It's not enough to examine software: if you don't trust the company, then anything they say or promise is worthless. Automatic updates can change anything, including the TOS! This is the same company that sells a 1984-Telescreen (XBox) with an always-on camera and microphone. _NSA shouldn't be forgotten.
Oracle likes to tout Java as GPL, but what does that matter when we know the company can't be trusted? Who controls a software project is the key, not the licenses or corporate promises. There's no point in trusting iOS because we've examined it, we also have to trust Apple.