this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Since it's very difficult to verify what the program does, the user has to trust that it's secure. But there is no place for trust in security. If you have to trust something, it is not secure. Encryption protocols that we all use are not proprietary. It would be ridiculous if we had to just believe that they are secure. Fortunately we don't have to, because any expert in the world can verify it.
Sure, the developer probably doesn't want all the user data to leak, but they might want to spy on their users. So what security does a user have? It takes just one proprietary program to ruin your security.
Free Software gives you a right to modify how a program works and share that modified version with others. In proprietary software that would usually be illegal. So if someone does find a vulnerability and fixes it, they can't share a patched version with others. Same problem if a program contains spyware or other malicious functionality. Users wouldn't be able to remove it easily. In proprietary software users are at the mercy of the developers who have complete power over them and their systems.