How exactly do you expect every single privacy “enthusiast” to inspect source code?
A privacy “enthusiast” is not the same as a privacy “expert”. And even then, a “privacy expert” doesn’t need to be a genius programmer - or even one at all - they can be lawyers, historians or journalists.
Knowing how to code is hard. Knowing reading someone else’s code is even harder. Vetting code for security is even harder than that.
Not to mention the fact that the Firefox source is enormus, dwarfing kernel.org, a huge project with an incredible amount of contributors.
Expecting every privacy “expert” to be able to fully understand every single line of code in a project is divorced from reality. Expecting it from anyone merely interested in it is asinine.
Not even a genius security researcher would be capable of vetting the source of something as giant as Firefox on their own. Sure, it’s a great passion project which many have taken up and learned many things from it, but it just isn’t practical for literally anyone.
The Open source community is just that - a community. And any good community sticks together. A deeply rooted interst of this community is to spread its message and accomplishments to everyone, “experts”, “enthusiast” or “neither” alike.
Any community benefits most from active members who wish it good. It also benefits from members being varied, and thus able to give their own, unique perspective on community issues. As I said, many privacy experts aren’t security experts, but rather people of a legal, journalist and historic background. Some are vloggers. Nothing wrong with that.
If the community is healthy, things will balance out. The vloggers, bloggers and Mastodon posters’ backlash (among others) would force Mozilla to capitulate on the issue, or create a fork if the situation asks for.
How exactly do you expect every single privacy “enthusiast” to inspect source code?
A privacy “enthusiast” is not the same as a privacy “expert”. And even then, a “privacy expert” doesn’t need to be a genius programmer - or even one at all - they can be lawyers, historians or journalists.
Knowing how to code is hard. Knowing reading someone else’s code is even harder. Vetting code for security is even harder than that.
Not to mention the fact that the Firefox source is enormus, dwarfing kernel.org, a huge project with an incredible amount of contributors.
Expecting every privacy “expert” to be able to fully understand every single line of code in a project is divorced from reality. Expecting it from anyone merely interested in it is asinine.
Not even a genius security researcher would be capable of vetting the source of something as giant as Firefox on their own. Sure, it’s a great passion project which many have taken up and learned many things from it, but it just isn’t practical for literally anyone.
The Open source community is just that - a community. And any good community sticks together. A deeply rooted interst of this community is to spread its message and accomplishments to everyone, “experts”, “enthusiast” or “neither” alike.
Any community benefits most from active members who wish it good. It also benefits from members being varied, and thus able to give their own, unique perspective on community issues. As I said, many privacy experts aren’t security experts, but rather people of a legal, journalist and historic background. Some are vloggers. Nothing wrong with that.
If the community is healthy, things will balance out. The vloggers, bloggers and Mastodon posters’ backlash (among others) would force Mozilla to capitulate on the issue, or create a fork if the situation asks for.