Thursday, August 1, 2013

Why it is worth to build open source software.

Sometimes people ask me why I always want to build everything from source, and my answer is always that I have to do it because of the  Fedora policy, which states two reasons:
  • Security: Pre-packaged program binaries and program libraries not built from the source code could contain parts that are malicious, dangerous, or just broken. Also, these are functionally impossible to patch.
  • Compiler Flags: Pre-packaged program binaries and program libraries not built from the source code were probably not compiled with standard Fedora compiler flags for security and optimization.
 But it is not all. Open Source definition is a very broad definition, and some software packages may not be usable at all without proprietary, closed and well-controlled companions. In that light, building from source is the ultimate indicator whether a software creator really gives you the right to build (and, what's more important, to patch) his/her code.

This post was inspired by this answer on fedora-java.



1 comment:

  1. Also, free software is impossible without the source.

    Besides that, not everyone is going to release a build that will work on your machine (for any number of reasons) -- besides IBM PCs there are a ton of machines in the world, and even among IBM PCs, there are at least two types of machines. Say you're using a n bit version and the author has decided to -only- release m bit versions -- that effectively means you are either forced not to use it, to use it in a virtual environment or bloat your installation with extra software. All solutions no-one should ever want to pick just to be able to run a single piece of software.

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