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Dumb question: how do I know if an open source project is trustworthy? (lemmy.one)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by BurningnnTree@lemmy.one to c/programming@programming.dev

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Some background: I'm a software developer, and I've never really participated in the open source software community before. (i.e. I don't contribute to open source projects, I don't know anyone who does, and I don't really know anything about the companies who start these projects to begin with, or what their motivations are for being open source.)

I'm currently trying to find software that my team at work can use to solve a particular problem we have. After doing some googling, it looks like this open source product called OpenReplay is a good fit for what we need: https://openreplay.com/

But when I first visited that website, I noticed that the background artwork looks AI generated. This made me feel skeptical of the project, and it makes me wonder: what if it's actually a huge scam and it's actually malware? For example, maybe OpenReplay is actually a copy of a different legitimate product that I'm not aware of. Maybe all of the stars, forks, and discussions on the GitHub page are from fake accounts. When I Google OpenReplay, there aren't a whole lot of results. How do I know if it's trustworthy if I can't find an authoritative source telling me it is?

Maybe I'm just being paranoid. But this is basically the first time in my career where I've tried to vet a new piece of software for my team to use, and I want to make sure I'm doing it right. How do you know when a product like this can be trusted?

EDIT: I don't mean to cast doubt on OpenReplay specifically, I'm just using that as an example because it's the product I'm currently looking into. My question applies to any piece of software that isn't widely known about.

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[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I will get shit on for this but „rejecting everything where I cant look in the source code“ makes more sense imo from a security standpoint.

The „free“ as in everyone can put in into their software and sell it without contributing back isnt security relevant from my pov (neither do I like that ideology tbf).

[–] grue@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

In other words, you're saying it has to be specifically copyleft (which is the only kind that guarantees that all downstream users will always be able to look at the source code), not merely permissively-licensed. Sounds good to me!

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 2 points 5 months ago

I appreciate the elaborate response. The intricacies of licensing arent fluent in me and the reminder helps.

Copyleft is cool but for OPs question, I would suggest source available at least. My criterion is that I (or op for that matter) can look at the source code of this project, not everyone on every downstream project.

I‘d also distinguish between in and out licensing. If they want to make a product that is not foss, copyleft wont work so reviewing the code would be the smallest denominator imo although I would not use or recommend their software.