Free Open Source verses Commercial Privacy Software

There are two camps, Open Source which creates and distributes software free to all and the commercial camp which sell their privacy software to people & businesses.

On one side we have products like Eraser & Truecrypt which are free and popular here @ Wilders and out there in the marketplace are commercial variants.

Are 'Open Source' the poor mans' tools created for who cannot afford to buy the real deal or do they go 'toe-to-toe' with the commercial products matching them in features and performance?

 

Open source - a way to make good software
Closed source - a way to make good money

Oh I see this is in the context of privacy.

Well you can monitor closed source software for actions that may possibly infringe on privacy. Open source software there's far less to worry about - someone out there will look at the code and you can too.

You'll never have that same level of "closure" with Closed Source software as you will with Open Source.

 

I don't think you can make the blanket statement that one is better than the other. It depends on the particular product. There are many open source/free things that are better than any of it's paid competitors. On the other hand, sometimes it's well worth it to spend a few bucks on a great product (Sandboxie).

But all in all, what Hungry Man said rings true. A product in which you can dissect the code yourself is always more trustworthy. And, of course, free is always better than not free, provided that the two products in question are of equal quality/usefulness.

 

I personally think FREE software is better..

With PAID,they leave stuff out ONLY TO WANT YOU TO PAY MORE TO GET UPGRADES,ETC.......

 

I agree but also should note some comercial software (like PGP) release source code for review (So you can vet it) even though it is copywrite and you can't use it for anything. There is another company that does this too (cant think of who it is now). But as long as the code is available for review I don't see a problem paying for it. I pay for PGP because it has FIPS certification (Needed for work) other wise it is no better nor worse than TrueCrypt or LUKS (they all do the same thing in different ways).

 

There is good and bad on both sides of the fence...

The bad I've seen in OpenSource, is the developer gives a project in their free time and for no money, or just donations, so, sometimes you don't get much in return, meaning, projects come and go, or lack development because of being free, but I also see that it really depends on the developer(s), because there are also many great OpenSource projects.

The great thing about OpenSource is that the entire world can look the code over to make sure what they are getting isn't a problem, especially as it relates to exploits and security and then the OpenSource community can work on the problem and most often, bring about change at at a much faster pace then a proprietary project.

The bad thing about proprietary is we can't see the code and know what is going on, so matters of problems have to be dealt with internally, that means we need to depend on that company for everything and this is where a lot of OpenSource people aren't willing to go down this road and place their trust in someone else's own hands.

The reason I use Unix/Linux is because I can make it my own, take the source, customize everything to my needs, right down to the kernel hardware support I only need and keep it as light and fast as possible, with a system stripped down to only what I need, so in the end, it's faster, more stable and reliable and virus/malware free and a safer system too, and in the world of Windows, you can't do any of this...

Cheers