How safe is open source software? What are the general benefits?

No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 121 points – 12 months ago

So with open source software more on my mind lately I was wondering - while I get the benefits of transparency and such, how safe is it? If the source code is available to all, isn't it easier to breach for people (like the recent cookies hack)? If I'd have an open source password manager, would it be easier for people to get my passwords somehow than if I use something not open source? Do I just not understand how software works in general?

And what are other benefits that may be not so obvious to someone not so knowledgable about this?

Edit: thank you all for really insightful answers! Among other things I also learned just how much I don't know :)

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Technically, vscode isn't open source. It's in the same situation of chrome vs chromium.

Majority is the same, but Microsoft has some non-open source parts of vscode.

Vscode repo contains "code - oss"

There is VSCodium that is released under MIT without the Microsoft proprietery stuff.

Except Chromium can still access the Chrome extension store. The VSCode extension store is not included with the OSS version, which seriously hampers the usefulness of the app.

I know, but I didn't want to add too many details to the answer. Also because the core of vscode is open source and can be read by anyone