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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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[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's as long as someone takes the time to check the code, that's my whole point.

There's torrents with malware that are well seeded even though you can see comments from people saying they're infected, people don't care and you over estimate people's capacities if you think the majority understands what they're installing when downloading stuff online, as long as it fills its purpose, they'll never know that they just installed a crypto miner without realizing it.

[–] mrkeen@mastodon.social 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@Kecessa no you missed my point. You change the behaviour of the producer, not the consumer.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago

People are publishing programs anonymously! They don't care about it, there's no consequence to it.

Hell, that's like believing the introduction of a prison system stops all crime. People just try to find better ways to hide.