quick question

[Bastiaan Veelo]

Hi Casey,

I am not a developer of GnuCash and have not read much of its code, but 
I can give you a general answer. The advantage of Open Source Software 
regarding security is that you can screen the program and know exactly 
what it does with the information you feed it. Even if you are not a 
programmer and cannot understand its internal workings from reading the 
source code, it is good to know that other people can and do. This is 
called the advantage of peer review. If the program /was/ leaking 
sensitive information, the fact would be discovered sooner than later. I 
am pretty sure that there is no malicious intent amongst the developers 
of GnuCash, open source developers are generally keen on their 
reputation. And if there were and you had a reason to sue, I think you 
still could -- stealing is always a crime.

Now for a small comparison. One person says "You can trust my program 
because I take your money" and another person says "You can trust my 
program, just see for yourself!" Whom would you trust more?

Do you trust the corporation that sells you software to screen it for 
vulnerabilities and to give you fixes for the flaws it finds? There is 
no real incentive, nobody is looking over their shoulders. Do you think 
they hire external peers to look at their mistakes? Probably not. Do you 
get any guarantee that their software is without (security) bugs? Most 
certainly not.

If you are concerned about security, you are better off with Open Source 
than with closed source. There are other advantages too, but that is 
outside the scope of this reply.


Best regards,
Bastiaan.


casey crissman wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was doing some research into quicken for mac and happened upon  
> Gnucash.  I know little to nothing of programming, open source, etc.  
> and just want to know how secure the information coming through this  
> program will be.  Is there any possibility of someone getting my  
> info?  Couldn't really find anything about this on the site or  
> reviews.  I would have thought that's a pretty important factor-  
> especially when using something that's not backed by some corporation  
> I could sue..  lol.
> thanks very much
> casey
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