Why Proprietary Code Is an Unauditable Black Box
Think for yourself. When vendors say "trust our security," what they mean is "don't look at our code."
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. Including actually reading the source code of software that processes your data.
Our Open Source Policy is public because open source security is verifiable security. Proprietary security is security through hope.
Illumination: "Trust me" is what every con artist says. "Verify yourself" is what engineers say. Choose engineers.
The Five Reasons Open Source Isn't Naive
1. Many Eyes Make Shallow Bugs
Linus's Law. More reviewers find more vulnerabilities. Proprietary code gets reviewed by the vendor's team. Open source gets reviewed by the entire internet. Which finds more bugs?
Illumination: Bugs in proprietary code stay secret until exploited. Bugs in open source get fixed publicly. Choose public fixes over secret exploits.
2. No Backdoors By Accident
Intentional backdoors are hard to hide in public code. Accidental vulnerabilities get caught faster. Transparency prevents both. Proprietary code could have either and you'd never know.
Illumination: The NSA can compel vendors to add backdoors and stay silent (documented). They can't compel the entire open source community. Choose uncensorable code.
3. Vendor Lock-In Is a Security Risk
Proprietary vendor goes bankrupt? Stops supporting your version? Raises prices 10x? You're screwed. Open source? Fork it. Maintain it yourself. Hire someone to fix it. Options are security.
Illumination: Dependence on a single vendor is a single point of failure. Diversification applies to software too.
4. Security Through Obscurity Is Dead
Question authority that claims "keeping the code secret makes it secure." That's not security—that's hoping attackers are too lazy to reverse engineer. They're not lazy.
Illumination: Attackers have your proprietary binaries. They have decompilers. They have patience. Your "secret" code isn't secret to them.
5. Compliance Requires Auditability
How do you audit code you can't see? You don't. You trust vendor claims. That's not compliance—that's faith-based security. Open source? Audit it yourself. Or hire auditors who can.
Illumination: "Independently audited" proprietary software means "audited by people who signed NDAs and can't tell you what they found." That's marketing, not security.
Operation Mindfuck: Everything Open by Default
Radical transparency means publishing everything unless there's a specific reason not to:
- All tools we build — On GitHub. Public. Forkable. github.com/Hack23
- All libraries we use — Open source only. If it's proprietary, we don't depend on it for security-critical functions.
- All configurations — Infrastructure as code. Public templates. Secrets redacted, structure visible.
- All policies — Including this one. Because security policies you can't audit are just vendor promises.
- All documentation — Setup guides. Architecture decisions. Incident post-mortems (sanitized). Learn from our mistakes.
All hail Eris! Chaos teaches: hiding your code doesn't prevent attacks—it prevents defense.
CHAOS ILLUMINATION: The security-industrial complex hates open source because you can't sell expensive "proprietary threat intelligence" about vulnerabilities everyone can already see. Transparency destroys their business model. That's why we do it.
Open Source Isn't Security Theater
Question everything—including our position. Open source isn't magic pixie dust that makes code secure. It's necessary but not sufficient:
❌ Open Source ≠ Secure
Bad code is bad code whether you can read it or not. Open source enables auditing—it doesn't guarantee anyone actually audited it.
✅ Open Source = Auditable
Which is the first step to secure. You can't fix vulnerabilities you can't see. You can't see proprietary code.
❌ "Many Eyes" Is Hope
Just being open doesn't mean experts reviewed it. Heartbleed lived in OpenSSL for years. Open source isn't immune to bugs.
✅ "Many Eyes" Is Opportunity
Opportunity for review that doesn't exist with proprietary code. Heartbleed got fixed publicly once found. How many Heartbleeds are hiding in proprietary TLS implementations?
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. Including acknowledging that open source has challenges. But proprietary code has worse challenges—and they're unfixable by design.
License Choice: Freedom Requires Structure
Not all "open source" is equal. License choice matters:
- GPL/AGPL — Copyleft. Modifications must stay open. Prevents proprietary capture. Use when you want code to stay free.
- Apache/MIT — Permissive. Can be incorporated into proprietary software. Use when you want maximum adoption.
- Dual licensing — Open for community, paid for commercial. Sustainable model. Use when you need to eat.
Think for yourself about which license serves your goals. Don't cargo cult "everyone uses MIT." Question why.
Transparency as Resistance
Question authority. Especially authority that insists code must be secret to be secure.
Open source isn't perfect. But it's auditable. Verifiable. Forkable. Unfucked-with-able by single vendors or three-letter agencies.
All hail Eris! All hail Discordia!
Read our full Open Source Policy on GitHub. Public. Auditable. Practice what we preach.
ULTIMATE ILLUMINATION: The question isn't "Is open source secure?" The question is "How do you audit security in software you can't see?" The answer: You don't. You trust. And trust is a vulnerability.
— Hagbard Celine
Captain of the Leif Erikson
"Code you can't audit is code you can't trust."
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