I support free and open source software (FOSS) like VLC, Qbittorrent, LibreOffice, Gimp…
But why do people say that it’s as secure or more secure than closed source software?
From what I understand, closed source software don’t disclose their code.
If you want to see the source code of Photoshop, you actually need to work for Adobe. Otherwise, you need to be some kind of freaking retro-engineering expert.
But open source has their code available to the entire world on websites like Github or Gitlab.
Isn’t that actually also helping hackers?
In addition to the other good points -
OpenSource software allows you to create reproducible builds in theory. Such that you can take the source code provided by the vendor (which you theoretically audit to ensure you are satisfied it takes no unexpected action or whatever your concerns are) and compile it, and get something that can be validated as 100% identical to what you get if you buy the compiled version from the vendor directly.
Without this assurance, the vendor can tell you that this thing they sold you does XYZ, but unless you are looking for it in your network traffic for example you might not know it’s uploading webcam pictures of you in the background to ihackedyourwebcam.com or collecting and transmitting telemetry you didn’t agree to or etc. Or you don’t realize that software you installed on your server has a hardcoded hidden administrator user with password 123456, etc etc etc.
Also, while Linux in particular is by no means perfect, as a Linux user I know I’m using software that is much more likely to be also used by people who WILL take the time to inspect the code themselves, or might take the time to audit what it does on their network, or any of a bunch of other things that bring hard to quantify additional layers of security to the ecosystem around FLOSS.