For personal use? I never do anything that would qualify as “auditing” the code. I might glance at it, but mostly out of curiosity. If I’m contributing then I’ll get to know the code as much as is needed for the thing I’m contributing, but still far from a proper audit. I think the idea that the open-source community is keeping a close eye on each other’s code is a bit of a myth. No one has the time, unless someone has the money to pay for an audit.

I don’t know whether corporations audit the open-source code they use, but in my experience it would be pretty hard to convince the typical executive that this is something worth investing in, like cybersecurity in general. They’d rather wait until disaster strikes then pay more.

I generally look over the project repo and site to see if there’s any flags raised like those I talk about here.

Upon that, I glance over the codebase, check it’s maintained and will look for certain signs like tests and (for apps with a web UI) the main template files used for things like if care has been taken not to include random analytics or external files by default. I’ll get a feel for the quality of the code and maintenance during this. I generally wouldn’t do a full audit or anything though. With modern software it’s hard to fully track and understand a project, especially when it’ll rely on many other dependencies. There’s always an element of trust, and that’s the case regardless of being FOSS or not. It’s just that FOSS provides more opportunities for folks to see the code when needed/desired.

Depends on what you mean by “audit”.

I look at the GitHub repo.

• How many stars?
• Last commit?
• Open issues
• Contributer count

Do I read the whole code base? Of course not. But this is way more than I can do with closed source software.

depends like for known projecte like curl i wont because i know its fine but if its a new project i heard about i do audit the source and if i dont know the lang its in i ask someone that does

I don’t have the know how to do so, so I go off of what others have said about it. It’s at-least got a better chance of being safe than closed source software where people are FULLY guessing at if its safe or not, rather than what we have with at-least 1 person having poured over it that doesn’t have ties to the creator.

Generally, no. On some cases where I’m extending the code or compiling it for some special case that I have, I will read the code. For example, I modified a web project to use LDAP instead of a local user file. In that case, I had to read the code to understand it. In cases where I’m recompiling the code, my pipeline will run some basic vulnerability scans automatically.

I would not consider either of these a comprehensive audit, but it’s something.

Additionally, on any of my server deployments, I have firewall rules which would catch “calls to home”. I’ve seen a few apps calling home, getting blocked but no adverse effects. The only one I can remember is Traefik, which I flipped a config value to not do that.

Well my husband’s work place does audit the code they deploy but they have a big problem with contractors just downloading random shit and putting it on production systems without following proper review and in violation of policy.

The phrase fucking Deloitte is a daily occurrence.

If it’s a project with a couple hundred thousands of downloads a week then no, i trust that it’s been looked at by more savvy people than myself.

If it’s a niche project that barely anyone uses or comes from a source i consider to be less reputable then i will skim it

Let me put it this way: I audit open source software more than I audit closed source software.

I look whether if someone has audited the code or not & even then I simply find Libre stuff trustworthy anyways

some yes, I’m currently using hyde for hyprland and I’ve been tinkering with almost every script that holds the project together

I usually just look for CVEs. The biggest red flag is if there’s 0 CVEs. The yellow flag is if the CVEs exist, but they don’t have a prominent notice on their site about it.

Best case is they have a lot of CVEs, they have detailed notices on their sites that were published very shortly after the CVE was published, and they have an bug bounty program setup.

I do sometimes, when I know the tech stack. (I wonder if GitHub Copilot could help in other situations?)

For example, I’ve been learning more about FreshRSS and Wallabag (especially now that Pocket is shutting down).

In any case, with open source, I trust that someone looks at it.

Nope! Not at all. I don’t think I could find anything even if I tried. I do generally trust OS more than other apps but I feel like I’m taking a risk either way. If it’s some niche thing I’m building from a git repo I’ll be wary enough to not put my credit card info but that’s about it

I run projects inside Docker on a VM away from important data. It allows me to test and restrict access to specific things of my choosing.

It works well for me.