Users should not trust closed-source services like Apple’s iCloud with their personal data, said the chief executive of Open-Xchange, a cloud software firm which provides app suites to some of Britain’s biggest service providers. “Really paranoid” users should consider switching to phones running the Firefox OS, he added.
Rafael Laguna, who co-founded the open-source software firm after having previously worked with Suse Linux, an open-source operating system, says the best way to guarantee security is to let users choose – even if only theoretically – where to host their software, and let them examine the code for flaws and back-doors.
Open-source software makes its source code, the set of instructions which make the program work, available for public inspection and enhancement. The vast majority of commercial software is closed-source, and users must take the integrity of the code on trust.
