Re: How secure is the openSUSE Build Service?

On Monday 05 November 2007 11:40:05 pm Thomas wrote:
> Only if you assume *every* upstream developer is honest and/or trust the
> integrity of the Debian/Gentoo/FreeBSD servers... Hello rsync! ;-)
>
I have to disagree. Trusting every upstream developer, and all the admins who 
maintain the systems (build farms, download servers, etc.) is clearly 
impossible. Both groups are largely unknown to end users.

Far more important is the level of trust you place in the integrity with which 
the project is run. If a download server is compromised (which has happened) 
are the admins both skilled and forthcoming about fixing the problem, and 
communicating what packages might be at risk? Is a software project developer 
community careful about how they evaluate patches, do they reliably backport 
patches against a development release to their stable release when it's 
appropriate, etc.

In general terms, trust isn't binary, but a continuum, and I'd regard a 
well-run distribution with no third-party repositories as safer.

> Am Freitag 02 November 2007 schrieb Eduardo Tongson:
> > Correct.
> >
> > > Does this mean that a distro that doesn't require 3rd party
> > > repositories (Debian/Gentoo/FreeBSD) is safer?