Z:gnu-www-ja-rms-nyu-2001-transcript--be5261-Nobody has the time to check t/en

Nobody has the time to check the source of every program he runs. You're not going to do that. But with free software there's a large community, and there are people in that community who are checking things. And you get the benefit of their checking, because if there's an accidental bug, there surely are, from time to time, in any program, they might find it and fix it. And people are much less likely to put in a deliberate Trojan horse, or a snooping feature, if they think they might get caught. The proprietary software developers figure they won't get caught. They'll get away with it undetected. But a free software developer has to figure that people will look at that and see it's there. So, in our community, we don't feel we can get away with ramming a feature down the users' throats that the users wouldn't like. So we know that if the users don't like it, they'll make a modified version which doesn't have it. And then, they'll all start using that version.