alt Hacker NewsTested how? With 100% "unit test" coverage? I can certainly see how a random person on the internet might be highly motivated and actually talented enough to contribute to these sorts of projects. But they don't have the budget and resources that commercial entities have. They don't have the same due diligence requirements. They don't have the same liability. If I use a commercial device unaltered, it's the company's fault if the device fucks up or is defective and causes harm. If I install random internet software on my medical device and it fucks up and causes harm, it's my fault.
I say this as someone who might modify my own medical devices because I'm so fucking jaded over the capitalist march towards enshitification and maximizing profit over human lives. There is simply no way random folks on the internet can test these types of systems to any reliable degree. It requires rigorous testing across hundreds to thousands of test cases. They at best can give you the recipe that works well for them and the few people that have voluntarily tried their version. That doesn't scale and certainly isn't any safer than corporate solutions.
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> But they don't have the budget and resources that commercial entities have.
Everyone is standing on the shoulders of giants. You're not going from stone tools to jet engines in a month, but you could fix a bug in one in that time.
> They don't have the same due diligence requirements. They don't have the same liability.
Things that exist to try to mitigate the misalignment of incentives that comes from paying someone else to create something you depend on. Better for the incentives to align to begin with.
Notice also that these things are floors, not ceilings. The company is only required to do the minimum. You can exceed it by as much as you like.
> If I use a commercial device unaltered, it's the company's fault if the device fucks up or is defective and causes harm. If I install random internet software on my medical device and it fucks up and causes harm, it's my fault.
And then if the community version fixes a bug that would have killed you and you stick with the commercial version you can sue them for killing you. Except that you're dead.
> There is simply no way random folks on the internet can test these types of systems to any reliable degree.
Basically the entire population is on the internet, so the set of them includes all the people doing it for a corporation. Are they going to forget how to do their jobs when they go home, or when they or a member of their family gets issued another company's device and they want it to be right?
Why do people think constantly something made by some random company is automatically better than something made "DIY".
I totally understand, that because of liability and some more availability of resources, you would expect a company product to be "safe". BUT: if it is your butt that is going to be in the line, then I bet you: you will be much more careful that a random engineer in some random company. About the resources available in a big company, they are usually more directed to marketing, legal (including lobbing to avoid right to repair) and oder areas to maximize revenue, and not exactly in quality.
I worked in 2 different big companies which worked in "mission critical systems" and boy! I can tell you some stories about how unsafe is what they do, and how much money is invested in "cover your ass" instead of making products better/safer.