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by yggydrasily 3809 days ago
Even though I really appreciate the idea behind it, I was never all that comfortable running f.lux on my Macbook. I never understood why it was free yet closed-source. It made me suspicious in a way, if that makes sense.

After a while I just gave up and uninstalled f.lux. Instead, I created a 4500K white point copy of the default color profile and manually switched to it at night, which seemed to have the same effect. It also prevented those big flashes whenever switching to and from full-screen apps.

I'm grateful that f.lux has pushed this issue to the point of getting traction as a built-in feature from Apple (and I do hope Apple brings it to OS X at some point), however unless f.lux becomes open-source, I don't plan to reinstall it.
3 comments
jshevek 3809 days ago
You support (via hardware purchases) a powerful company that demonstrates overt hostility towards openness whenever it suits them, but won't use close source f.lux?
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DINKDINK 3809 days ago
>I never understood why it was free yet closed-source. It made me suspicious in a way, if that makes sense.

Unless binary builds are verified against the source code (or the code is reviewed and compiled locally), security is not a criteria that's benefited. The gitian process in bitcoin is an interesting solution on how to verify builds.

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hueving 3808 days ago
You can just build the source yourself. So if you trust your compiler more than flux devs, that would be better.
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timonovici 3809 days ago
Most of your OS is not open, so why bother? That's like spraying perfume in a room full of skunks ...
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voltagex_ 3809 days ago
It's about expected levels of risk and the level of risk you're willing to accept.

e.g. Risk of Apple deploying a malicious binary: low [0]

Risk of J Random Dev deploying a malicious binary: higher, after they plug in a Thunderbolt adapter they found laying around at 32C3 [1].

So you might be willing to accept the risk of using a closed source OS, but an app doing interesting low level (?) things to the OS? Maybe not.

[0]: Yeah yeah, the NSA is going to force them to deploy a bad copy of XCode, I know.

[1]: https://trmm.net/Thunderstrike_2

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