[charcircuit]

>compete with open source

Open source doesn't necessarily imply it is secure. Security isn't free and open source projects can struggle funding such development.

>byte-reproducible builds

This is mostly a party trick. Meanwhile the system is one curl | sh away from having all its cookies stolen, files cryptolocked, mic spied on, keylogger installed, clipboard sniffed, etc. Reproducible builds can't save you from insecure design which my comment was referring to investing in fixing and is what this patch being highlighted in the article is doing.

>it's also the premier malware target

Having a large market share is why. If Linux overnight gained a ton of marketshare the malware situation would be worse than windows.