[mindslight]

But what is the alternative to open source for securing communications? From my perspective, you've just described problems with commercial app stores, the extra effort required to build from source, build reproducibility, and the effort required to audit software. NSA and their global colleagues aren't going to simply go away due to having their activities publicized for the nth time.

[georgemcbay]

Well, there's not really any practical alternative. And I do think it being open source is much better than it being closed source, as long as people are aware that ultimately unless you build it yourself you can never be sure of the security inside (and even if you do build it yourself, you have to be sure there are no subtle bugs either intentionally or unintentionally introduced).