You have greater assurance of what the software is doing behind the scenes.
Even if you can’t read code, others who can will; privacy groups (official and hobbyist) likely will.
You can know, even if just through others, sort of what’s going on with the software in a way you simply can’t with proprietary software.
That you can transfer your skills to any other company/avenue/whatever. Just imagine going to the next company to get proprietary software B.
- Is this permissible by the company?
Use company tools for company work.
Actually I have some freedom to choose, including the relative expensive proprietary software. So in the essence my choice is rather moral one than obligatory.
The problem is that your tools are going to have to be compatible with other people’s tools.
In that case, use whatever you prefer. The fact that you are even considering the morality of using OSS over proprietary means you actually want to steer away from the latter given the choice. The only questions remaining are: Will the OSS alternative allow you to do your work as efficiently and effectively as the proprietary one at the minimum? Will using the OSS alternative negatively affect others using proprietary software that you need to work with?
To answer the first question, I need to try the FOSS alternative. To the second matter, it seems that the choice will not affect others so far. Anyway, thanks!
You don’t have to hope the company fixes it or is really doing the security checks they’re supposed to.
They give me a problem to solve, it’s up to me what tools I use.
If i can do it in the same time or faster with my choice of software I will.
Depending on the company’s policies you may be able to install FOSS software. Outside of the other comments so far, looking at a problem differently may provide different insight.
The downside is that you will likely miss out on integrations provided by the proprietary software. Also, your company’s IT may not appreciate your experimentation. I had one coworker dual boot their computer to Ubuntu, which eventually broke the install. It was shortly after that that the company began locking things down tightly.
