Is it safe to install Listen from the author's repository?

[Dralt]

Has someone verified the program is not stuffed with half a dozen trojans or spyware?

[jason.b.c]

Has someone verified the program is not stuffed with half a dozen trojans or spyware?


I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but you need to be a little more specific.:confused:

Trojans and spyware for what?, Linux?? :confused:

Who's the author.??:-k

[Simian]

I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but you need to be a little more specific.:confused:

Trojans and spyware for what?, Linux?? :confused:

Who's the author.??:-k


He means Listen Music Player (I think)


http://listengnome.free.fr/

I have no idea if it's safe. But I really like it so I hope it is.

[Sef]

Has someone verified the program is not stuffed with half a dozen trojans or spyware?

Spyware and Trojans for Windows can't be installed on Linux/GNU. There aren't enough to even worry about, much less use an anti-virus.

[helpme]

Spyware and Trojans for Windows can't be installed on Linux/GNU. There aren't enough to even worry about, much less use an anti-virus.
There are enough rootkits however and installing random software from the internet (as root, no less) does of course pose a risk.

That said, I doubt listen has gone through rigouros testing, but at least quite a lot of people used the packages and so far nobody reported anything.
So, is it really safe? No.
Is it safe enough? For many people obviously yes.

[mostwanted]

Has someone verified the program is not stuffed with half a dozen trojans or spyware?

In that case they would have to be open source trojans/spyware...

[helpme]

In that case they would have to be open source trojans/spyware...
No, they wouldn't, as you install a binary package...

[mostwanted]

No, they wouldn't, as you install a binary package...

Which is available under an open source license, meaning it's open source.

And honestly, a developer who develops apps in his spare time for the benefit of others has no interests in putting spyware into his products. He is judged by his skills as a programmer and of how many use his programs, he is not developing Listen to make money on cheap advertising or cracking schemes. He doesn't even have advertising on his website (http://listengnome.free.fr/).

To think that independent developers would put spyware into their applications, is a Windows mentality and also purely a Windows problem.

[helpme]

Which is available under an open source license, meaning it's open source.

The binary you install by definition isn't.



And honestly, a developer who develops apps in his spare time for the benefit of others has no interests in putting spyware into his products. He is judged by his skills as a programmer and of how many use his programs, he is not developing Listen to make money on cheap advertising or cracking schemes. He doesn't even have advertising on his website (http://listengnome.free.fr/).

I don't think that's really the issue here.
The problem is on the one hand that he could, also of course I'd consider it extremely unlikely to put it mildly (hell, I even have listen installed), on the other hand it's at least theoreticaly possible for some third party to put something in it without the author noticing.
So the issue here is that installing random software of the internet always poses a security risk.


To think that independent developers would put spyware into their applications, is a Windows mentality and also purely a Windows problem.
On the contrary, to be aware that installing software from the net as root poses a security risk is a very basic security councious mentality.
This has nothing to do with Windows and frankly, I find it rather shocking that people seem to act as if there weren't any security threats to Linux machines.

[Dralt]

Which is available under an open source license, meaning it's open source.

And honestly, a developer who develops apps in his spare time for the benefit of others has no interests in putting spyware into his products. He is judged by his skills as a programmer and of how many use his programs, he is not developing Listen to make money on cheap advertising or cracking schemes. He doesn't even have advertising on his website (http://listengnome.free.fr/).

To think that independent developers would put spyware into their applications, is a Windows mentality and also purely a Windows problem.

I suppose you read every line of source code of every application you
install on your systems, eh?

Trojans and spyware are nothing specific to Windows, you know.
As *an evil doer* you could embed a piece of malicious source code as part of
a patch you are committing to an open source project.
Most reliable open source projects have reviewers who verify nothing
*evil* gets checked in, yet it has happened in the past.

I am not bashing the author of Listen. I assume he is a honest
developer trying to produce a great piece of software, but, not knowing much, I must ask these questions, if only to give myself the illusion of having made a conscious decision.

I want to try Listen, so I will take the risk.

[stewski]

I suppose you read every line of source code of every application you
install on your systems, eh?

Trojans and spyware are nothing specific to Windows, you know.
As *an evil doer* you could embed a piece of malicious source code as part of
a patch you are committing to an open source project.
Most reliable open source projects have reviewers who verify nothing
*evil* gets checked in, yet it has happened in the past.

I am not bashing the author of Listen. I assume he is a honest
developer trying to produce a great piece of software, but, not knowing much, I must ask these questions, if only to give myself the illusion of having made a conscious decision.

I want to try Listen, so I will take the risk.

Im very impressed with listen and thanks to the author and all who have worked on it.

However I don't think its unfair to question if people have noticed anything nefarious (sorry bad spelling no doubt) I've noticed it offers automatic album art and I don't know where thats comming from (possibly amazon) but Im doubting its a community project?

I noticed the other day that apples album art service is also an open webservice
now these companies rarely give anything for free.
Its one thing to allow me to upload data to my audioscrobbler (should I choose to) but I'd keep a close eye on where music listening habbit data is going.

amazon already track my purchase habbits by IP and continually send me suggestions on what I need to buy off them next, a service I'm not especially in favor of (junk email) but I'd be unhappy if they got a full list of my album collection (and no not for copyright reasons as I have valid copies of all my oggs).

P.S. the random selection function seems unairingly good at picking singles, all nice features but I'd like to know how these things are done before the app gets rubber stamped as a potential inclusion to ubuntu!

I'll feel better when/if listen is in one of the normally agreed repo's as for my personal (potential marketing uck) data in the GNU/Linux ubuntu community I trust!