Comment Re:Accidentally? (Score 4, Insightful) 69
Ahh, you miss the point. The vast majority do not need to understand the code.
Open source's strength is not that everyone has to read/understand the code -- it is that everyone can. It takes only one person to find an issue, then others can see for themselves and confirm/fix. If the vendor not fixing it fast enough, a fork or patch can be done without vendor's approval. On the other hand when Apple logged your location, it was only found by accident because they left data laying around. Then you had to wait for Apple to fix it, which, for all we know, they did by not leaving the data easily findable.
Of course that is not perfect and plenty of bugs and issues do not get found quickly in Open Source - but if it is popular enough, it is much harder to be evil on purpose and hide it.
Oh, it's open source so it's all good?
Open source is so fast to get a pass on being Evil(tm) around here. More people who own an Android phone have the skills to rebuild an engine than to properly interpret the source code of their phone. Open source only matters if you have the skills to understand the code. The vast majority of people running CyanogenMod don't have this skill set.