Proprietary software developers have little incentive aside from the possibility of discovery to not take advantage of users. It's sometimes difficult to determine whether it's malicious or not, and there's a greater chance for plausible deniable---we don't know the story behind that code.
If an anti-feature is discovered in free software, it can be promptly removed and replaced, regardless of whether the developers of the software consider it to be an anti-feature. What if HP wants this to remain for debugging/diagnostic purposes? There's little you can do about that. (I'm not saying they do.)
The fact that free software can have bugs is an open source argument that falls apart when the argument becomes "open source is better because of technical advantage X".[0]
There are frequent arguments that the freedom of drivers isn't important---mainly because it's inconvenient to use a system without non-free drivers and requires purchasing replacement hardware to work around. This is an example that maybe can help counter that point.
I do agree - wholeheartedly - with you that Free Software gives users control over what their devices do. This is important. Control and trust that your devices do what they are supposed to do - no more, no less - are pretty much impossible to establish without free software
My point was that if nobody bothers to look at the code, the bug will go undetected. Think of how long the Heartbleed bug had been in OpenSSL before it was discovered.
> My point was that if nobody bothers to look at the code, the bug will go undetected. Think of how long the Heartbleed bug had been in OpenSSL before it was discovered.
Yes, I agree. "Linus's Law", while it has some truth, is a flawed (and open source) reasoning if considered absolute.
If an anti-feature is discovered in free software, it can be promptly removed and replaced, regardless of whether the developers of the software consider it to be an anti-feature. What if HP wants this to remain for debugging/diagnostic purposes? There's little you can do about that. (I'm not saying they do.)
The fact that free software can have bugs is an open source argument that falls apart when the argument becomes "open source is better because of technical advantage X".[0]
There are frequent arguments that the freedom of drivers isn't important---mainly because it's inconvenient to use a system without non-free drivers and requires purchasing replacement hardware to work around. This is an example that maybe can help counter that point.
[0]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....