In the end, choosing software for privacy/security is a matter of trust: How much do you trust a piece of software to protect your privacy/security?
We determine how much we trust a piece of software based on countless different social/technical factors. Being open-source is definitely a positive trust factor, but some people may place more weight on other factors such as pedigree of the developers, availability of corporate backing/funding (guaranteed continued development/support), or maturity/stability of the software itself.
I personally consider being open-source paramount when it comes to security/privacy software (and am one of those people who tend to dismiss anything privacy/security related that's not open-source, although I don't usually feel the urge to broadcast my dismissal to the world), but I respect that other people may not share the same set of priorities.
We determine how much we trust a piece of software based on countless different social/technical factors. Being open-source is definitely a positive trust factor, but some people may place more weight on other factors such as pedigree of the developers, availability of corporate backing/funding (guaranteed continued development/support), or maturity/stability of the software itself.
I personally consider being open-source paramount when it comes to security/privacy software (and am one of those people who tend to dismiss anything privacy/security related that's not open-source, although I don't usually feel the urge to broadcast my dismissal to the world), but I respect that other people may not share the same set of priorities.