The Sun newspaper ran an article yesterday slamming the use of ‘open source’ software as a way to attack Jeremy Corbyn.

But Political Scrapbook has found the Sun considers such software reliable enough to use it for its own website. Hypocrisy, much?

The Sun reported the views of one expert Neil Doyle:

Labour chief Mr Corbyn’s manifesto would probably cover MoD and security service computers under an open source licence, said Mr Doyle. He said: “Open source means code and plans can be accessed and potentially altered and re-packaged by anyone. “That could also mean giving the keys to spies and copycat outfits in Russia, North Korea and China.” He said it would also be easier for hackers to inspect software and hardware to identify vulnerabilities and steal sensitive data.

Its true that hackers in other countries can identify vunerabilities in open source software.

But they can also hack proprietary software like Microsoft Windows.

But with open source software – where all the underlying code is open so people can look at it, suggest changes and improve on it – at least problems can be quickly patched up.

Moreover open source software can be more powerful, cheaper (good news for taxpayers!) and reliable!

After all, the Sun uses it too. They run their website on WordPress – the open source blog software.

Did they think we wouldn’t notice?

This screenshot is from the source-code of The Sun website

Of course, Corbyn wasn’t advocating opening up MoD secrets or opening access to software used by security services. He advocated opening up most publicly funded software.

But if it thinks open source software is dangerous, why is The Sun using it?