Quoting Lisa <xiaoxiao_2008@...19...>:

Sorry for bothering you, but my mom won't let me download Inkscape unless she knows that it won't install a virus or spyware on the computer or something. So who wrote/created Inkscape? I know that it's open source, but what exactly does that mean? Is there any way I can prove to my mom that it's a safe and reputable program?

Thanks for writing, Lisa.

Your mother's right to be concerned; these days, any time you download and run a program, you are placing an awful lot of trust in the people who wrote it.

Inkscape is the work of a large team of volunteers; probably too many to name here[1]. However, you needn't trust them individually. As an "Open Source" project, we publish the recipe ("source code") for our product openly for everyone to see, and it is subject to rigorous peer review.

(For obvious reasons, spyware makers aren't usually so brave.)

However, if you want something firmer (you're probably not in a position to evaluate the source code yourself), there's always the fact that large vendors like Novell have reviewed it and include it in their Enterprise products:

http://www.novell.com/products/linuxpackages/professional/inkscape.html

Something else -- when you download software (any software), it's not enough just to trust the authors and/or the published code. You also need to download the software from a trustworthy source, because there is nothing preventing untrusted third parties from giving you a copy which has been tampered with.

In the case of Inkscape, I can vouch for sourceforge.net (which is where the download links on Inkscape's downloads page go), as we have a good working relationship with them.

Hope this helps,

- Tim Daniels, project co-founder (often credited as "MenTaLguY")

[1] An up-to-date list of participants can be found here (hopefully the link won't get line-wrapped):

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/inkscape/inkscape/AUTHORS

Alternately, the authors list is available from the about dialog in the application itself.