Need to compare hashes between a stock ISO and one ~~flashed~~ booted by Ventoy (dd the latter to a file and check)

What does BLOB stand for?

I like multiboot. Used it back when I used Windows.
The Ventoy advertisements on Reddit looked too suspicious, so I never checked it out.

This is a bit absurd. I really don't think this is as serious as some comments say. Also there is a comment from AUR package manager which explains more details. . And even the blobs in the first post there are source and build instructions in their respective folder.

I just wish it had a real alternative. GRUB on USB doesnt support as much distros or windows.

Is BLOB an acronym?

It's a useful tool, but there is a security concern for anything not fully open source. You will have to weigh your risk factors, I doubt that it's any problem for most consumers or distro hoppers.

Best to keep an eye in case any new contributers arrive suddenly...

I've had too many issues with Ventoy that I'd rather just use fedora media writer or balenaetcher for when that doesn't work. I mean honestly it's a bit gimmicky, even if it's a cool concept. I believe Glim and some other options exist too

I haven't read to far into this but the issue is completely devoid of contributors and maintainers. I find the wording of the issue quite concerning:

Due to the recent XZ-Utils drama I checked the code and I'm appalled. There are more BLOBS than source code. https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/tree/3f65f0ef03e4aebcd14f233ca808a4f894657802/cryptsetup https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/tree/3f65f0ef03e4aebcd14f233ca808a4f894657802/Unix/ventoy_unix https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/tree/3f65f0ef03e4aebcd14f233ca808a4f894657802/DMSETUP

There is no reason to have those not be build in the release process. Of course it's convenient, they are prebuild, it's fast and nobody has a problem with it.

Recent events however showed that these BLOBs can contain everything and nothing. The build instructions would not produce the exact same executable for everyone. It's better to have GitHub build it on-push and use them out of the build cache.

I would do it myself, but unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with the Ventoy build process to actually do it. I understand that removing BLOBs isn't a priority over new and shiny features. But due to recent events, this should be rethought.

Thank you for reading this and I hope for a productive conversation

This is free software, they don't owe you anything and this kind of language sounds angry and entitled. You can't just Gordon Ramsay on someone else's codebase.