Quote:
Originally Posted by deepsand
However, I will submit that open source has the greater opportunity to be of higher quality owing to 2 factors:
1) It is less likely to fall prey to the "good enough" standard that most work-for-hire is subject to; and,
2) It is more easily & quickly remediated when it is found to have problems.
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Entirely not true... When a open source project has opened up it's trouble ticket database to the public you will see just as many un-resolved issues floating around...
More eyes on a project does not mean that those eyes are capable of fixing the problem. If the program has achieved a good level of modularity to the point where many people can work in their own little private sections without disrupting the whole project then a level of better short term efficiency (possibly delusional efficiency) might be achieved but it does not translate to better quality. And it certainly does not solve the un-resolved issues floating around. Open source projects are subject to programmers who hold very little long term responsibility to the project. Why? Because they have no vested interest in whether the code actually works well or not. There is nothing in it for them. There is significantly more broken and non operational open source projects on the market than there are commercially closed source ones. Commercial projects need to work in order to make money. Open source ones do not need to work. It is very easy to understand, however it is not the defacto standard rule which can define the difference between open and closed source. It is purely a management/employee/collaboration issue.
Open source projects which do not care about or which does not scrutinize the skill level of the people working on the project, does not by a long shot mean that it will be of higher quality. In fact... anonymous style, non-collaboration on a project essentially leads to total chaos and the total quality of the product suffers as a result.
In either event... neither of claim 1 or 2 is effected by the open source nature of the code base. It is purely a managment issuse, and sometimes entirely dependant on the skill level of the programmer ( how many highly skilled programmers are working for free? NONE ) which cannot be confused with the nature of the code.
I prefer the
"Good Enough" standard when building software.... as in...
"is this good enough? Would I want this for myself?" as opposed to the
"anything will do standard so long as the client doesn't notice now... they can dish out a few hundred hours and a few thousand dollars down the road when I have already been paid and my hands are cleaned of it" approach.