linuxaudio.org

Great messages, Hannu.  Now, for a point of slight contention:
> > and inevitable legions of bugs unfixed because of all that deadweight a

quoted text
> > commercial programmer must support.

> The claim that proprietary software has more bugs than open source one is

> an urban legend. There is proprietary software that is full of bugs.

> Equally well there is open source software that doesn't even compile. Some

> software is just written by incompetent programmers. This has nothing to

> do with the distribution policy. If there are any bugs then users report

> them to the author of the program who fixes it (also with proprietary

> software).

I think that the merits of Linus' law are very much reality --- however,

achieving the right circumstances for the benefits to accrue is an

entirely different matter.  If every project had the same ratio of man-

hours+talent to SLOC that the linux kernel does, then I think the

landscape of open source software would be very different.
Of course, such is not reality, and I doubt it ever will be.  So, I

think direct comparisons of open source to proprietary reliability is

still a bit disingenuous.  It really has to be done on a case by case

basis.
--

Pete Bessman

http://gazuga.net

"So this baby seal walks into a club."