[linux-audio-user] Re: Free Software vs. Open Source: Where do *you* stand?

[Pete Bessman]

Great messages, Hannu.  Now, for a point of slight contention:

> > and inevitable legions of bugs unfixed because of all that deadweight a 
> > 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."