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The software process of open source is fascinating, but I think you can't overlook the fact that people are choosing to contribute and want to get something don

The software process of open source is fascinating, but I think you can't overlook the fact that people are choosing to contribute and want to get something done. If you hired 100 developers and told them to contribute as needed would the outcome be as good as the big open source projects around? Most likely we'll never find out because management wants to control what gets done.

stcredzero 18y ago
Haven't there been comparative studies done on Linux and Windows operating systems as a whole? I think that the quality of both systems has been found to be comparable.
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  Yes, though I don't think you can say anything really objective about the "quality" based on the data available. I found some of the statistics in the case of Windows source indicative of lower readability and maintainability...defined global funcs and structs counts are higher than the Open Source systems (FreeBSD and Linux) and file length is significantly longer, even though Linux is a significantly larger codebase (the largest of all of the systems analyzed). But, of course, that's just numbers...roughly meaningless without context. And, obviously, Microsoft manages to keep shipping code that mostly works, and they hire some of the best developers in the world. Here's the paper: http://www.spinellis.gr/pubs/conf/2008-ICSE-4kernel/html/Spi08b.pdf http://www.spinellis.gr/pubs/conf/2008-ICSE-4kernel/html/Spi... And some additional commentary: http://www.spinellis.gr/sw/4kernel/ http://www.spinellis.gr/sw/4kernel/ Anyway, while I've never seen the Windows source code, I have looked at FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris, and all are pretty good. I think FreeBSD may be the cleanest (partly because it tries to be fewer things to fewer people than Linux), but probably not technically the most interesting. And, of course, I've only taken a few quick trips through FreeBSD and Solaris, and I've actually written driver code for Linux. Doing real work in a codebase always makes the warts more apparent.
13ren 18y ago
Skunkworks are probably the corporate version of open source. They work well.
- greendestiny 18y ago
  Quite true, they tend to be small though. I'm imagining large groups of programmers simply tackling projects as they saw fit within a code base. I'm not sure normal employment is quite up to the task - maybe if you paid people per feature or spec'd bits out topcoder style.
  - Kaizyn 18y ago
    Here's an idea... let's try paying them by the line of code or number of bugs fixed. Oh wait, maybe that isn't such a good idea.

stcredzero 18y ago

Haven't there been comparative studies done on Linux and Windows operating systems as a whole? I think that the quality of both systems has been found to be comparable.

SwellJoe 18y ago
Yes, though I don't think you can say anything really objective about the "quality" based on the data available. I found some of the statistics in the case of Windows source indicative of lower readability and maintainability...defined global funcs and structs counts are higher than the Open Source systems (FreeBSD and Linux) and file length is significantly longer, even though Linux is a significantly larger codebase (the largest of all of the systems analyzed). But, of course, that's just numbers...roughly meaningless without context. And, obviously, Microsoft manages to keep shipping code that mostly works, and they hire some of the best developers in the world. Here's the paper: http://www.spinellis.gr/pubs/conf/2008-ICSE-4kernel/html/Spi08b.pdf http://www.spinellis.gr/pubs/conf/2008-ICSE-4kernel/html/Spi... And some additional commentary: http://www.spinellis.gr/sw/4kernel/ http://www.spinellis.gr/sw/4kernel/ Anyway, while I've never seen the Windows source code, I have looked at FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris, and all are pretty good. I think FreeBSD may be the cleanest (partly because it tries to be fewer things to fewer people than Linux), but probably not technically the most interesting. And, of course, I've only taken a few quick trips through FreeBSD and Solaris, and I've actually written driver code for Linux. Doing real work in a codebase always makes the warts more apparent.

13ren 18y ago

Skunkworks are probably the corporate version of open source. They work well.

greendestiny 18y ago
Quite true, they tend to be small though. I'm imagining large groups of programmers simply tackling projects as they saw fit within a code base. I'm not sure normal employment is quite up to the task - maybe if you paid people per feature or spec'd bits out topcoder style.
- Kaizyn 18y ago
  Here's an idea... let's try paying them by the line of code or number of bugs fixed. Oh wait, maybe that isn't such a good idea.