"Of all the myths that have grown up around open source software, perhaps the most pervasive is Eric Raymond's aphorism that 'Many eyes make bugs shallow', suggesting that if lots of people can view a program's source code, they will find and fix its errors more quickly than commercial products whose code is jealously guarded. The only problem with this is that it's not true - certainly not in one of the flagship projects of open source, OpenOffice."
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-06-29
Agreed. For that matter an office suite is made up of a lot of code and not one is bug free. OpenOffice.org has it's bugs, as does MS Office and every other office suite out there I can think of.
One of the reasons I use OpenOffice.org and StarOffice is because I encountered bugs in MS Office that are more annoying to me than the ones I encountered in OpenOffice.org and StarOffice so far.
Member since:2005-07-06
OpenOffice's codebase grew up as a proprietary one. Much of the code is over 12 years old.
It's been open source since 2000. You'd think they'd gone over all of the code now.
If you want to make a case against 'many eyes make bugs shallow," you have to use a piece of software that was written from the ground up in an open fashion.
Apache. See Secunia advisories for Apache & IIS before replying.
Member since:"It's been open source since 2000. You'd think they'd gone over all of the code now."
Wow talk about ridiculously high expectations
"Apache. See Secunia advisories for Apache & IIS before replying."
You expect apache to be perfect?
Once again.............
talk about ridiculously high expectations
Member since:The number of advisories per month on a software package may not be the most representative of it's "goodness".
I believe a more interesting comparison, may be the stack (IE: Linux, Apache, Oracle, Tomcat vs Windows, IIS, MS SQL, .NET) and man-hours of matenance per page served (probably thousandths would be an applicable scale). Couple that with compromises per page served and you would probably have a pretty clear picture of the situation.
Member since:
Member since:
2005-07-09
OpenOffice's codebase grew up as a proprietary one. Much of the code is over 12 years old.
If you want to make a case against 'many eyes make bugs shallow," you have to use a piece of software that was written from the ground up in an open fashion.
I would even discount software written by small organizations internally but released as open source.
I would instead look at a piece of software with an open development mailinglist/irc room. One that actively accepts patches from a good portion of its userbase.
Edited 2005-12-08 20:42