Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2000 00:28:36 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Drew Eckhardt <drew@PoohSticks.ORG> Cc: SteveB <admin@bsdfan.cncdsl.com>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Sitting on hands (no longer Re: FreeBSD vs Linux, Solaris, and NT) Message-ID: <3A45A5A4.784ABF34@softweyr.com> References: <200012212014.eBLKEfh12072@chopper.Poohsticks.ORG>
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Drew Eckhardt wrote:
>
> In message <NEBBIGOKKMNLOMOHMJNPMELBCNAA.admin@bsdfan.cncdsl.com>, admin@bsdfan
> .cncdsl.com writes:
> >Here's the thing about open software that still concerns me. My
> >background is with the major software development tools companies, so
> >that is my point of reference. It is great that code is available and
> >fixes are made and pushed out, but who is doing real testing of these
> >fixes. Sure the obvious problem is fixed, but what other problems has
> >it uncovered, what side effect has it created, and how about
> >compatibility with other software or drivers in this case.
> >
> >With commercial software (well at least the places I worked) nothing
> >could go out the door without a complete QA cycle performed on it.
>
> In a past life, I did half the design and implementation of the
> software tracking calls and letting the billing software know
> about them on a CDMA cellular base station.
>
> For hardware, we used machines from the biggest workstation vendor
> with a three letter name, running the latest production release of
> their Unix.
>
> Before booting the putz from our team who'd crippled our software
> with threads and excised the damage he'd done, we regularly dumped the
> machines out to the ROM monitor.
>
> I know people who work in several operating systems groups at that
> company, know a bit about their quality control process, and know that
> it was insufficient.
>
> I've yet to encounter a bug of that severity in any released version
> of free software
I have. OpenBSD 2.7 release, PostgreSQL 6.5.3 from the OBSD port, and a
transparent proxy accessing the database. Do something stupid, smash the
stack in the proxy process, panic the kernel every time the user tries to
read email. Clever programmers can crash any system. ;^)
I'm enjoying this discussion, and getting a lot of fodder for this month's
column, but there seems to be a running undercurrent in the discussion that
isn't coming to the forefront: commercial companies have formal QA staff
because their development staff either can't or won't do the QA themselves.
Open source projects -- I am most familiar with FreeBSD, then OpenBSD --
do a far better job of having other talented programmers review ALL of the
changes to the system, either before or after the commit, than any commercial
organization I've been a part of. At best, the "formal QA" teams in these
places are a poor substitute for having a wide-ranging group of programmers
working on the system review each others work. The lack of "time to market"
demands is one of many sociological factors that contribute to make open
source software better than commercial efforts.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/
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