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Does Open Source Need Quality Standards?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Nov 29, 2004 03:04 PM
from the if-it-compiles-it-works-right dept.
Linux Business
underpar writes "This Techworld.com article reports that a UK group called the Open Source Consortium is being officially launched today. The article further states that the goal of the group is to respond to claims that switching to open source is more expensive than using Microsoft products and to help smaller companies compete with Sun and IBM for open source contracts. They say they will not compete with other open source groups and they intend to eventually come to the US. The hype-filled about us section of their site says their Quality Standard Certification provides a "simple framework for self-assessment and performance improvement." The question of whether this is useful or even wanted in the US still remains to be answered."
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  • Dumb overgeneralization (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2004, @03:06PM (#10945488)
    Does Open Source Need Quality Standards?

    Some open source projects do (carrier grade linux; linux in medical devices).

    Others don't (screen savers, C# clones(to match MSFT's Quality Standards), etc)

    • Re:Dumb overgeneralization (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2004, @03:12PM (#10945563)
      Another dumb overgenralization is that this organization think that their " Quality Standard Certification" is appropriate for a wide range of products.

      Linux in medical devices should have follow FDA standards

      Linux in automotive systems shouldd follow DOT standards.

      Linux in voting machines should follow Diebold/MS-Access quality standards..

      (sorry for the US-centric examples - for your own country pick your favorite certification organizations)

    • Not only an overgenralisation, it is a redundant idea to boot. OSDL already provides a lot of the stuff they publicly talk about - code quality etc. The real purpose of the organisation comes to light when you read deeper into the site.

      You need to be skilled in their "consulting framework" [openforumeurope.org] and you need to conform to some "financial framework" as well. Their membership criteria are mysterious (hint, you probably need to be a member of their club of buddies) and some of the organisations that are members (and knowing those organisations intimately, they probably are the drivers behind this thing as well) are decidedly dodgy - Open Forum Europe has publicly spoken as "Open Source Representatives" and as such, have signed a declaration supporting software patents [theregister.co.uk]. Looks to me like just another group of people trying to corner a market. Anyone remember the Open Group, and the "good" they did for UNIX? (another hint - a lot of the same people are involved)

      This is so much the wrong crowd to hang out with....
    • Good to see "Dumb overgeneralization" modded to +5 right off the bat. Other replies in this thread also deserve "insightful" moderation.

      Software should be held to whatever quality standards the customer requires, regardless of it's proprietary or open development process.

      For products where quality IS important, published documentation, including source, code-change-history, published test-cases and results of running those tests cases, etc. can help ensure quality. Commercial outfits typically rely on
    • Agreed. The other issue I see here is the credibility of OSC compared to that of IBM's, Novell's, Red Hat's and the likes.

      Not that I think OSC does not have credibility - I just don't know about that - but am wondering as to who would bean counters trust more when they sign cheques?

      • Nothing has quality. Open sourced or Not. This capitalist society is just obsessed with pumping out new versions every week.

        IF we all halt all software development TODAY. There is enough software to last till the next millenium. Everybody just rushes new versions out cause they could.

  • open source != linux (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2004, @03:08PM (#10945510)
    Just because Linux is under the GPL which is an OSI aproved license does not mean that anything that has to do with open source has to be about linux.

  • I think they do... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by akaina (472254) * on Monday November 29 2004, @03:08PM (#10945513) Journal
    ... and rumor has it they're experimenting with this quality assurance idea called 'pier review'

  • About Us page (Score:5, Funny)

    by miltimj (605927) on Monday November 29 2004, @03:08PM (#10945514)
    I like the dedication to quality evidenced in their About Us page:

    We are a not-for-profit organisation which guarantees the the quality of open source deployments in the public sector (emphasis mine)

  • McHammer: Too Open To Standardize (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fembots (753724) on Monday November 29 2004, @03:09PM (#10945529) Homepage
    Short answer is YES, almost everything needs a certain level of quality standards for widespread use. Even MS has its own quality standards :)

    However, who is to set these standards and who is to govern them is another question.

    I have a subtle feeling that Open Source = Freedom, that's probably why we see so many forks and distros because "I would have done this that way, and I could".

    So what is to stop a "US Open Source Consortium" being officially launched tomorrow because another group of developers have different idea on Open Source's quality standards?

    Can Linus the most influential man [slashdot.org] gives a single, authoritative guideline?

    • Re:McHammer: Too Open To Standardize (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MoonFog (586818) on Monday November 29 2004, @03:15PM (#10945606)
      Nothing will stop them. If US companies want to listen to the US Open Source Consortium as you name it, then they will. If European companies want to listen more to another OSC, then they are free to to do so. Is this necessarily a bad thing? As long as there is some kind of control and legitimacy over these consortiums, this can be good. Establishing 15 different consortiums within one country just because some developers disagree would probably be overkill though.
    • It looks like my days of charging my clients $350/hr to "maintain" their open source solution (while I'm actually reading Slashdot or Porn) are numbered.

      It also looks like my days of receiving lucrative MS funding for using me as a case study to show that a single Open Source implementor is way more expensive than a dozen MCSEs are also numbered.

      And to think, that MS was going to pay off my 3rd house and 2nd Porsche next week if only I would get up in front of national TV and announce how glad my company

  • Be Careful (Score:3, Insightful)

    by omghi2u (808195) on Monday November 29 2004, @03:09PM (#10945531) Journal
    Be careful what you wish for.

    Something "free" or "cheap" might be so for a reason.

    I still say best open source is that tied to proprietary hardware then you really cash in.

    As for la-dee-dah software, operating systems, etc, I stay away from those.
    • Something "free" or "cheap" might be so for a reason.

      I would call that FUD.

      Just because it's free or cheap doesn't mean it's inferior in quality. Similarly, being expensive doesn't guarantee the quality would be good either.

      Actually, for example, *BSDs are arguably the best network operating system and they are free. It is those overpriced proprietary OSes made by you-know-who that are riddled with bugs and security problems.

      Software products do not suffer from resource scarcity like traditional commo

  • Questionable quality. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RealAlaskan (576404) on Monday November 29 2004, @03:09PM (#10945536) Homepage Journal
    From TFA:
    Our quality standard certification is an ideal route for Open Source Consultancies who wish to be recognised for taking the first steps to implementing a formal quality management system. The OSC Business Standard makes an ideal first step on the road to ISO 9001 or the Excellence Model.
    So, this is for consultancies, not software.

    More to the point, isn't ISO 9001 one of those standards where you prove your ``quality'' by committing to following a process, and documenting that you do indeed follow that process? The inevitable result is that you can commit to shooting your customer in the foot, and document that you have done so, and earn the highest ``quality'' rating for it. That sort of ``quality'' isn't very reassuring.

    • Yes, basicly ISO 9001 just states that your capable of producing the small shit over an over again. It's a more a proces standard than a quality standard. Oh, and in the UK, you can advertise that your product is good because it's ISO 9001 certified.

      If they want to addresse the issue of quality in open source software, there is a lot they need to consider. Most importantly... what do they mean by quality? What represents good quality in one project, may not be relevant to others.

    • Slow down cowboy (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gosand (234100) on Monday November 29 2004, @04:30PM (#10946343) Homepage
      The inevitable result is that you can commit to shooting your customer in the foot, and document that you have done so, and earn the highest ``quality'' rating for it. That sort of ``quality'' isn't very reassuring.


      Don't know much about Quality, do you?


      I'll speak of these things in general, since they are essentially the same types of certifications (ISO, CMM, etc). If your customer agrees to be shot in the foot, and you shoot him in the foot, then the quality of that release is right on the money. One of the things that people miss (or fake) when implementing these processes is that they try to cut corners and fake-out the process. These certifications usually require that you get customer commitment to process changes. That means you keep your customer in the loop of communication. Therefore, you get them to agree to things and hold them to it. Customers don't usually like that, they love to wiggle and worm their way around commitments. But if you follow these processes, you can get them to document their commitment. They aren't very happy when they are called on the fact that they get exactly what they asked for, but in the end the point is to make them happy by getting them to ask for what they really want.


      Everyone loves to put down things like the CMM and Six Sigma, because they "don't work". Just because you worked somewhere where it didn't work doesn't mean the models don't work, it means you didn't do them very well. And they aren't easy to do well, they take effort. Most places will cut corners and fake the behavior that they think will let them slide by to get a certification, then they will usually go right back to doing what they want. There is a difference to "getting to certification level X" and "operating at certification level X".


      And the real definition of quality is the delta between what the customer expects and what is delivered.

  • Then who would test the beta/non-working versions of new projects?

  • Not a problem... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by danielrm26 (567852) * on Monday November 29 2004, @03:11PM (#10945560) Homepage
    Certifications like this are often welcome in corporate environments where names and packaging often matter as much or more than the product.

    Even if OSS is better in a lot of cases, many managers can't politically afford to introduce it because of the climate that exists in the still largely Windows-controlled world.

    Any sort of ... anything that lends credibility to OSS is, in my book, a good thing. So if this takes off and acts as some sort of benchmark for quality that people can rely on, I say more power to them.

  • Six Sigma to the resuce!!!!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by HarveyBirdman (627248) on Monday November 29 2004, @03:11PM (#10945562) Journal
    If you have not had Six Sigma training, you might be baffled about what it is.

    If you have had Six Sigma traning, then you are definitely baffled about what it is.

      • I turned down the opportunity to take Six Sigma training.

        We weren't given the choice. :-(

        So now I have to apply methods that were developed for the prodcution of millions of commodity items to my R&D development of unique and singular prototypes. Hah?

        I am in Hell.

  • In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kevin_conaway (585204) on Monday November 29 2004, @03:12PM (#10945564) Homepage
    Scientists wonder:

    Do bears shit in the woods?

    Is the pope Catholic?
  • .... we want something like that here. We have Microsoft and SCO.

  • YES, it does (Score:4, Informative)

    by DoktorTomoe (643004) on Monday November 29 2004, @03:14PM (#10945595)
    I think we all agree that a business world based on OpenSource would be preferable to a Windows-centric system. To achieve this, high-quality-business solutions have to be written and found. I am running my own business and am using Linux on 5 machines. There is some old Mac, but I do not really use it anymore. To please the Finanzamt (the german IRS), you have to file reports, do some accounting etc. This has proven very difficult for me when I tried it with OpenOffice. So I searched for business software, e.g. accounting suits, ERP and CRM-Software. I tried for over 2 months and have compiled about 100 different approaches - but all of them were either abandoned, not scaleable to other countries needs (I cannot use spanish tax forms) or they simply didn't work the way they where supposed to do (I even had an KDE program that was published with internal static linking to the programmers home directory!). I finally settled with lxoffice (http://www.lxoffice.org), which is fairly scaleable and where 95% of the system works, but it was a hard fight. While I am accepting such situations as a hobbyist, as a business owner that's lots of time I am not paid for. Quality control could help in such situations, helping users choose reliable software. And yes, I'd be willing to pay for it.
  • YES !!!

    And it needs to stick to them. Microsoft may produce buggy insecure code but I'm fed up of finding bugs in Open Source software and being told 'what do you expect, it's free'.

    Ed Almos
    Budapest, Hungary
    • Microsoft may produce buggy insecure code but I'm fed up of finding bugs in Open Source software and being told 'what do you expect, it's free'.

      So you'd prefer to pay big bucks for your software instead, find bugs in it, and then be ignored when you complain to the software company?
  • Based on the amount of abandoned projects, weak support, buggy code, inconsistent UI, and so forth I've seen in projects that were "neat ideas", I'd say yes, some standards would be useful. Especially when there are projects like Firefox, OpenOffice, and Gaim to carry the banner (plus many other lower-profile projects).

    OSS still has a bit of a reputation of being "kids in basements wearing black t-shirts hacking out amateur software surrounded by Matrix screen savers" and not always undeservedly.

    But not always deservedly either. And some sort of cert program (I leave to people smarter than I am the how, where, and when of certification) could be helpful. Would it make it more difficult for an innovative project to take root? Well, yes, but that would be the point, and it would guard against projects that are abandoned when, for example, their creators graduate from university.

    I'm a big fan of Free software, btw.
  • Linux is quality. By having publicly available code, we can all make sure it's up to our standards. If it's not, then you are welcome to (a) not use it, or (b) fix it. So why the concern? Contribute to the community and all is well. There's no barrier to helping (such as improving a country). But seriously, Linux has proven itself worthy of being quite stable and for the most part secure (problems are bound to happen in such a large block of code, but responsible repair is key). Same with the core ap
          • I'll give you that, but for every binary decision, you're going to piss off roughly half the people.

            There are security analysts who do spend time looking at the kernel, but it's a big job. As with most of these projects, they usually start becomes someone pays a security company to spend millions auditing it (ie: a government wanting to use it for sensitive data or voting machines). If only we could get every linux user to do one line of code *smirk* :)
            BTW: FHS is an attempt at getting some standardiz

  • Needs vs. Shoulds vs. Could Haves, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by timothy (36799) * on Monday November 29 2004, @03:18PM (#10945645) Homepage Journal
    "Who is this 'We,' paleface?"

    Lots of people are quick to say that someone else's work "needs" something. My car needs its cupholder in a sane spot, instead of so it just about blocks the radio buttons. It's true, but that's not exactly a demand on the car maker. Just a hint ... MR. SUBARU!

    Sometimes it's hypothetical and prescriptive; "Red Hat needs to compete in the market X, so it needs to advertise in trade publication Z and add the de-pre-mux-defrobnostication patch that this special niche requires." Fine :)

    Other times, the "need" is expressed as an imperative, when the speaker has no standing to demand anything ("The GIMP interface needs to change!") etc, or (as in the headline here) where there is no single Thing to change. "Open Source" covers a huge range; it's like "Things that have the letter R." It's true that some of these things (like Catherine Zeta Jones) are beautiful, but it it does not follow that all things with "R" better our existence in quite the same way.

    It's perfectly nice and positive and welcome etc that someone has decided to promulgate what they consider higher standards of quality for "Open Source" -- as long as everyone realizes that only a certain subset of open source software can be scrutinized by any given such body, that developers may have their own ideas (even if they are not universally popular, and even if they have no intention of following someone else's ideas of UI perfection), that open source's great advantage in this context is that UIs are a) frequently separate from the underlying code and b) forkable.

    timothy

  • standards (Score:3, Insightful)

    by eille-la (600064) on Monday November 29 2004, @03:21PM (#10945673)
    F/OSS needs more unified standards first! (like for packages).

  • Linux passed TelecomCarrier Grade Reliability Test (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2004, @03:21PM (#10945680)
    Certain versions of embedded and server Linux had already passed the Telecom Carrier Grade Reliability Test. Carrier Grade Linux is 99.999% Reliable. Any Window is NOT Telecom Carrier Grade Reliable. Microsoft won't even try because it will fail.

  • nit-picking (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Errtu76 (776778) on Monday November 29 2004, @03:24PM (#10945703) Journal
    While i could care less about w3c compliant, *if* you decide to put up a link to w3c, checking valid xml stuff, make sure it's actually valid ;)
  • Do we need standards that pertain to quality or standards that themselves have quality? :)

  • The Community chooses. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nijika (525558) on Monday November 29 2004, @03:25PM (#10945713) Homepage Journal
    Ugh, sorry for the marketing like speak, but I feel like the quality standards in OSS are dictated in an "organic" way. Where the best software bubbles to the top, and the quality is assured by continued participation in quality software. Look at Apache. Look at the Linux and BSD kernels. KDE, anything. All of them have organic style quality controls where the community dictates just what is quality.

    I can imagine an organized group like this, though, would be excellent at answering issues like corporate generated FUD in an organized and coherent way. That's our big problem, we lack representation (not counting eccentric geniuses with big ZZ top beards).

  • If FOSS is to conquer the end user market, there must be quality standards for usability (giving the system a polished look) and documentation. Many projects already are quite good at the documentation but a lot lack usablility in terms of "I'm coming from windows and I want at least a bit comfort by configuring the system via a GUI". That's not my opinion (I like the config-file-style) but it's how less technically experienced people think. And this is, after all the group of people that should be careful


  • We are a not-for-profit organisation which guarantees the the quality of open source deployments in the public sector by setting professional standards and bonding its members.

    AFBCD (Another Fucking Barber College Diploma)

    More info on stinkin badges [nyud.net].

  • From the aforementioned hype filled section: (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dammital (220641) on Monday November 29 2004, @03:29PM (#10945748)
    "We are a not-for-profit organisation which guarantees the the (sic) quality of open source deployments..."
    Sure am glad they're watching out for quality.

  • SQA is needed. (Score:3, Informative)

    by ichigo (832988) on Monday November 29 2004, @03:34PM (#10945805)
    SQA is essentially one of the most important aspects in software engineering. Depending on the nature of a software, open source or not, SQA is definitely a must and key to developing software that meets the needs of the intended end-users without sacrifycing quality. What's the point of having a software that has fancy features of this and that and yet crashes every now and then?

    SQA helps to validate the software whether it is developed up to certain acceptable standards like whether it's functioning the way it supposed to, does it go berserk and stop functioning after the user keys in certain kind of data, etc.

    Just because a software is open source and free, I see no reason why the quality should be compromised especially the operating systems, office productivity and development tools.

    And so I really feel this Quality Standard Certification is needed, I mean just look at the numbers of governments and organizations is using Windows OS despite it's many flaws compared to the number of Linux OS adoption. The reasoning for this that "Linux is harder to use" is lame - it's obviously because of it's reputation and that Microsoft gave "quality assurance" to their product. What about Linux? Is there concrete proof that Linux is better that will convinced the government and the organization that it is a better OS?

  • Standards will just slow the war down (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Stevyn (691306) on Monday November 29 2004, @04:14PM (#10946177)
    I tend to think of OSS as a war between different developers to see who's idea will be favored by the market. For too many years, implementation of ideas was up to some PHB. The problems of that system are starting to show. The idea that "well, it may not be the best way to do it, but at least we can all agree to do it this way" goes against the idea that the best solution will come out on top.

    I think developers should continue to try new ideas and do it their way. If nobody likes their idea, their software won't be used and it won't matter.

    The market will adjust. It may not be elegant or convenient to juggle several different packaging systems, for example, but people are doing it. Eventually, the best packaging system will come out on top because people chose to use it, not become some standards organization decided it was best.

    These past few years of OSS have shown some pretty neat ideas in a short amount of time. I think it's going to improve at a faster rate in the next few years.

  • No, because no one will use them (Score:3, Insightful)

    by upsidedown_duck (788782) on Monday November 29 2004, @08:41PM (#10948983)

    Seriously, if a programmer can't even put forth the effort to make autoconf work on more than one platform, then they won't have the time to spend on "quality standards." I've seen professional programmers spout "best practices" out of their asses for a long time, and, when it comes time to produce something, they are just as fast and loose as anyone. The reason: talk is cheap. quality is very hard.

    • This is indeed Geek News, but please keep it to yourself. The other 90% of geeks that have yet to be laid will get jealous and mark you offtopic out of spite.

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