Does Open Source Need Quality Standards?

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."

Dumb overgeneralization

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

YES, it does

[DoktorTomoe]

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.

Linux passed TelecomCarrier Grade Reliability Test

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

SQA is needed.

[ichigo]

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?

A 'quality standard'

[PhYrE2k2]

You are mistaking a 'standard' (such as TCP/IP) with a 'quality standard'. One can make a program to follow a specific protocol, but that doesn't make it a good program at all.

We're talking about quality. How good is the finished product compared to its usage. Is a mission-critical application actually going to be stable? Does your application spend most of its time in spin locks? The quality is in the method of the implementation. A web server can answer HTTP requests without trouble, but will is do so well? Is it expandable? Is it going to advance? Is it useful? Are its libraries useful to other functions?

Quality is a 'degree of excellence'. So what makes the software you see on Linux better than 'average'. Why are we all using it? Price decreases our costs and barriers, but a degree of quality exists because there is a large user base creating quality, and demanding quality.

If you make code that is not readable or properly coded, nobody will use it, or people will say "I'm starting my own project" and fork off (as we've seen so many times in the UNIX world).
A good example of quality (IMHO) is qmail. Written well, coded securely, very functional, and very logical. And it has succeeded for those reasons (and hype). The tens of patches out there for it adding all sorts of neat features are people saying "this code makes sense. This structure makes sense". Adding features to a SMTP system doesn't involve mucking up the mail system. People like it because it screams of quality. A great deal of time, effort, and quality went into the code.

You mention a standard. We need standards in protocols- not in quality. The standard says that a SMTP conversation goes like this... but the style, programming language, where security checks are made, and so on are all up to the programmer or team of programmers. And why should we (you?) take away that freedom? If I want to make my code of low quality, don't use it, don't buy it, don't use the service I offer from it (not that I do produce poor code).

-M

Re:Questionable quality.

[SoSueMe]

"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."

Sticking with the "ISO" flavour, ISO 9126 [cse.dcu.ie] defines software quality characteristics as Functionality, Reliability, Usability, Efficiency, Maintainability and Portability