Richard Stallman <[email protected]> writes:
> [...] They say that open source usually leads to more powerful and
> reliable software. [...]
Who are "they" and how do "they" put proof to this claim? This is one
of the biggest lies of the open source community that I read again and
again.
Most of the open source software works "about so". Do we have a bullet
proof USB stack? WLAN drivers? DHCP code? ACPI? APM (which is about
what? eight years old?)?
Open Source code most of the times is a collection of code of various
quality from people who needed to "scratch an itch" or put a hack in
to "support just my configuration".
If you find a well designed and completely specified and developed
piece of open source software, you're almost sure to find a company or
an individual having been paid for developing it and the putting it
into open source.
Some open source code still gives me nightmares if I only think about
the filenames.
Regards
Henning
--
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen -- Geschaeftsfuehrer
INTERMETA - Gesellschaft fuer Mehrwertdienste mbH [email protected]
Am Schwabachgrund 22 Fon.: 09131 / 50654-0 [email protected]
D-91054 Buckenhof Fax.: 09131 / 50654-20
On Sun, 2003-01-05 at 21:17, Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> Most of the open source software works "about so". Do we have a bullet
> proof USB stack? WLAN drivers? DHCP code? ACPI? APM (which is about
> what? eight years old?)?
USB is getting there, but its certainly better than some others
WLAN yes - openap is superb stuff
DHCP - yes
ACPI - very recently become a truely open project so will I hope now
improve
APM - reliable for years, bios code (the nonfree bit) often very buggy
> If you find a well designed and completely specified and developed
> piece of open source software, you're almost sure to find a company or
> an individual having been paid for developing it and the putting it
> into open source.
I don't think its that clear. We have some extremely classy code done
for fun, or because people had the hardware, and some horrible code
people were paid to write.
Good code is about good engineers, and good engineers do things for many
different reasons and motivations.
Alan
--
Alan Cox <[email protected]>