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Ask About Proprietary vs. Open Source Code Quality

Scott Trappe is CEO of Reasoning, a company that has gained a certain amount of noteriety (and a Slashdot mention) by running its Ilumna automated inspection service on several versions of TCP/IP -- and concluding that the Linux version has fewer bugs than most proprietary ones. Why is this? Let's ask Scott, and also ask him any other question you can think of about software quality and how to achieve it since, after all, that's his business. We'll send him 10 of the highest-moderated questions and post his answers when we get them back.

7 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Give due credit by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Didn't the TCP/IP code originally come from the FreeBSD project?

    No. The Linux TCP/IP stack was written from the spec mainly by Alan while he was at Swansea. Haven't you seen the credit to SUCS in your Linux boot-up? That's the problem with graphical splash screens...

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Re:What about BSD? by b0r1s · · Score: 2, Informative
    For questions like this, watch the FreeBSD lists.

    People like Terry Lambert pop up often with quasi-benchmarks taken from personal experience.

    Check out http://news.gw.com/freebsd.arch/9169 for a detailed way to get 1.6 million simultaneous connections in FreeBSD, a number that Linux simply can't match.

    Check out http://linuxpr.com/releases/5611.html for IBM's simultaneous connection limit:
    In a critical measure of secure Web serving performance, a 4-way eServer p630 set an industry record for entry level (4-way) systems supporting 1,988 simultaneous connections, far outpacing the 568 simultaneous connections achieved by the 4-way Sun Fire V480 on the SPECweb99_SSL performance measure.[2]

    The eServer p630 set an additional 4-way Web serving record when the system processed 6,895 simultaneous connections, offering greater than 50 percent more performance than a 4-way Sun Fire V480 with 4,500 simultaneous connections.[3]


    1.6 million compared to 6,900. To be fair, one is excessively tuned, but despite that, it's a huge difference.

    --
    Mooniacs for iOS and Android
  3. Re:Open. Source. Fucking. Sucks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    in spite of sounding like a troll i agree with you. the whole open source thing is great while you're living in your folks basement, but once you've got a roof to keep over your head and mouths to feed it becomes a waste of time. i mean if you want to code in your spare time, then fine, use it to start your own company. you can try to right all of the "wrongs" you percieve in the industy. If technically superior code can kill the competition then a programmer (with business sense) at the head of a multinational corp would be a dangerous thing to those run by business men and bean counters.

    i wrote a massive library from scratch in C that has been used to build a commercial-grade data transformation product. it is 100% component-oriented, the beginnings of a software assembly line. there have been 3 bugs found in 3 years. my method: i don't tolerate bugs in my code. period. i scour the code over and over, reading it line by line with my finger on the monitor. it's idiotic but man does it work. i dunno if it would work for other people, but this would be the ultimate closed-source environment. of course i'm taking my own advice and founding a company on it.

  4. (-1, Flamebait) by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 2, Informative
    Whereas with open source software, you have no legal recourse if the latest release of sendmail or bind has an exploit, but rest assured that within 24 hours a fix will be released. Compare that with response times from commercial closed source vendors...

    Sure, because it's well known that commercial software vendors never fix serious vulnerabilities as fast as the open source community. Particularly ones like Apple, for example, who have fixed several vulnerabilities in MacOS X way before the equivalent Linux patches were released. Since you like sendmail so much, I suggest you check how fast the major commercial *nix vendors released their patches compared to the open source world, and get back to us.

    Now please pick up your ill-informed pro-OS FUD and go away.

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    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  5. Re:Give due credit by Arandir · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, Linux used to use the BSD TCP/IP stack. Linus was fine with it. But Alan was tired of the ragging he used to get at LUGs.

    --
    A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  6. Open vs Closed what about non-MS good product? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The following are closed-source softwares, bug-free up to my knowledge, never crash, intuitive, nice interface, easy-to-install, easy-to-learn, easy-to-use and very nice to work with it:

    Borland C++ Builder 5.x
    Vandyke Secure CRT (Doesn't have term bug) =P
    Vandyke Secure FX
    EditPlus
    CuteFTP
    CuteHTML
    LViewPro (Much easier than Photoshop)
    mIRC
    Trillian
    WinAmp
    WinZip
    Adapte c Easy CD Creator
    Bitware Fax
    Visual ASM
    HyperDX
    WinICE
    EAGLE Layout Editor
    Toad for Oracle

    What's your list?

    Not mentionning all the great games on Windows!

    Not mentionning Microsoft 'good' products:
    MS Paint
    MS Word
    MS Excel
    MS PowerPoint
    MS Age of Empire II
    MS Age of Methology
    MS Visual C++ when you don't use MFC.

    Let me know when those software WILL be as good, user-friendly, bug-free, usable like the one on Windows.

    Got to admit KDE is getting there, but not yet.

    Every stupid questions turns out like how yea Micro$oft sux, Windows sux, Linux Rulez, OpenOffice is so good and free.

    For the *nix bashing part:

    gdb is crapt
    man pages are crapt
    vi sux
    emacs better than vi but really sux
    nedit is freaking slow
    OpenOffice Word, AbiWord don't equivalent MS Word
    OpenOffice Calc IS FAR FROM USABLE compare to Excel

    The good part:
    KDE is pretty good
    pico/nano is not bad.
    Kate is probably ok.

    After a long day of hacking in vi/emacs/pico/nano/gdb on a f*cking term, man you are happy when you get back to home hacking in some nice EditPlus or with MSVC full debugger!

    For those who are so good at vi/emacs, how much time does it takes let say to open a GPL/LGPL/BSD source tree with directory, to remove the License
    header notice from all files in all subdirectories
    (Open all files recursively => easy with CuteHTML, with EditPlus create a project file
    with a dir /s/b and a regexp or manually open all files from each sub-dir )
    (select, CTRL-C, CTRL-H, CTRL-V, replace by a token -LICENSE- ), and save it (Save all),
    then send it to a line printer (Print all...) then undo the search and replace (CTRL-H...) and save it (Save all).

    Tool used: CuteHTML or EditPlus

    Good luck! =P
    None of my vi/emacs friend where able to do it easilly and as fast as me, but my grandma can do it as fast as me.

    Have fun freaks!

    - Usability Hacker: Someone who don't waste time with stupid tools without religious faith to get the job done faster, easier and better than any other hacker.

  7. Re:Proprietary v Open by maarten_delft · · Score: 2, Informative

    It is true that MS does not pro-actively disclose the details of the file formats they introduce, it is also true they modifying standard formats (expand), but to say that they do that with the sole purpose of reducing compatability and maintainging their market share is something that should not be generalized.

    As is frequently pointed out, in some cases their software is just overall better than others.

    --
    --[rosso bright]--