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QA Under The Open Source Development Model
carrowood writes "A survey was conducted questioning open source developers from both large and small projects concerning their quality assurance practices. A
research paper based on the survey result was just published in the Journal of Systems and Software.
Some comparisions between QA practices of open vs closed source projects are made with some interesting observations. While on the whole it looks like open source QA can be as good as that in traditional software development, there were a few areas pointed out where the open source community does not do so well, such as regression testing and setting release dates.
A thought provoking read."
...then you can go and buy software developed out of a motivation for financial gain.
Surely open source projects exist for other motivations, and hence have less (if any) need to aim towards release dates.
After all, in the business world the sheer fact that you _have_ to get something out by a particular date (because marketing / the bean counters said so) contributes significantly to the quality problems.
Ultimately, while development can, in certain cases, be done in a vacuum, QA cannot (and should not). It's by nature a collaborative and interactive process.
I have nothing but respect for the few (good) QA engineers I've worked with.
Well, the fact that no releases dates are setted are more a good point than a bad one ! Of course, in an ideal world where software would be released on dates (!), they won't have bugs either. But in the real world, must proprietary software aren't on schedules, and anyway, when they are, this is often at the detriment of the number of remaining bugs and/or dismiss of some features.
In the free software world, the software is released when ready. So, of course they don't set release date (generally speaking -- some projects have regular releases). But I hardly see that as an obvious bad point. It could be on the contrary one of the strength of the free software.
At least, programmers on free software releases when they are happy with the code.
I suspect clients requiring ISO 9001 just go for commercial software. One part of OSS often is to refuse warranty and alike - IMO this does not quite fit into ISO 9001.
In my many years of experience, I have to say that regression testing is not as common in proprietary software development as it should be (and frequently not as common as claimed). Furthermore, while I don't want to say that regression testing is less important for Libre Software, I will say that I think it's probably more important for proprietary software, where the programmers are writing for a paycheck, rather than for pride, and are frequently under intense deadline pressure (which in turn, frequently leads to testing/QA of all types being skimped).
:)
As for no release dates, anyone who doesn't recognise that as an advantage of Libre Software simply lacks any clue about the process. Sure, there are downsides, but nothing's perfect. Free, reliable, on-time, pick any two.
The open source development model allows tremendous flexibility, allowing members of a development team to be dropped or added at a moment's notice. With the source readily available, one can become familiar with a project's code before applying to be given access to the CVS or equivalent repository. Gradual accretion may produce code in a style not unlike that of James A. A. Joyce's Ulysses manuscripts, but, like James A. A. Joyce, all of the core developers can easily jump from point to point in the code and comprehend the necessary sections and the C/PHP/Python/Java equivalent of their allusions.
Unfortunately, as a result of this decentralised development system, commercial QA, support and RHQ are not as readily available. I'm a middle manager and my company has had a double-sided experience with the MySQL AB organization. They produce a fine product which is perfect for a medium sized corporation such as the one I work for (which shall remain nameless). MySQL worked very well for us, but unfortunately at one point we started receiving segmentation faults when there were more than 30 connections or if a query was greater than 2,048 characters in length. We have reported these bugs to MySQL AB but they have not yet fixed them in their latest gamma/production release. However, they have been very polite and are always willing to cooperate with us; even if small portions of the code are not yet fixable and have escaped the relatively poor QA of the EOD, their TOS have always been reasonable and our MD has always been able to CWT regarding the slight problems and BS our way around them.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Other areas of problems are attributable to slovenly or "don't give a damn" attitudes--unused variables, unreachable code, "magic number" constants, and so on. Ignoring values returned by a function are very common. Maybe it is acceptable with a library function, but why return a value if you aren't going to use it? It's better to make the function into a procedure by returning void. On a more theoretical level, the use of weak typing even when the language allows for tighter specification of variables. Strong typing is designed to prevent such oddities and inadvertently multiplying a color by date.
However, in the end it all comes back to complexity. And that is where the biggest improvement in OSS quality can be obtained.