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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."
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.
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 gives a single, authoritative guideline?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
"Who is this 'We,' paleface?"
... MR. SUBARU!
:)
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
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
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
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 carefully driven away from monopolist software and at least use some free software.
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.
And those standards, would be... non-existant?
/. is a bunch of nerds at a million typewriters. It's not a political conspiracy determined to undermine your beliefs.
validator.w3.org http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .opensourceconsortium.org
gives this response:
This page is not Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!
... and it ain't even slashcode ...
Just look at their address:
A freaking PO Box. No "real" address. No phone number. No fax number. so who are these clowns anyway?And then we've got the whole "Beat the FUD" section. Groklaw already does a better job of defudding than these assholes.
Scam, scam, scam.
I've seen some difficult to understand jokes on slashdot, but "pier review" is not one of them. On the other hand, is there a special significance to "Pier 13?" Yes, I've googled it, but there's only so much time for me to waste till I get out of work.
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.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
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.
--- Ban humanity.
Of course.
I don't spend my time reviewing others' code unless it is, for example, a smaller tool which is of importance (a third party suexec wrapper for example, or a rare Apache module from a less than perfect source).
My point was that:
1. We can if we want to. If something is that important, you at least take a quick look at it to see if any care was taken. This may be more so in smaller projects such as a perl script.
2. If you're not hiding it from other people, you're not ashamed of your potentially sloppy and buggy code being an easy target for anyone to exploit (not that a good hacker needs the code, but you see the point). It's not a black box.
3. People can implement features as needed in the code, and here they find security issues. The constant development to different platforms for big tools means that bugs can be found faster and advancement moves quicker as a whole.
A standard of quality is subjective and really depends on what is 'acceptable' and what you consider 'quality' code. Keep in mind that I'm not saying that M$'s code is not of quality or comparing them (for what Windows does (including application compatibility dating back to Windows 3.1) it does a decent job of it).
Simply, the optimal standard is pristine code that has all the features you want, no bugs, and will work on all systems. But we're in a realistic world. Having countless developers and testers makes some of these projects what they are and acts as a second check for many changes.
I'm not reviewing most of the code on the system, but somewhere, someone is catching the security holes and bugs you hear announced on the various tracking sites... so someone's probably doing it for you...
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
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.