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Open Source Code Maintainability Analyzed

Posted by Zonk on from the i-read-about-this-in-college dept.

gManZboy writes "Four computer scientists have done a formal analysis of five Open Source software projects to determine how being "Open Source" contributes to or inhibits source code maintainability. While they admit further research is needed, they conclude that open source is no magic bullet on this particular issue, and argue that Open Source software development should strive for even greater code maintainability." From the article: "The disadvantages of OSS development include absence of complete documentation or technical support. Moreover, there is strong evidence that projects with clear and widely accepted specifications, such as operating systems and system applications, are well suited for the OSS development model. However, it is still questionable whether systems like ERP could be developed successfully as OSS projects. "

39 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Results would be fairer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    If they excluded PERL.

    1. Re:Results would be fairer by tomhudson · · Score: 3, Insightful
      "The code IS the best documentations" vs "code looks like line noise"

      Anyone who has used perl knows that if you need anything beyond POD, you're not ready for perl.

      Perl is "unclean" for a reason - it is there just to get the job done quickly, not necessarily cleanly.

      Just try and start documenting perl - since there is more than one way to do things, you'll end up giving in to the urge to change code as you document it - so the documentation never gets written, and the code never gets finished. It's a fool's errand, a sisyphian task, the modern equivalent of a "bucket of steam". Sort of like the distraction of commenting while meta-modding.

      Teach a man perl - he writes code to do the task in a few minutes. Ask him to document perl - he writes code forever - and still leaves the job unfinished.

      Some tasks, and some languages, just weren't made for documentation. [tt]

  2. I tried to read it but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    by Ioannis Samoladas, Ioannis Stamelos, Lefteris Angelis, Apostolos Oikonomou ...it was all Greek to me.

  3. Was this really a surprise? by StateOfTheUnion · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Was this really a surprise? Did anyone think that open osurce software is as a general rule well documented or documented as well as many commercial projects that have project management (for better or worse) and technical writers on staff to do internal as well as external documentation?

    1. Re:Was this really a surprise? by arkanes · · Score: 4, Insightful
      In my experience, OSS is no more or less well documented than commercial, in house code. Some OSS projects have great docs. Most don't. Most in house software is poorly documented. The number of companies that actually have technical writers on staff for internal software is very, very small. Certainly I've never worked for one.

      In fact, I'd go so far as to extend this to software in general. Even when the comments can really matter, like API docs for libraries, the documentation sucks as often as not. I see no advantage to OSS here, but I don't see a disadvantage either.

    2. Re:Was this really a surprise? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      O.k., perhaps its not a surprise, but in the end the community needs to do away with the 'more eyes make better software' myth in order to move forward. In that sense, it is good that 'professionals' are now pointing out that some of the software out there is actually quite bad and that it is _not_ generally acceptable to not maintain documentation and uphold good project hygiene.

      Here's a nice experiment for you:

      1. Select a random project, preferably one that's slightly buggy during ordinary use.
      2. Subscribe to project's mailing list.
      3. Politely inquire if the project has any kind of automated test suite.
      4. Observe stumped reaction.
      5. Kindly explain the absolute necessity of such a system in any non-trivial app.
      6. Go down in flames.

      That attitude needs to change.

    3. Re:Was this really a surprise? by Feztaa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'll probably get flamed for this, but at least with OSS, if there's no documentation, you can at least read the code to see what it does. I know, that's no substitute for proper documentation, but with closed source, if there's no documentation, you're just fucked, plain and simple. In OSS, if there's no documentation, you can read the code.

    4. Re:Was this really a surprise? by Rei · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, the importance of a test suite rises dramatically with the complexity of the project. The difficulty of making a test suite increases with the amount of hardware that you need to implement it. When I think of "big" open source projects that aren't very hardware dependant - for example, ITK (the Insight Toolkit), they tend to have nice test suites. Naturally, the little ones don't, but little projects of most things don't have test suites.

      I agree, though, that automated test suites are underused. Also, not enough programmers (OSS or otherwise) seem to understand the importance of refactoring.

      A message to coders: People, if your function is more than 10 lines long, you should start to consider splitting it. If it's more than 100 lines long, you're probably doing something wrong. If you have the same code written with slight modifications two or more different ways, you're probably doing something wrong. Use templates rather than repeating code if your language supports them. If you ever feel "this should probably be commented more", don't comment it - split it up into functions and let the functions be their own comments (if you have to, comment the functions as well). Use const as much as physically possible (in supporting languages). Use array objects that clean themselves up instead of arrays allocated on-the-fly whenever physically possible. If you find certain variables being used often together, group them into an object. If you find a set of functions operating on an object and only that object, make them member functions. Etc.

      Just doing basic refactoring can make code far more organized and readable.

      --
      "Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh) ... "coccoon can do."
    5. Re:Was this really a surprise? by tomhudson · · Score: 3, Insightful
      If it's more than 100 lines long, you're probably doing something wrong.
      If a chunk of code can't fit on one page (two, max) it's too damn long. You're trying to do too much in one spot, and the goonies and golems will bit you in the ass.

      If it needs more comments than code, it's a sign its overly-complicated and you need to rethink what you're doing and how you're doing it. In other words, your algorithm sux the bag.

      If you can't write test cases for it because it's too tightly coupled to the rest of your code, you probably misunderstood the problem in the first place (or at least you're approaching it from the wrong direction)...

      All the comments and documentation in the world won't make spaghetti understandable or maintainable.

    6. Re:Was this really a surprise? by Weirsbaski · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ... but at least with OSS, if there's no documentation, you can at least read the code to see what it does

      ... In OSS, if there's no documentation, you can read the code.

      And if it not OSS, then either you have access to the code (in which case you can read it also), or you don't (in which case maintainability isn't even the issue, because there isn't any).

      Whether the source is open or closed has no (direct) bearing on how good the source and documentation are, for those allowed to see the source and documentation.

      --

      I am not a sig.
    7. Re:Was this really a surprise? by Peeteriz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In the enterprise, for example, financial companies, is quite common to be writing and maintaining additions/modifications to some huge software package that your company has bought - you write routines that run together with their code, there are facilities for such modifications/additions.

      However, you can't *really* know how *their* code works - you must interoperate with this code, but their code has (a lot of) bugs and is poorly documented - there is a lot of documentation, but it mostly covers the trivial parts, and if you *need* to know the exact behaviour in some tricky situation, then trial-and-error is the only way.
      And of course, you have no access to their source code.
      You may pay a huge sum of money and get that access, but the amounts involved are ridiculously huge.
      You may request a change from them - but again, the costs are huge - for a trivial change they charge so much that you can fund a programmer man-year in-house - so in-house workarounds are the way to go.

  4. Extremely Ridiculous Publishing by bperkins · · Score: 3, Interesting

    GNU General Public License (GPL)
    Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)
    are all defined in the article.

    But not ERP.

    Go figure.

  5. At least... by BJZQ8 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At least with Open Source Software you CAN maintain it if necessary. With closed source, there is no way to make any changes to old software...and much too often, the companies that make some of the obscure CAD stuff (my field, once) are out of business. At least having it open makes it possible to change something...even if you don't.

    1. Re:At least... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As a software engineer, I do like to point out something to you. "At least with open source you CAN maintain it if necessary" is not true! Maintenance takes up a good 60+% of a software cycle. Doing maintenance requires good documentation, fixing a bug is a minor issue, especially when it's easy to track down. Understanding design decisions, understanding architecture so that you can extend the software is a big challenge.

      Without appropriate documentations, you end up doing what has been done all over again, studying the software to understand how it works, which can be taxing. Go look at somewhat complex OSS projects, try hacking gcc to spit out a different binary format without reading any documentation. Try understanding postgres without documentation. GUI applications like a CAD system are even harder to make sense out of. If you are actually talented enough, the sheer effort you will poor into understanding the system, you might as well spend it designing from the ground up.

      Most people are not hackers, If they were, why would they need source code? crackers don't need source code to add functionality to any system, it's a matter of patching the object code, having a section of the code jump to your own code and return. But it's ugly, having source code makes it a little bit prettier but not much.

      Documentation is the key! .segmond

    2. Re:At least... by pclminion · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't see how copyright applies in this case. I can take a book, mark it up, cut pages out and paste new content into it. It's my book. I would be in trouble if I wanted to then sell that book, but I'm not trying to. Why should a piece of software be different?

    3. Re:At least... by charvolant · · Score: 5, Insightful
      At least with Open Source Software you CAN maintain it if necessary.

      Sort of ... kind of ...

      There comes a point where, particularly without design documentation, the bar is raised so high that the effort involved in maintaining something is more than that involved in moving to a new product. There's a scaling problem here. What works with small, simple direct programs doesn't work with large, complex or indirect programs.

      And some OSS code is simply completely undocumented, not even a comment -- apart from the licence. Something I discovered wandering through the XFree86 XKB code.

      See http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_12/bezroukov/ index.html for a discussion some of the weaknesses of the open source model when it comes to program comprehension.

  6. Bleh by Neil+Blender · · Score: 3, Interesting

    One need only peruse the source code of 5 randomly picked source forge projects to figure this one out.

    1. Re:Bleh by pclminion · · Score: 3, Interesting
      One need only peruse the source code of 5 randomly picked source forge projects to figure this one out.

      Yeah, but don't blame it on OSS. This is simply another embodiment of the long-tailed distribution of human stupidity. In any human endeavor there are a large number of people who are Unskilled and Unaware of it. These people will try their hand at whatever catches their attention, and the results usually range from mediocre to terrible.

      There's a lot of really bad fan fiction out there, too. And terrible amateur cartoons. And naive, uninformed political opinions.

      What we witness on SourceForge is merely a demonstration of the inability of most people to accomplish anything of any importance. Nothing specific to OSS.

  7. This assumes commercial software is any better by Augusto · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And it's often not.

    Many of us have and are working in the "real world" out there, and I've been less than impressed with most documentation on large products.

    Not to mention design documents, which end up being dead documents that are outdated as soon as the first line of code is written. To many corporations, there's no big incentive to spend so much money on these types of activities when you can have people just churning out code and finishing the darned product in the end.

    I'm not saying commericial development is any worse, but I can't say it's any better for sure either.

    --

    - sigs are for wimps.
    1. Re:This assumes commercial software is any better by tcopeland · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > design documents, which end up being
      > dead documents that are outdated as soon
      > as the first line of code is written.

      So true. Or only one page will be kept up to date - the database schema diagram, because it can be automatically generated from the production database schema.

      Meanwhile, new hires are referred to these documents with mumbles of "this is the design documentation, read this and you'll know everything". This statement is usually accompanied with a cynical smile and a shrug, indicating to the new hire the uselessness of the ritual. Ack.

      --
      The Army reading list
  8. Only one man... by game+kid · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...dared to challenge this article.

    (insert rousing action-series music) Hercules!

    --
    You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
  9. Mirror this article for closed source development. by dilvie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd like to see the same story aproach done for closed source projects. Since the focus here was on open source, specifically, it wasn't really well balanced, and it didn't tell us anything new. Anybody who's browsed sourceforge could have told you that open source development has its share of problems.

    The real question is whether or not closed source projects are all that better off.

    --
    MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
  10. No suprise, some projects are best suited for OSS by segmond · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It takes being interested in a project for one to pour himself into it. Most hackers/programmers have a thing for Operating System and programming tools, So it's not suprise that OS projects are doing betters. Or Programming tools, GCC, editors, Programming Languages, Databases... I love to program, but I could never find myself programming an ERP system, just for some company to make money of. How is it going to meet my personal need? There has to be something in it for me!

    This is why accounting software, office software and lots of general use applications "suck" in the OSS word. The "motivation" is not there, even "ego" is not a good enough motivation. My fellow hackers will give me more props for some lousy 500 line python hack which does something weird and not so useful than a complete accounting software suite.

    What would be interesting is to see a group of companies start an OSS project from the ground up, pour their own money, pay programmers. But then again, there is no motivation for that! Big companies are only interested in jumping on OSS projects that happen to have gained fame...

    --
    ------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
  11. You don't want to know what goes into sausage by melted · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've worked on a major product in CRM market, and let me tell you, don't want to know what goes into sausage. If you knew, you wouldn't touch this code with a 10 foot pole much less bet your company on it.

    I'm sure it's the same with ERP. It's just a huge polished turd, but because you don't have the source code you don't know it's a turd. You only see the polish.

  12. Re:bah! by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 3, Funny
    ...3 1/2 inch floppy

    Nothing to be ashamed of, that's a pretty average size.

  13. ERP by fatcowtoes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    However, it is still questionable whether systems like ERP could be developed successfully as OSS projects.

    Yeah, it's also still questionable whether systems like ERP can be developed successfully at all. I'd like to see statistics on the number of ERP implementations that go horribly wrong and wind up crippling or even bankrupting companies.

  14. In theory... by the_skywise · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I always thought that if you have enough people "chewing" (working) on the same module that it should eventually self-standardize into a least common denominator of maintainability. Which, if not the most maintainable code, should be as maintainable as possible given the design and interoperability constraints (with other modules). Evolutionarily speaking... it HAS to be maintainable or it "dies" (becomes unmaintained and then unused or superceded by another implementation).

    On the flip side, a closed source module could be built "top down" to a unified set of coding standards that would help maintainability. But it's not a requirement. I've seen plenty of code bases built just this way that were horrific... But still maintained and not changed because management was willing to throw enough money to keep things going (but not enough money to make it more interoperable).

    YMMV.

  15. Open Source ERP by stiller · · Score: 5, Interesting

    However, it is still questionable whether systems like ERP could be developed successfully as OSS projects.

    I could be mistaken, but isn't Compiere an established OSS ERP implementation?

    I think the questin shouldn't be: 'Can software like ERP be developed as OSS?' But rather: 'Are there enough people in the OSS community interested enough to develop this kind of software without any form of financial support?' I think the answer has turned out to be 'no'. The same goes for things like (good) financial software, and anything that would require heaps of work, high precision and coordination, but no spectaculair result for the common man to brag about.

  16. Corporate OSS is an Ad-hoc Corporate Alliance by Mr.+McGibby · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Good corporations understand the value of corporate alliances. Often, the cost of doing something by yourself isn't worth the payout. Business support software is one of those. Companies don't make money from selling their internally developed software. OSS provides a means for lots of small companies to get together to create this kind of software, without having to create a formal agreement. Sure, some companies are going to take advantage, but if it is open, then every company can add the features that it wants.

    The problem with a software company filling this role is that their system is proprietary and unmodifiable by the client. Most companies *do* have the resources to hire a programmer or a contractor to add a feature to a piece of OSS.

    Anyone have any ideas on how to prevent abuse of such a system? That is, too many people using the system and not enough people contributing?

    --
    Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
  17. Re:Extremely Ridiculous Publishing by Bozdune · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Right, and what the hell does "Enterprise Resource Planning" mean?

    It used to mean the combination of MRP ("Material Requirements Planning") + Accounting. Then along came PeopleSoft and kinda changed it to HR + Accounting. Then along came Siebel and everyone scurried to make it MRP + HR + accounting + CRM (not quite there yet, though). Then they noticed Kronos and they all scurried to make it MRP + HR + Accounting + CRM + Time & Attendance. And failed, because Time & Attendance is a big pain in the butt. Heh. So they partnered with Kronos instead.

    The march of "embrace and extend" continues. Next app up: Expense Reporting (say bye-bye to Concur, etc., that's an easy app). Already on deck: data warehousing (say bye-bye to Cognos, Business Objects, etc., say hello to SAP BW). Soon to come: business process automation (say bye-bye to Ariba, etc.)

    And so on, if you believe the pundits.

    "ERP" has become a meaningless acronym, an umbrella under which every business app known to man is rammed into the same stinking pile of multi-million dollar shit. At some point it will probably implode from its own weight, and we'll go right back to the "best of breed" interoperable software model.

    But it will be a while yet. I suspect in the meantime there will be some Open Source alternatives. I sure hope so.

  18. Re:GUI by Phleg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're actually trying to claim that Winamp's design is good?

    Winamp and other players which try to emulate the look and feel of a "new wave" stereo do nothing but piss me off. Stereo systems have the bad interfaces they do because of an inherent lack of physical space; something that's still a concern with computers, but much less of one.

    Here's to more programs like Rhythmbox and iTunes which have the *important* controls accessible, allow for easy categorisation of songs, and use screen space nicely. All that without having to resort to 6pt fonts.

    --
    No comment.
  19. Quality is still a happy user by mcdtracy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Quality is still a happy user. Users like software
    the works well and hopefully doesn't need a lot of documentation to make it work well. Great software
    tends to teach the user how to make it perofmr or at least motivate the user to want ot invest the time to master the software for a particular use.

    These guys need to understand that this approach to quality applies to all software, irrespective of
    development model behind it. A software product with a lot of customers creates the momentum to maintain and enhance that product. An OSS product can be infused with similar energy due to acceptance by a large community of users (esp if many are programmer's too). The feedback from the users incents the programmers to maintain and enhance the product.

    New models can be built from hybrids of OSS (donated programming in the commons) and products
    that one must buy. If there emerges an ERP OSS app then there will be a business opportunity to document/train, support/fix/enhance/customize that application... and Oracle will feel the same frustration competing with that model that MS does competing with Linux.

    These complaints against OSS as a model (no obtion to buy support or docs) are a business opportunity
    that has been put into play by JBOSS, MySQL, and soon to be hundreds of others. The low barrier to entry is the key to high usage... It's try and don't buy (unless you'd like some training, customization, focus product enhancements, etc).

    Volume, usage and effectiveness drives the software world. Quality just makes the ride more comfortable. And OSS gets more comfortable everytime the train puls through the station.

  20. Was in "Look at the Numbers!". Positive results. by dwheeler · · Score: 3, Informative
    It's worth noting that a slightly older variation of this paper was already referenced in Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS)? Look at the Numbers! back in 2004-09-30. Look at their results, the actual numbers give a rather positive story: "1. Using tools such as MI derived for measuring CSS quality, OSS code quality appears to be at least equal and sometimes better than the quality of CSS code implementing the same functionality."

    OSS is no silver bullet. Their last point is "OSS code quality seems to suffer from the very same problems that have been observed in CSS projects." Er, big surprise, they're all software.

    --
    - David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
  21. Re:Sin(Sqrt(comments_in_percent)) ??? by pclminion · · Score: 3, Informative
    They take sin(sqrt(mumble_percent)).

    Now, I'm all for emperical data, but that is just bistromatics and totally insane.

    Metrics are already "black magic." This one is no worse or better than any other dimensionless metric I've seen.

    Obviously the input is in radians. The argument to a trig function is always assumed to be radians unless otherwise specified. Now, the sqrt(mumble percent) can only range from 0 to 1, so what we're looking at here is the graph of the sin function from 0 to 2.4 radians.

    Do it now. Graph it. Graph the function sin(sqrt(2.4*x)) from x=0..1

    Notice that this function (you might call it a transfer function) ramps up and peaks at 0.43 radians. That corresponds to a comment percentage of 3%. Then it begins to go down again. What does this mean? It means that there is a point beyond which more comments are not useful. If more than 3% of your code is comments, there's something wrong. That's all that part of the equation means!

    You only classify it as "bistromatics" because you're too lazy to do the thinking and figure out what it's for.

  22. Re:maintainability index = bullshit by pclminion · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Particularly amusing is a term of 50 * sin (sqrt(2.4 * perCM)) in the maintainability index

    It's only amusing to people who don't bother to think about why it's there. It's actually a very insightful part of the metric.

    First of all, perCM ranges from 0 to 1, not 0 to 100. Yes, that isn't explicitly stated, but it would be ridiculous otherwise. Second, try looking at the damn graph.

    As I told somebody else, do it now. Don't pretend to do it, GRAPH the damn thing and look at it: sin(sqrt(2.4*x)) for x=0..1.

    That graph makes it completely transparent what they're trying to accomplish with that part of the formula. First off, if comments are 0, the value is 0. Having no comments does not positively impact maintainability! Second, the function PEAKS at around 0.43. This represents an avgCM of 0.03, or 3%. Then, the function begins to go down again, but not as drastically as it rose.

    What this is saying is that the benefit of comments has a maximum at around 3%. Having more comments than this tends to DECREASE the maintainability (and this is borne out by experience). However, having too many comments is better than having too few comments, so the function is skewed to the left side by the sqrt() function.

    You see, every part of that expression makes total sense if you spend more than 2 nanoseconds thinking about it. Sheesh.

  23. How many projects have died for maintainability? by coldtone · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have seen many a software project disregard performance, features, and development speed all in the name of maintainability.

    We can't use JSP's, there hard to maintain!
    We can't use Javascript, it's loosely typed!
    We have to use an Object Broker, SQL is not maintainable!

    All the projects that I have been on where code maintainability has been the primary goal have one thing in common. They all failed.

    If you spend all of your time worrying about how the code looks, you will never finish the project. Talk to people who have built successful software. (The ones that sold millions of copies.) Very few of them are proud of the code the wrote, but they are happy with the product.

    The focus should always be on product quality, not code quality.

  24. The language is very important by doc+modulo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    - C++ is more readable than assembler
    - C# and Java are more readable than C++ ...
    - At the end of this list are functional programming languages.

    If you can read source more easily, then maintainability will be better.

    This article will tell you why you should be interested in functional programming languages. If you're smart and open minded, you will be convinced.

    The best functional languages are Haskell and Erlang (click "next" at the bottom of the page).

    For example, with Java you prevent bugs by static typing variables, example:

    int numberOfTries = 3;

    If you later try to fill "numberOfTries" with a string, the compiler will warn you of a bug and you'll have prevented it.

    With Haskell, you don't have to type int. Haskell will figure out the type for you, you get the benefit of preventing bugs with the convenience of not having to type variables.

    The reason I chose Erlang is because with functional purely functional programming languages like Erlang, you can automatically multitask your program over several CPU's (or this will take minimal effort). Nice feature to have in the future because every CPU manufacturere is going multi-core chip now. Also, you can easily make a server that never goes down with Erlang because your server is automatically clustered. Just plonk down a couple networked PC's and if one dies, the server cluster will just keep on going (a bit slower) until you replaced the power supply of the broken PC.

    There are tons of other advantages but, as I said, the above links will convince you if you're smart. Haskell is a bit more academic in nature, they're figuring out the best possible language and Erlang is more polished and ready to go. It was invented by Ericsson to create ultra reliable realtime servers.

    --
    - -- Truth addict for life.
  25. Can I ask a stupid question? by rastin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Are there standard methodologies for making non-oss code maintainable? If there are its news to me, every place I've worked has been uterly bass ackwards with their source code. Redundant libraries that do the same functions (one writen by Bob the other by Fred). Documentation that is years out of date with reality. And all the dead objects floating around, (its safer to leave them in that pull them out). With non-oss you get a pretty users manual, maybe that is what people call maintainable. Not to say there can't be sloppy OSS code. I think a great topic for discussion would be just plain maintainablity, whether its OSS or not.

    The article mentions doubt on whether an ERP system can be build OSS, why not? Are they planning on giving every end user the source code and ability to recompile the company's ERP? When I install Linux and friends on my mother-in-law's computer I don't plan on giving her the source code, is it implied that OSS is less maintainable because you cannot tell if someone has an altered version? It just freaking code!

  26. Re:How many projects have died for maintainability by Jerf · · Score: 3, Informative

    We can't use JSP's, there hard to maintain!
    We can't use Javascript, it's loosely typed!
    We have to use an Object Broker, SQL is not maintainable!

    All the projects that I have been on where code maintainability has been the primary goal have one thing in common. They all failed.

    If that is their idea of "maintainable", they didn't fail because they shot for maintainable, they failed because they drank the kool-aide and trapped themselves into software paradigms that only work when oodles of resources are thrown at them. Smaller teams require more agile methods to get results, and that is also the mechanism whereby smaller teams can produce software where larger teams failed. (It goes both ways, I'm not claiming that as an absolute. But that small teams can and have beaten much bigger ones is an unassailable fact.)

    Certainly you've got some good facts at hand to learn from, but I think you're taking the wrong lesson away. Projects that simply ignore maintainability fail, too. Can you imagine Mozilla with no concern for maintainability, or the Linux kernel?

    The focus should always be on product quality, not code quality.

    If you don't have quality code, you don't have a quality product. You may have an adequate product. You may be in a situation where an adequate product is all you need. I have an adequate set of knives in my kitchen, because I can not afford quality knives. But I do not pretend that they are therefore quality knives.

    You're calling for a classic short-term focus, and you can and will suffer the classic penalties for short-term focus. I know, I've seen it first hand and dragged software products out of their local optima by the sweat of my brow. It's not easy, but either it happens or the product dies a code-quality death.

    You need to use the proper metric for quality. Inappropriately using and paying for a strong type system is anti-quality in my book; that goes for your other two examples as well, when done correctly. (SQL and JSP code both need to be rationally minimized via the application of Once and Only Once, but they are not the cause of the unmaintainability; the abandonment of Once and Only Once is. Once and Only Once is one of the most important aspects of any proper quality metric.) Your quality metric should have functionality built into it.