Code Quality In Open and Closed Source Kernels

Diomidis Spinellis writes "Earlier today I presented at the 30th International Conference on Software Engineering a research paper comparing the code quality of Linux, Windows (its research kernel distribution), OpenSolaris, and FreeBSD. For the comparison I parsed multiple configurations of these systems (more than ten million lines) and stored the results in four databases, where I could run SQL queries on them. This amounted to 8GB of data, 160 million records. (I've made the databases and the SQL queries available online.) The areas I examined were file organization, code structure, code style, preprocessing, and data organization. To my surprise there was no clear winner or loser, but there were interesting differences in specific areas. As the summary concludes: '..the structure and internal quality attributes of a working, non-trivial software artifact will represent first and foremost the engineering requirements of its construction, with the influence of process being marginal, if any.'"

Comments

Re:windows is teh suck blah blah blah

[LBArrettAnderson]

The fact that he said that he couldn't draw any conclusions probably means that the windows code had by far the best quality out of any of them, and that shouldn't surprise anyone.

Re:No-one has ever claimed

[Angostura]

...and the findings suggest that, actually - no-one does.

You just don't like what he has to say.

[westbake]

Comparing Linux to the Windows Kernel and concluding there's no difference between them ignores a decade of operational experience. A "study" that concludes otherwise is wrong. Most people working on Linux would consider it flamebait.

Go ahead and mod yourself up.