CIO.com's Ken Harris unleashes a torrent of abuse on the state of software quality in a recent article. While he doesn't bring it up, the problem is compounded by software licenses that disclaim all responsibility for the problems caused by
We call them "bugs" as if somehow they are separate, evil creatures. But they're not. They are problems with the intrinsic quality of our product and the way it is brought to market. With automobiles, we learned that it's not always the driver, or how they drive. Sometimes it's the vehicle, and how it is built. At what point do we challenge software's architecture and design and the quality control process that produces it?
Harris suggests open source as a possible check on shoddy software quality. This may be overly optimistic. Open source by itself does not affect software quality. Knowing that one's code is open for all to see may prevent a developer from taking shortcuts that a proprietary license would hide, and a strong community might root out problems, but neither is a guarantee.
No, I think there is something fundamentally different about software. It is still "magic" in some ways. Just as a mobile phone's convenience trumps the need for a perfect (or even passable) signal, I suspect that we put up with a lot from software because it's still relatively new and drives a tremendous amount of value, even in its buggy state.
Eventually we'll expect more, and we'll get it. For now, I think we're still somewhat giddy by just how much even the worst software can do.
I'm falling behind on the blogging (Hey, it's my end of quarter!) but thought these articles/posts were too good to let slip:
- Digium is apparently doubling revenue each year. Given that it was doing $10 million (at least) two years ago, if memory serves, we may be looking at our next open-source IPO.
- Red Hat received kudos from Gartner and Forrester. In particular, Forrester's report has an awesome statistic: "86 percent of JBoss users are confident that it can handle their largest workloads." I guess presence, not absence, makes the heart grow fonder.
- Shlomfish tackles the age-old question of "What makes software high quality?" It has an exhaustive answer worth plowing through.
- The 451 Group suggests that the real Linux desktop race has just begun, with Linux trumping Windows in ultraportables. Worth watching.
Finally, Aggiorno discovers that most of the Fortune 500 fail to use web standards properly, noting "rendering web pages is such a complex task because of the lack of use of standards." Amen.
That's it for now. I'm caught up! Well, sort of. There are a few posts I'm itching to get out on Bitrock, Microsoft, and a few others, but I may have to do those late tonight.
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