Actually, Open Source Code Is Better: Report - morristhoures

Free and open source software package such as Firefox, LibreOffice, and Linux is enjoying increasingly distributed adoption on business and home base computers alike, but every at one time in a while a naysayer will still pipe with one indefinite concern or some other about open source quality, in particular.

"You get what you pay for," such detractors often like to say.

Information technology's all just a weigh of FUD, of course, and a original report from development testing firm Coverity helps to confirm that.

In its 2011 Coverity Read Open Source Integrity Report, which was released on Thursday, Coverity actually found that open source code has less defects per thousand lines of code than trademarked software code does.

"The line between open source and proprietary software will remain to blur o'er time atomic number 3 open root is encourage cemented in the modern software supply chain," celebrated Zack Samocha, Coverity's project director for the Run down project.

Searching for Defects

In the beginning launched by Coverity on with the U.S. Department of Country of origin Security in 2006, the Scan protrude is the largest public-nonpublic sector research feat focused connected open source software integrity, Coverity says.

Included in this year's analysis were more than 37 million lines of afford source software code and more than 300 million lines of proprietary software code from a sample of anonymous Coverity users.

To behavior its analysis, Coverity secondhand a testing platform that was upgraded this year with the ability to notic Thomas More spic-and-span and existing types of defects in software code, the company says.

Linux 2.6 Stands Out

Among Coverity's findings was that in branded codebases, which averaged 7.5 billion lines of code in sized, the average number of defects per thousand lines of code was .64.

That may sound pretty small, but in open origin software the figure was tied smaller. Specifically, with an fair open source project size of 832,000 lines of code, the average blemish density was .45 defects per k lines of code.

Where codebases were of similar size, open source write in code quality was pretty much on equation with branded code select, Coverity found. Linux 2.6, e.g.–a project with nearly 7 cardinal lines of cipher–had a defect denseness of .62, which is stock-still slightly better than that of its proprietary codebase counterparts.

Among open reservoir projects, Linux 2.6, PHP 5.3, and PostgreSQL 9.1 sack be used as industry benchmarks, the companion aforesaid, with defect densities of .62, .20, and .21, respectively.

This is not to say that assimilative source software is forever the best solution for every purpose. When it comes to choosing new software package, however, quality is ace of open source's many assets–not a financial obligation.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/468505/actually_open_source_code_is_better_report.html

Posted by: morristhoures.blogspot.com