Motivation of software professionals
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From: Arved Sandstrom on 13 Feb 2010 09:59 James Kanze wrote: > On 12 Feb, 22:37, Arved Sandstrom <dces...(a)hotmail.com> wrote: [ SNIP ] >> I think you'd find that if there was much less free stuff >> available that we'd have a _different_ economic model, not >> necessarily a _worse_ one. > > There used to be a lot less free stuff available, and it was > worse. (It doesn't make sense to me, either, but those are the > facts.) > >> I look at warranties differently than you do. To me a warranty >> means that I used proper development practices, I can make >> informed statements that the published software is actually >> fit for a stated use, and that I care enough about the program >> to offer some support. > > Clearly. The problem is that most commercial firms don't do > that. Right, and that's because usually the _only_ difference between free and commercial software right now is the price. Paid-for software doesn't come with any more guarantees or support than the free stuff does; in most cases you actually have to pay extra for support packages. In effect the commercial software is also crappy because we do not hold it to a higher standard. I believe that a well-thought-out system of software certifications and hence guarantees/warranties will lead to a saner market where the quality of a product is generally reflected in its cost. Someone with a "glass is half-empty" perspective on this might bemoan the fact that the higher cost would be all about absorbing the cost of recalls and lawsuits and what not; I think the other view, that the higher cost reflects the higher quality, and that you will expect _fewer_ recalls and lawsuits, is just as valid, if not more so. >> I have no idea why you think that warranties and liabilities >> are going to lead to the financial ruination of countless >> developers. People in other sectors sell millions or tens of >> millions of other imperfect things, with warranties, and they >> seem to be making a living. > > I think that part of the problem is that a mistake in a program > will affect every instance of the program. Most recalls for > cars, on the other hand, only affect a small subset of the total > production. Is there any reason to believe that, in a more mature and professional software development ecosystem, that the percentage of *total* recalls of software would be excessive? Most software programs I have to work with do not have show stopper bugs, and realistically do not need to be "recalled". Generally they have localized bugs that have workarounds or that you get a patch for. If the software was of quite high-quality in the first place then the number of these lesser defects is not going to sink a software shop. AHS
From: Lew on 13 Feb 2010 10:09 James Kanze wrote: > Logically, I think that most of the techniques necessary for > making really high quality software would be difficult to apply > in the context of a free development. And at least up to a Nonsense. Free software has a much higher rate of adoption of best practices for high quality than for-pay software does. You say so, too. It's the "logically" with which I take issue. That free software uses the best techniques and has the highest quality in the marketplace is entirely logical, in addition to being an observed fact. You just have to avoid false assumptions and fallacies in reasoning. > point, they actually reduce the cost of development. So > theoretically, the quality of commercial software should be > considerably higher than that of free software. Practically, > when I actually check things out... g++ is one of the better C++ > compilers available, better than Sun CC or VC++, for example. > Valgrind is at least as good as any of the commercial memory > checkers under Linux. And Subversion is at least as good as any > of the version management tools, excepted ClearCase (and the two > really address different models of development). ClearCase is an unwieldy pig. You hold that up as an example of high quality? Admittedly, it's better than a lot of other version-control products, but not nearly as good as the free ones. > There used to be a lot less free stuff available, and it was > worse. (It doesn't make sense to me, either, but those are the > facts.) No, they're not the facts. Since the beginning of free software, much of it has been very high quality. I doubt very much that the ratios have changed much, or if they have, perhaps you could substantiate your "facts". I don't dispute that there used to be a lot less free software, insofar as there used to be a lot less software of any description. It's your undefined use of "worse" without evidence that I dispute. > I think that part of the problem is that a mistake in a program > will affect every instance of the program. Most recalls for > cars, on the other hand, only affect a small subset of the total > production. A mistake in a car model enough to effect a recall affects every instance of that model. Bugs in software, OTOH, affect only a small subset of the total production of software. You haven't been paying much attention to the news lately, have you? -- Lew
From: Seebs on 13 Feb 2010 11:27 On 2010-02-13, James Kanze <james.kanze(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Logically, I think that most of the techniques necessary for > making really high quality software would be difficult to apply > in the context of a free development. They might be hard to apply, but consider that a great deal of free software is written without idiots saying "you need to get this done sooner so we can book revenue this quarter to please shareholders". It's also often written by particularly good developers, who care about their code. It is also probably an influence that free software writers expect the code itself to get feedback, not just the behavior of the application. I have submitted bug reports about poorly-expressed code, not just about code which didn't work. > And at least up to a > point, they actually reduce the cost of development. So > theoretically, the quality of commercial software should be > considerably higher than that of free software. Again, I don't think there's actually any force driving that. The benefits of well-written software are significant enough that it is likely worth it to some people to improve software they have access to, and if it's worth it to them to do that, it costs them virtually nothing to release the improvements. Free software often ends up with the best efforts of hundreds of skilled programmers, with active filtering in place to keep badly-written code from sneaking in. > And Subversion is at least as good as any > of the version management tools, excepted ClearCase (and the two > really address different models of development). If you are implying that CC is actually usable to you, that marks a first in my experience. No one else I've known has ever found it preferable to any of the open source tools, of which git is probably currently the most elegant. > I think that part of the problem is that a mistake in a program > will affect every instance of the program. Most recalls for > cars, on the other hand, only affect a small subset of the total > production. Another issue is that, if you give away open source software, people can modify it. If you modify my code, and your modification is not itself buggy, and my code is not itself buggy, but your modification causes some part of my code not to work as expected, whose fault is that? This kind of thing is a lot more complicated with code than it is with physical objects. You don't have a million people using a bridge, and a couple hundred thousand of them are using the bridge recompiled for sports cars, and another couple hundred thousand are running it with a third-party tollbooth extension. -s -- Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nospam(a)seebs.net http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
From: Seebs on 13 Feb 2010 11:31 On 2010-02-13, Arved Sandstrom <dcest61(a)hotmail.com> wrote: > Right, and that's because usually the _only_ difference between free and > commercial software right now is the price. Paid-for software doesn't > come with any more guarantees or support than the free stuff does; in > most cases you actually have to pay extra for support packages. Could be. > In effect the commercial software is also crappy because we do not hold > it to a higher standard. I believe that a well-thought-out system of > software certifications and hence guarantees/warranties will lead to a > saner market where the quality of a product is generally reflected in > its cost. That might seem "saner", but again, the market is massively improved by free stuff at the baseline. Look at it this way: Would science improve if you were guaranteed that for-pay versions of the Periodic Table were "better" than free ones? No. It turns out that it's much better for everyone to have basic information be completely free. The closer you get to infrastructure being free (or paid for at a cultural level rather than by individual users), the better everything else works. Operating systems and compilers are infrastructure. More things are becoming infrastructure-like with time. Furthermore, commercial software has strong incentives to be badly-written or poorly-designed. Think about IM protocols. What IM protocols have been best designed? The ones that didn't feel a need to be "proprietary". Meaning the ones designed explicitly with intent to be free and open. And not to necessarily provide for a viable commercial business model. Software is counter-intuitive economically. If you try to make it conform to the economics of things which can be scarce because each instance costs additional money, you'll cripple it. > Is there any reason to believe that, in a more mature and professional > software development ecosystem, that the percentage of *total* recalls > of software would be excessive? Most software programs I have to work > with do not have show stopper bugs, and realistically do not need to be > "recalled". Generally they have localized bugs that have workarounds or > that you get a patch for. If the software was of quite high-quality in > the first place then the number of these lesser defects is not going to > sink a software shop. It won't if they're making substantial money. It would sink the infrastructure work, though. -s -- Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nospam(a)seebs.net http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
From: Arved Sandstrom on 13 Feb 2010 11:58
Seebs wrote: > On 2010-02-12, Arved Sandstrom <dcest61(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >> In a similar vein, what about the free software around which an >> ecosystem of "support" developers has grown, who sell their expertise in >> deploying the software in a client environment, or doing a job for a >> client using the program? > > Well, in that case, I think you might have a contract. $DAYJOB sells stuff > which is in large part "linux and free software", but there are contractual > terms above and beyond the stuff given in the license. > > But if you don't like it, you talk to us about the contract under which you > bought it, not to Mr. Torvalds. > >> Even more specifically, what about software >> given out for free, around which the _author_ offers such support >> services? This practise is not uncommon. By doing so, has not the author >> implicitly guaranteed the fitness of his application? How can he then >> simultaneously provide the program free of charge for anyone who wants >> it, and claim that it is so unreliable that he can offer no guarantees >> for it? This is rather at odds with his own use of it in a commercial >> setting. > > I don't think so. If you want a guarantee, you buy it. If you didn't > buy anything, you haven't established a commercial relationship giving you > a reasonable expectation of support or fitness for a particular purpose; > after all, the entire point of selling support is to sell the promise that > you'll make it fit for a particular purpose if it isn't, which it might > not be. > > -s Everything you say is regrettably where our field is at right now. Which is pretty sad. The whole point of the discussion was, I thought, to see if we can't do better than this. I don't have all the answers, and I don't purport to have all the answers. I am simply describing what I see to be a desirable goal, that of an elevated level of professionalism in our field. I don't think we'll get there by just hoping that individuals do a better job. AHS |