FOSS quality vs. non-free s/w quality
FOSS quality vs. non-free s/w quality
There is a common theme pushed by fanatics of capitalism that never dies: that a profit-driven commercial project ensures higher quality products than products under non-profit projects. Some hard-right people I know never miss the chance to use the phrase “good enough for government work” to convey this idea.
I’m not looking to preach to the choir here, but rather to establish a thread of scenarios that correspond to quality for the purpose of countering inaccurate narratives. This is the thread to share your stories.
In my day job I’m paid to write code. Then I go home write code I was not paid for. My best work is done without pay.
Commercial software development
When I have to satisfy an employer, they don’t want quality code. They want fast code. They want band-aid fixes. The corporate structure is too myopic to optimize for quality.
Non-commercial software development
Free software developers have zero schedule pressure. They are not forced to haphazardly rush some sloppy work into an integration in order to meet a deadline that was promised to a customer by a manager who was pressured to give an overly optimistic timeline due to a competitive bidding process. #FOSS devs are free to gold-plate all they want. And because it’s a labor of love and not labor for a paycheck, FOSS devs naturally take more pride in their work.
I’m often not proud of the commercial software I was forced to write by a corporation fixated on the bottom line. When I’m consistently pressured to write poor quality code for a profit-driven project, I hit a breaking point and leave the company. I’ve left 3 employers for this reason.
Commercial software from a user PoV
Whenever I encounter a bug in commercial software there is almost never a publicly accessible bug tracker and it’s rare that the vendor has the slightest interest in passing along my bug report to the devs. The devs are unreachable by design (cost!). I’m just one user so my UX is unimportant. Obviously when I cannot even communicate a bug to a commercial vendor, I am wholly at the mercy of their testers eventually rediscovering the same bug I found, which is unlikely in complex circumstances.
Non-commercial software from a user PoV
Almost every FOSS app has a bug tracker, forum, or IRC channel where bugs can be reported and treated. I once wrote a feature request whereby the unpaid FOSS developer implemented my feature request and sent me a patch the same day I reported it. It was the best service I ever encountered and certainly impossible in the COTS software world for anyone who is not a multi-millionaire.