[H-GEN] Windows to *nix

[Greg Black]

On 2006-09-22, Anthony Irwin wrote:
> McBofh wrote:

I was going to leave this thread alone, but I can't let this
little exchange go without comment.

>> Most people who write OSS are awful coders who regard software
>> engineering principles (let alone practices!) as evil and concepts
>> to be shunned in favour of 1337ness and popularity.
> 
> I haven't really read much oss code never really had a need to but I get 
> the impression that there are a lot that do care about the quality of 
> the code and will spend longer getting it right then many commercial 
> companies that just want to make a product release date.

If you haven't read the code, how can you possibly have an
informed opinion about its quality?

I don't know where McBofh got his "most" from, and I suspect
that it was just a wild guess.  However, it's absolutely certain
that there is some dreadful software in the open source world.
Some examples from code that I have studied include sendmail,
bind, apache and associated software, all mozilla software and
openoffice.  It's equally true that the open source crowd do not
have exclusive control of the secrets of writing bad software.
There is an abundance of utter crap in the commercial sector
too.

Note: I'm not suggesting that all open source software is crap;
nor am I saying that all commercial software is crap.  Some of
the software from both camps is excellent.

Greg