Somehow, I feel I've written about this before.. Anyway, Cameron writes about why Open Source sucks. Most of what he says makes sense, but I can simplify the matter quite a bit: it's just statistics.

99% of all software sucks. 90% of commercial software dies away and is forgotten about, or (more likely, actually) never sees the light of day in the first place. Somewhere I read that two thirds of programmers work inside enterprises developing code for just that enterprise. Anyway, I'd hazard a bet that most quality commercial code doesn't die: it succeeds on its own, or is bought and used by someone else. Lets say 99% of quality code stays alive in one form or another.

On the other hand, Open Source code just won't die, no matter how it would deserve death. It just keeps on popping up in yet another source code archive or software portal.

Hence: 99% of visible Open Source stuff (that is, all Open Source stuff) sucks. However, because bad commercial code is forgotten about, the good 1% floats to the top and becomes 9.9% of the visible stuff. Only 90% of the commercial code you see sucks.

What we need is a way to kill stupid Open Source projects, or at least hide them away so that no one has to waste time with them.

Comment by ip address on Fri, 13 Feb 2004 14:51:46:
Nice summary. Thank you for posting it.