Expanding on the quality of open source software.
Recently I wrote an article about why I prefer open source software. My main reason, for those who have not read the article, is one of quality. Now, “quality” is one of those words that means different things to different people in different situations. This may be the main reason why it’s a contentious subject to discuss.
I got a response to my article from the well-known Eugenia Loli-Queru. Thank you for your comment, Eugenia, even if it is in disagreement with what I wrote. And I did notice on your web site that you recently wrote an article about some troubles with VLC.
I must say, I have only limited experience with VLC. For my multimedia needs, I have always found MPlayer to be more than sufficient. I don’t recall ever running into any problems with it, but I don’t do much multimedia work.
As for the problems you mentioned with VLC, I’m not sure whether or not a better testing procedure on their part would have caught the issues you encountered. We must keep in mind that real-world development is often hindered by a variety of factors, be it not enough time, not enough manpower, not enouh money, and so forth. Such constraints are just something we have to deal with. When it comes to the VLC developers testing every possible video format conversion using the codecs and formats they support, it could take far more effort and resources than they have at their disposal. Of course, we cannot forget that there are many other features of VLC that would also need to be tested.
Beyond that, even if they did test every possible video conversion with every release, they still may run into problems if somebody comes along with an unexpectedly corrupt file. Ideally, the codec or their software would catch the corruption, but in many cases that may be difficult, if not impossible, to do. Even with extensive automated testing procedures, it may not be reasonably possible for them to determine if some form of corruption has taken place during a video conversion.
With respect to the original topic, that being the quality of open source software, I think I could have made my earlier article somewhat clearer. I was in no way suggesting that every open source application is of a high quality! Absolutely not. What I was suggesting is that more often than not, for each closed source application there is an equivalent open source application or technology that is of a higher quality.
While my personal experience is in no way proof that open source software is of a higher quality, it is what I’m basing my assertion on. After many years of using a wide variety of closed source and open source systems, both for my own personal use and as part of the IT work I have done, I have to say that experience has shown open source to be the way to go. For instance, I have yet to see an Apache HTTP Server deployment be considered a “failure”. Yet time and time again I have seen projects severely delayed or cancelled outright because closed source systems, mainly Microsoft’s IIS, have proven inadequate.
If I can find the time, I wish to further discuss the topic of open source quality. My preference when discussing such issues is to rely on real-world experience and examples. If there is one trend that I have noticed, it is that open source software often leads to projects that succeed, because the software being used ends up just working as it should. That is not a trend I have observed with closed source software.