More Words, Deeper Hole

It's easy to point fingers at lots of open source software and the process under which it's written and deployed and disseminated, but honestly, I don't see much of a measurable difference in the quality, across the field as a whole, between open source, and closed source, software.

If the open source movement is guilty of anything it's making clear that the cost of robust, free, open software is that the creation space must also permit cohabitation with flaky, fragile, horribly maintained, free, open software whereas closed source, for-profit businesses can afford to sweep those kinds of things (mostly) into the dark closets of their own hallways before the public ever sees them.

Frankly, all things being equal, if I had to have the fruits of only one model or the other, I'd chose what the open source world has produced. Luckily, we don't, yet, have to make that choice.