John Hebert wrote: >I agree with Dustin that open source software is >usually buggy, _but_ it is usually described that way. >All software is buggy, but rarely does closed source >software describe itself that way. > >In fact, the nature of open source is that users are >expected to debug it. Maybe this is where Andrew's >confusion comes from: he expects open source to be the >same quality as closed source, but does not realize >that it is a group effort to make it the same quality. > > I think that I look at it differently - I expect bugs in any early version, close source or not. I probably tend to use the more mature Open Source apps (since I work mainly in a Windows environment) but I'm pretty intolerant of any program that I regard as unusable/unstable.
I do think that there's a good argument that commercial applications should be held to a higher standard - if you're going to charge someone money for the software then it should work as advertised and bugs should be fixed quickly. -- Why is 'abbreviation' such a long word?