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Comment by jacobsenscott | Hacker News Reader

Commercial software usually has a support team working frantically behind the scenes trying to keep the wheels on, while the engineers are under presser to add more bells and whistles rather than improve the core application. Support issue caused by bugs are just a cost of doing business. Obviously you need a certain amount of reliability to keep those costs from putting you out of business, but less than you might think.

Free software sinks or swims based on how it works when nobody is there to support it. So the reliable stuff rises to the top.

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There's also a self-selection bias here. FOSS software tends to attract people who are interested in FOSS, and they tend to be knowledgeable, or is a tinkerer/DIY'er.

Commercial software is often used by unwilling users. These users aren't interested in the software, and are often not well versed in IT or have an uncontrollable environment they cannot tinker with. Therefore, any failure caused by their circumstances are attributed to the failure of the commercial software.

Therefore, FOSS software may seem more reliable because the people using it has more competency in using it, has more control over their environment and may even be willing to elbow-grease a DIY fix/hack.

This is pretty close to the mark. As far as I can tell, after the Bell System got broken up in 1982, the government turned a lot of their IP into IEEE/FIPS/ISO/ANSI standards (e.g. X3J11, POSIX.1) and then made compliance mandatory. So businesses sprung up to provide compliant solutions, not for love of the technology but to cash in on the gravy train. Great example is the Windows POSIX subsystem where you can really tell that the intent of the folks who built it was basically just to check off a box.

Hmm.

You could say there is a self selection bias with millionaires having pricey stuff too... but that sounds like another reason it is reliable - i.e. its typically made for users who know their stuff versus made by the users who barely have an inkling...like getting your car designed by a mechanic versus getting it designed by a 5 year old who thinks big engines and tail pipes look cool...

Often those in management tend to have a relatively infantile understanding of software and design, let alone the understanding of their problem domain...

My impression of FOSS is that it's very heavy on total rewrites, as that is what attracts engineers. So, you end up with a lot of underbaked variants of the same thing.

Hmm, interesting theory...I think its more that forks are a thing - with a traditional product if snr mgmt dictates xyz must happen, rare is it even the consumer gets much say - with FOSS if it doesn't work right or does something dumb you can normally fork and go a completely different direction.

So I guess yeah if there are 100 ways to skin a cat you will get 100 different approaches, but then that's where the market comes along and mostly only the best 'rise to the top'.

Also, don't pretend complete re-writes with dubious value don't happen in big biz...its more common for something to be pronounced 'unworkable' and a complete rewrite mandate be issued, usually because a product had ossified to the point nobody knows what it actually does anymore, normally because companies are bad about investing maintenance time into code.

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