Buggy Linux (and a toilet sink)

Hello! We're here at IT Blogwatch, in which Linux is looking 'buggier' to maintain. Not to mention a toilet tank sink ...

Is Linux safer than other OSs? Some say it's getting too many features and not enough fixes! A look at this subject from A.P. Lawrence: "Almost two years ago I wondered about the negative aspects of companies like IBM and HP trying to control Linux by hiring top Linux developers. Well, part of the problem may be about to get some attention ...  Linux kernel is 'getting buggier' and that part of the reason may be from the strong influence of corporate money ... from the ZDnet article:  'few developers are motivated to work on bugs, according to Morton. This is particularly a problem for bugs that affect old computers or peripherals, as kernel developers working for corporations don't tend to care about out-of-date hardware, he said [Andrew Morton]' ... Programmers are ordinary humans who need to eat, sleep, and pay their bills. Without employment by companies with a stake in Linux development, they'd need to treat their Linux work as a part time hobby and no doubt Linux would suffer ... I'm not even sure that Andrew Morton's concerns are all that important ... It definitely isn't going to slow Linux adoption in the rest of the corporate world. ... In truth, I expect Andrew's call for a bug-fixing cycle will be met with silence and apathy. There's no money in it, so even if the developers themselves agreed, the folks who sign their paychecks may tug on the reins rather sharply and tell them to ignore it. I hope I'm wrong."

» Kernelslacker agrees:  "I'm of the same opinion, ... each time I rebase a Fedora kernel to a new upstream point release, it creates as many new bugs as it fixes old ones; worse yet, sometimes it creates more new ones. Looking at the statistics of Fedora bugzilla, there are distinct patterns ... 2.6.14 took us from 356 open bugs to 376 in the space of a week. Another week later, up to 388. ... By the time we got around to rebasing to 2.6.15, FC4 was at 488 bugs."

» Zogger at Technocrat is brief:  "Linux Kernel maintainer Andrew Morton is pretty concerned over the status of the 2.6 kernel. He thinks that new features being added at a tremendous clip have lead to a gross ignoring of old bugs ... As a regular joe consumer, it wouldn't break my heart at all if every piece of software on the planet was put on a feature freeze for bug hunting purposes."  This drew several comments, like Rubycodez: "So the main focus of Linux is growing new features,  who's to say if buginess becomes too big a problem the focus won't shift to fixing? The good distros aren't using the latest kernel anyway, they put out fixes for a released  version they're using for a couple years.  Maybe that's where the emphasis on bug fixing belongs."

» Slashdot's Eldavojohn (898314): "Granted, I don't know enough about the inner workings of Windows or Linux but let's face it, Win95 & Win98 first editions would crash if you looked at them wrong ... While the debate rages on, Linux gets more complex ... gains more bugs ...begins to aim for more end-user features. Developers get sick of maintaining other developers code and focus on making new features (asked for or un-asked for) because it gives them pride to make something new. The Linux kernel hits the same pitfalls as the Windows kernel. If it takes an entire developement cycle to simply improve the current version's bugs, I'd gladly accept and encourage that."

» Ray Cha: "The operating system Linux is often used as the shinning example of the open source software movement ...  Keeping contributors motivated is crucial to open source endeavors. Reputation is a major factor in what drives people to submit code to the Linux development team. ... Are there solutions? One solution posited by Morton is to dedicate the entire next release to fixing long standing bugs. ... Another solution might try to expand the talent pool by encouraging young, gifted (even student) programmers to work on the bugs. Their motivations might be different from current developers ... The future sustainability for open source software will rely on learning how to best maintain the developers' incentives to contribute code."

Buffer overflow:

• Nicholas Carr: One interface to rule them all
• Lewis R Cunningham: Get the XML out of your database, via HTTP
• Susan Crawford: Comparative broadband ideas
• Charles Aunger: Will Carmine be enough in Microsoft's fight against VMware?
• Scott Karp: What If No One Will Pay For Content?
• Andy Updegrove: ODF Plug-ins and a Microsoft Promise of Cooperation
• Derek Sooman: Core Duo gets sequential naming scheme
• Peter Fairley: France's Effort to Spawn a New Google
• Andy Beal: 60 Million Blogging in China by Years End

• Jerri Ledford: Storage standards, again
• Eric Ogren: Microsoft Client protection
• Mitch Betts:  Your co-workers are info-hoarders
• Shark Tank: You're just encouraging them, you know...
• Martin McKeay: Blue Security Explains
• Robert L. Mitchell: Microsoft Office challenge:  Getting past "good enough"
• Douglas Schweitzer: Social engineering strikes again

And finally...  A toilet tank sink.  Convenient or conservation run amuck?

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk. Also contributing to today's post, actually I'm editing today: Judi Dey, our very own Antipodean.