On Bugs and Linux Quality

[Slawek Drabot]

Daniel Morrison:
"I have had similiar experiences to what you describe.... but surely this 
is what free software is all about! Choice.

If you are concerned about stability and showstopper bugs, choose 
Debian, RHEL, etc.

If you are concerned about bleeding edge functionality and hardware 
support, choose Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.

And don't forget to file those bug reports :-)

cheers

danm"


Choice is great. However we need to ask ourselves if we really need 20 different media players, for example, instead of 3 or 4 really good ones?

The nature of open source means that there are always more bugs than resources to fix them and therefore the tendancy for spawning new projects in response to shortfalls in another. I'm quite happy to live with this arrangement when using open source in the home, but I see this as a big obstacle for commercial/corporate adoption. 

Let's face it, the pointy haired bosses struggle with making a decision when faced with 2 or 3 options. Expand that to 20 and beyond and we have decision deadlock.