Java’s Code is Available

I noticed this on Java.net. In it, Eitan Suez suggests that having open source J2SE libraries would rapidly increase their quality because of all the developers contributing patches. The major problem with this argument is that the source for the Java standard libraries is already available and in fact is included in pretty much every J2SDK. It’s right there, in a format that can be used to create patches against and submit them to the publicly available bug parade for java. How many people do you see actually doing this though? Some, but very few. Sure people are going to be more inclined to submit patches if Java becomes buzz word compliant and gets a mickey mouse badge from the FSF, but there will still be far more people demanding improvements than there will be fixing them. Open source isn’t this magical bullet that suddenly makes life easy and gives perfect quality – there are plenty of extremely buggy opensource programs with too few developers and there always will be. Maybe I’m just more careful in choosing which commercial software I use, but on average I’ve found opensource software to be lower quality than commercial software, however opensource is more towards the extremes – it’s either really great or really bad. I’m sure that’s going to start a massive flame war but so be it. Opensource isn’t always better quality because generalisations are always false. Finally I’d like to draw attention to what I consider the best rebuttal I’ve heard in a long time:

Go open source with DB2 and then you can tell me what to do with my assets

From Scott McNeally obviously. Check and mate.