Engineering Best Practices vs. Open Source

Free Software advocates have long argued that the issues are political: e.g. freedom. Open Source advocates have argued that the issues are Engineering – that Open Source is better software engineering than the alternative.

What if the Open Source thesis is wrong? What if Open Source practices contribute to more poorly engineered software? What if the rationale for Open Source software is freedom?

This will be a discussion around the reasons why open source software development produces poorer quality software – but perhaps not so much poorer that the tradeoff is worth it for the added freedoms.

Also, proposals for ways to modify standard open source practices to mitigate or resolve some of these problems.

• Video