Baixe O Linux é um software melhor que o Windows (is Linux Better than Windows software?) e outras Notas de estudo em PDF para Engenharia Elétrica, somente na Docsity! loyal opposition 104 I E E E S o f t w a r E P u b l i s h e d b y t h e I E E E C o m p u t e r S o c i e t y 0 74 0 - 74 5 9 / 0 9 / $ 2 5 . 0 0 © 2 0 0 9 I E E E E d i t o r : R o b e r t L . G l a s s n C o m p u t i n g T r e n d s n r l g l a s s @ a c m . o r g I n the last decade, the open source movement has been a vital source of innovation affect- ing software development.1 However, open source community practices have provoked a debate on software quality—namely, is open source software’s quality better than that of its closed-source counterpart? Studies have attempted to correlate metrics with software performance or validate that metrics can actually predict software systems’ fault proneness.2 For open source soft- ware, a strand of research has emerged on quanti- fying software quality through code reading and judging of open source codes.3 Here, I attempt an evidence-based or experimental software research approach4 to answer the question. What is open source software? Whereas you can define closed-source software as a product created using traditional software development methods, the definition of open source software isn’t always straightforward. This is because a software product can take at least three paths to become open source. For ex- ample, a collaborating open source community developed the Linux kernel, an individual cre- ated PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), and the Mozilla browser was originally developed as proprietary software. One implication of this is that any con- clusions about Linux might not hold true for all open source products. What Do We Know from existing studies? I evaluated studies focusing on performance and quality rather than total cost of ownership. Mind- craft conducted one such study, with participation from RedHat and Microsoft engineers.5 The engi- neers tuned the tested systems to ensure maximum performance. They performed tests on one- and four-processor configurations of Dell servers in- stalled with Windows NT Server 4.0 and the Red Hat Linux 6.0 kernel. The results showed that Win- dows NT Server had faster throughput than Linux on both configurations. In 1999, Bloor Research experimentally com- pared the maturity of Windows NT to that of GNU/Linux for one year.6 The Windows NT sys- tem suffered 68 failures, of which 26 were memory related and eight were file system faults. The Linux system experienced only one software-related fail- ure. Bloor rated the Linux servers as good as or bet- ter than the Windows servers in five of the seven ar- eas monitored. The study has an obvious limitation. Namely, it’s unclear whether 25 of the 26 memory failures were due to the Windows OS or to the poor quality of the intervention to repair the first error. Ioannis Samoladas and his colleagues found that the code quality of successive versions of open source software was equal to or better than that of closed-source products.7 Security Innovation pit- ted a Windows 2000 system against a SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 for one year. The company con- cluded that Windows Server environments seem to manifest lower risk of instability when subjected to modifications.8 Diomidis Spinellis used CScout, a source code analyzer, to investigate the code qual- ity of four operating systems: FreeBSD 6.1, Open Solaris, Linux 2.6.18, and major portions of the Windows Research Kernel.9 He investigated met- rics for file organization, code structure, code style, preprocessing, and data organization. He found that the open source products’ code quality wasn’t markedly higher than that of the closed-source products. A Vulnerability study You can define vulnerability as the lack of adequate security. Security is software’s ability to prevent Adenekan (Nick) Dedeke The evidence is not that clear-cut. is Linux Better than Windows software? Continued on p. 103 Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO PARA. Downloaded on April 21, 2009 at 12:45 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.