"defect" rate inversely proportional to prior scrutiny? [LWN.net]

"defect" rate inversely proportional to prior scrutiny?

Posted Mar 6, 2006 21:54 UTC (Mon) by jabby (subscriber, #2648)
Parent article: Coverity releases first defect survey results

Perhaps I'm being naive or falling victim to the urge to generalize, but I can't resist pointing out what I perceive to be a correlation with these projects and observations...

It seems to me that projects which have received relatively high levels of scrutiny in the recent past and/or have received a high level of bug reports (presumably as a result of said scrutiny) would tend to have a lower level of "defects", as detected by code verification tools. They have in a sense been baptized by fire.

Then again, I have no special knowledge of the relative level of scrutiny directed at these projects. I'm just drawing this conclusion based on the LWN blurb. If anyone else with more specific knowledge could comment on this possible trend, I'd appreciate it.

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"defect" rate inversely proportional to prior scrutiny?

Posted Mar 8, 2006 12:32 UTC (Wed) by ramdyne (subscriber, #536) [Link]

For ethereal the high level of security problems is directly related to the project focussing on code quality.

See http://www.ethereal.com/lists/ethereal-dev/200603/msg0013... and http://www.ethereal.com/lists/ethereal-dev/200603/msg0018... for the developers reaction to this article.

Andreas Sikkema

"defect" rate inversely proportional to prior scrutiny?

Posted Mar 8, 2006 18:53 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

It seems they weren't entirely impressed, and perhaps rightly so. I should have left that last sentence out. Pre-coffee excuses and all that; I apologize.