Opensourcecode contains, on average, an equal number of or even fewer errors than propri lwa military code. That enables a research organization that millions of lines of source code-both open source software and closed software tested for errors.
The research is carried out by the Coverity-organization and described in the Scan Open Source Integrity Report. During the study were 37 million lines of code of open source software checked for errors, as well as 300 million lines of code of closed software products. For the opensourceselectie were 45 projects examined, with an average of 832.000 lines of code. In addition, proprietary code has been checked which was proposed by 41 anonymous members of the Coverity organization.
The analysis showed that the opensourcebroncode on average with 0.45 errors per thousand lines contained, while with proprietary code 0,64 errors per thousand lines were detected. From this it would appear that opensourceprojecten, on average, less errors, scoring both categories under the 1.0, the average number of errors made in software.
In addition, Coverity that the source code of three opensourceprojecten a very high quality: Linux 2.6, PHP 5.3 and PostgreSQL 9.1, with a respective foutdichtheid of 0.62, 0.2 and 0,21. Such figures are used by the organisation is defined as ‘industry benchmarks’.