News from PANUG/BizNix - July 3, 2002
http://panug.org - http://biznix.org

LINUX NETWORKING
The Linux Networking class is nearly full. We're limiting the class
size to 12 people. We have 2 seats left. The 3-day class is held
on non-consecutive days so students can digest and practice what they
learn instead of having to digest three days of intensive details
in one shot. The class dates are July 11, 18, and 25. For information
about the course contents go here:

http://alcpress.com/training/courses/linuxnetworking.htm

The course costs $325. To signup, call 503-635-6370.


BUGGY SOFTWARE COSTS $59.5 BILLION
by Ed Sawicki - Accelerated Learning Center / Tailored Computers

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has issued the
findings of a study it conducted on the cost of buggy software.
The cost, $59.5 billion, is borne mostly by consumers of the buggy
software. They say "few products of any type other than software
are shipped with such high levels of errors."

The study found that over half of all bugs were discovered well
after the code was written - mostly when the software was already
in the hands of users. Clearly, this suggests a lack of testing but
the NIST report says that about 80% of software costs are spent on
testing. Something is really wrong. Why isn't testing finding the
bugs?

NIST blames this mostly on growing complexity. Popular software is
now measured in millions of lines of code. Both programmers and their
testing tools are challenged when code size grows very large. But
there are other reasons as well:

1.Marketing strategies - this is pretty broad. It includes such things
  as time-to-market pressures that force programmers to take shortcuts
  to meet agressive schedules. This helps explain why, for example,
  a company can hire brilliant programmers but still ship awful
  products.

2.Limited liability by software vendors - since software vendors
  are somewhat insulated from lawsuit, there's little incentive to
  reduce bugs.

3.Decreasing average product life expectancy - vendors keep profits
  high by eating their young and forcing consumers to upgrade to the
  next version of buggy software. Unfortunately, each new version may
  fix some old bugs but introduce new ones.

The study does not mention vendors, hardware/software platforms, or
software categories as the worst offenders. This is unfortunate
because readers could easily get the impression that the entire
industry suffers from these problems equally, which is not the case.

The problems mentioned above are self-inflicted. Vendors choose to
have these problems. A vendor chooses to keep growing a program until its
complexity is such that it can no longer be properly maintained. No
programming class or book in the world instructs programmers that
"bigger is better". In fact, the reverse is true. Every Unix programmer
has been taught that "small is beautiful".

The problem of buggy software was created by the way the commercial
software world does business. The solution must come from vendors
making business decisions. This is not likely to happen. Buggy software
means high profits.

The NIST report is here:
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/n02-10.htm