FOSS benefits the field of computer engineering (was: Malware "best practices")

[Kent Johnson]

Ben Scott wrote:
> On 7/27/06, Jason Stephenson <jason at sigio.com> wrote:
>   
>> In the commercial realm of closed source
>> software most programmers only get to see the code of the project(s) to
>> which they are assigned. They never get to see much code that's better
>> or worse than what they are used to seeing.
>>     
>
>   I think you've got a very good point there.  Not just the code,
> either, but the whole experience.  Learning a FOSS project means you
> have to learn the data structures and program flow of someone else's
> code.  You get to appreciate the value of good design and good
> comments/documentation, and/or see how hard the lack of same makes
> picking up a project.  
All of this is true for a programmer coming in to an existing 
closed-source project as well.
> You also get to see, first hand, how software
> evolves over time, and the consequences of bad work.  You also see how
> abuses and bad assumptions lead to software failures in the field.
>   
Again, this is just learning from experience, it has nothing to do with 
FOSS specifically. Stick with a closed-source project  for a few release 
cycles and you will see the same thing.

The availability of open-source code and projects increases the 
opportunities to learn these lessons, but the lessons will be learned 
from experience whether the code is open or closed.

Kent