Statistics prove that Linux has less bugs than commercial software

Fri 7 Jan 2005

Posted by Prakash under Linux

Computer science researchers at Stanford University have done an analysis that Linux has far fewer bugs than commercial competitors.

Here’s the maths:

Commercial software has 20 - 30 bugs per 1,000 lines of code.
Linux Kernel has 0.17 bugs per 1,000 lines of code.

And most importantly, majority of the .17 bugs in the Linux kernel are already fixed.
Wired has an article:

4 Responses to “ Statistics prove that Linux has less bugs than commercial software ”

Ramnath says:
January 15th, 2005 at 4:09 am
I think Windows itself is a bug or rather a collection of bus thrown together by a master bugger!
John says:
March 28th, 2008 at 4:48 am
It makes sense that the linux KERNEL but it is not right to compare it to commercial software in general since the kernel is one piece of software unlike gnome and KDE which have much more bugs than the kernel. The results seem reasonable and I also believe that FOSS software usually has less bugs than proprietary software but the posted statistics are biased.

Pingback from Prakash Advani’s Blog » Blog Archive » 101 reasons why Linux is better than Windows
January 24th, 2007 at 3:56 am
[...] Linux has less bugs than commercial software, this is one of the mail reasons for its stability. Read more. [...]
Pingback from Doomslagen, Inc. Official Blog » Blog Archive » Reasons why Linux is better than Windows
January 16th, 2008 at 10:43 am
[...] Linux has less bugs than commercial software, this is one of the main reasons for its stability. Read more. [...]