First of all, I think open source is one of the greatest concepts of our time. I love the fact a community of dedicated programmers get together for a common goal. I love that open source technology is developed, for the most part, without capitalist intentions. It’s technology for the people, by the people. Wow, that was overboard. Anyway, with that said, there is one slight problem with open source.
It is my belief, and only my belief, that open source distribution companies do not have the resources to properly test what they are distributing. Some say, you get want you pay for. Others say that’s why there are warnings and tested hardware listed on the web pages. And some say, it’s not that big of a problem.
Software testing is a huge concern. Not only to software companies include testing in their budget, but many corporations that buy software do their own testing of a new product before it ever gets out company wide. This protects end users for security breaches, data corruption, and hardware failure.
While breaches and corruption are arguably superior in the eyes of most open source users, hardware failure has always been an issue for open source. Open source programs have broken hard drives, halted CPUs, and even recently, destroyed CD-ROM drives. The failures continue to arise throughout open source.
Stopping these failures will be one of the biggest hurdles in the open source movement. The main exploit of these failures is the lack of testing. But, who will step up to the role of tester? Hardware companies would be the obvious choice. However, they barely have enough time to test Windows. Plus, there is not enough of a market base to justify the extra testing in the case of most vendors. There are some exceptions in larger vendors, but even they don’t test all distributions. Software distributions would seem the next choice. However, the probability of them testing all the hardware out there for their distribution with their level of resources is simply not realistic. The conflict of testing and resources won’t be solved anytime soon. In the meantime, I would suggest only installing open source on hardware you are willing to lose.
