The Industry choice

[Terry Reedy]

"Steve Holden" <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote in message 
news:_rTBd.66275$Jk5.46 at lakeread01...
> Well clearly there's a spectrum. However, I have previously written that 
> the number of open source projects that appear to get stuck somewhere 
> between release 0.1 and release 0.9 is amazingly large, and does imply 
> some dissipation of effort.

And how do the failure and effort dissipation rates of open source code 
compare to those of closed source code?  Of course, we have only anecdotal 
evidence that the latter is also 'amazingly large'.  And, to be fair, the 
latter should include the one-programmer proprietary projects that 
correspond to the one-programmer open projects.

Also, what is 'amazing' to one depends on one's expectations ;-).  It is 
known, for instance, that some large fraction of visible retail business 
fail within a year.  And that natural selection is based on that fact that 
failure is normal.

Terry J. Reedy